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The increased accessibility of high-end smartphone components in recent times means that users can now get their hands on features that only years before were exclusive to more expensive Android handsets. At this point, it’s safe to say that mid-range smartphones are the best they can be, and the Vivo V27 Pro is a pretty darn good example of that.
With the V27 Pro, Vivo has seen fit to give users a great combination of hardware and affordability, making this particular handset a rather tempting choice. As with any other smartphone however it’s not perfect, but are the pros enough to outweigh the cons? Let’s find out!
Design and Display
Pick up the Vivo V27 Pro, and you’ll be forgiven should you mistake it for a flagship device – the large size and glass panels on the front and back do a great job of giving the phone that premium feel that’s all the range on more expensive handsets, even more so with the slick-feeling matte panel on our review unit. Look a bit closer though, and there are nuances that stand out.
For one, the phone’s sides are made of plastic instead of a metal frame, and this houses the volume and power buttons, SIM card slot, charging port, and speaker grille. The choice to use plastic is somewhat understandable given its mid-range pricing, although we would have loved to see a metal frame round out the phone’s glass sandwich design.
There’s also only one speaker placed on the bottom of the phone, a missed opportunity of sorts given the abundance of stereo speaker setups on midrange phones nowadays. With that being said however, the phone overall feels sturdy and feels nice during usage, and certainly feels like a well-crafted device.
There’s a curved AMOLED display which dominates the front of the device, with a 1080×2400 pixel resolution, HDR 10+, and 120Hz refresh rate. There’s little to complain about here, and as far as visual quality is concerned the V27 Pro’s screen gets the job done, and gets it done nicely. Web browsing, gaming, and scrolling through your social media feeds looks great on the phone’s display. One caveat we see however is how much a curved display is of use to you, although this is rather subjective.
Internal Specs and Software
For performance, we go back to the phone’s mid-range origins – the V27 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8200, MediaTek’s go-to chipset for handsets which aren’t exactly flagship-level, but don’t skimp out on performance either. Our review unit comes with 8GB of RAM, joined by 128GB of internal storage – a commonly-seen setup on a myriad of handsets out there, but one that performs nicely nonetheless.
By “nicely,” we mean the general smoothness of day-to-day tasks such as web browsing, communication apps, and even a bit of gaming. With regards to the latter, we loaded up XCOM 2 on the V27 Pro, and the phone was able to run the game without any significant or otherwise troublesome lagging. We did notice a bit of warming up however, but not to the extent that we’ve seen with Tensor-powered Pixel devices.
The phone runs on a 4,600 mAh battery, which is enough to get most users throughout the day. We live in an age where most phones will have enough battery endurance, and unless you’re constantly gaming on the V27 Pro, we imagine that the device can keep up until nightfall.
Should you need to charge however, there’s support for 66W wired charging speeds, which really comes in handy for emergency top-ups. The phone unfortunately does not come with wireless charging, which is a shame as the glass back would have been easily able to accommodate wireless chargers.
As for software, the phone comes preloaded with Android 13, although it comes with. – you guessed it – a custom Android skin in the form of Funtouch 13, Vivo’s proprietary user interface. Coming from a Pixel 7a as my daily driver, I wasn’t a fan of the heavy skinning of Android on the V27 Pro, and could live without the added third-party bloatware.
To counter this thought however, Funtouch 13 does come with the gift of in-depth visual customization, something which Material You still needs to work on. I did appreciate the fact that I could easily change the phone’s fonts, icons, and system theme, as opposed to the more simpler approach that the Pixel phones use. There are also some additional software tricks that Vivo has included such as the ability to force apps into a full-screen mode, something that again, Google has yet to implement.
Cameras
One area in particular where the V27 Pro manages to do nicely is with photography. It’s not exactly a Pixel-eqsue level of imaging mastery, but the phone’s triple-camera setup does shine, at least in favorable conditions. The phone comes with 50MP main lens with OIS (it’s a Sony IMX766V sensor by the way), an 8MP ultra-wide lens, and a 2MP super macro lens.
Photos look clean overall, especially if you’re shooting in ideal lighting conditions. Likewise, close-up shots and portrait photos are able to showcase the phone’s edge-detection capabilities, and look good for the most part.
Perhaps one area we’d have preferred to see a bit of improvement with is the front camera. There’s a 50MP main sensor in front, which manages to shoot decent quality images. There’s enough clarity to go around although saturation was a bit lacking, which was surprising to witness on a photo shot in board daylight.
For night mode, the phone manages to add a bit of exposure in otherwise darker shots, although details do turn out soft. Images are brighter than what we’ve seen on most other (non-Pixel) mid-rangers though. Video capture is impressive, at least compared to what we’ve witnessed on other Android mid-rangers; in particular, video stabilization on the V27 Pro is a treat.
Final Thoughts
At a price of around $459, the Vivo V27 Pro is a phone that gets a lot of things right. It packs good performance, a great-looking display, impressive fast-charging, and decent photographic capabilities into a good-looking package, at a cost that’s half of what you pay for with most flagships.
As we mentioned, there are some caveats though, and the lack of wireless charging and dual stereo speakers, as well as the abundance of pre-installed third-party apps might leave users thinking twice before spending their cash. But if none of these really bother you, then by all means get this phone. At the end of the day it gets the essentials right, but keep in mind that this is still a mid-range device through and through.
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