Verdict: Vivo X80 Pro
Our editorial rating is based on product testing.
- new Samsung GNV sensor with excellent photo output
- modern Origin OS Ocean user interface with a wide range of customization options
- high performance and almost 1 million points in AnTuTu
- 80 W charging (from 20% to 100% in 32 minutes)
- Chinese version without Slovak language support
- notifications don’t show up on the always-on display
We’re once again bringing you an exclusive review of a very interesting smartphone from the Vivo brand, which lately—along with its partner brands—has been producing some truly compelling devices. This time it’s the flagship Vivo X80 Pro, coming with top-notch Zeiss optics.
In this review, we’ll take a close look at this newcomer, and what matters most to us will be the quality of photos, overall reliability, and how smoothly the system runs. Even though this is the Chinese version, you also won’t be missing support for our most-used 4G band, B20.
Where to buy the Vivo X80 Pro?
One of the best Chinese retailers, Trading Shenzhen, has the 12 + 512 GB SD 8 Gen 1 variant of the Vivo X80 Pro in stock even in the EU warehouse—other versions are available in the China stock. With Global Priority shipping, you won’t pay any extra customs fees on delivery, and the price is VAT-inclusive. Shipping is charged at a sum of 15 €.
Vivo X80 Pro
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPExpress delivery from a European warehouse without customs duty and VAT.
This product will be delivered to you express from a local warehouse in Europe. Delivery from EU warehouses usually takes 2–10 days and is handled by a courier. When delivered, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty or VAT.
Technical specifications
Model Vivo X80 Pro Dimensions 164.57 × 75.30 × 9.10 mm Weight 219 g Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 / 3.0 GHz Graphics chip Adreno 730 Memory verzia 12 GB LPDDR5 + 256 GB UFS 3.1 Display 6.78" AMOLED Resolution 3200 x 1440 px (WQHD+) Max refresh rate 120 Hz with LTPO technology sampling rate 300 Hz maximum brightness 1500 nits Cameras Main camera 50 Mpx; Samsung GNV; 1/1.31" sensor; f/1.57 aperture; OIS Ultrawide 48 Mpx; Sony IMX598; f/2.2 aperture Portrait 12 Mpx; Sony IMX663; f/1.85 aperture Periscope 8 Mpx; f/3.4 aperture; 5-times optical zoom; OIS Selfie 32 Mpx; Samsung S5KGD2; f/2.45 aperture Battery 4700 mAh Charging 80 W wired FlashCharge; 50 W wireless Bluetooth 5.2 WiFi Wi-Fi 6; Wi-Fi 5; 2.4 Ghz / 5 Ghz NFC yes Positioning systems GPS; BEIDOU; GLONASS; GALILEO; QZSS; A-GPS Operating system Android 12 with Origin OS Ocean customization
Packaging contents and quality for the Vivo X80 Pro
The Vivo X80 Pro smartphone is sold in a dark gray flat box measuring 18 x 19.1 x 4 cm and weighing 725 grams. The box is sturdy enough to ensure trouble-free shipping during delivery.
Our partner TradingShenzhen, however, took care of additional layers of protection, leaving nothing to chance. The phone box was placed inside an air protective film along with another layer of foam. We also received traditional gifts—an EU adapter and a small USB fan.
Inside, you’ll find not only the smartphone itself, but also a protective case, a charging adapter, and a USB-C cable. We especially like the protective case, since it isn’t just the plain silicone one that most manufacturers include. The case comes in the phone’s color (orange), is hard, and has a subtle leather-like texture.
Build quality and design
The Vivo X80 Pro is the flagship model of the Chinese brand, and that shows in the high build quality you can feel immediately on first touch. We had the phone in orange, but it’s also available in black.
When you look at this new device, the rear camera module stands out most—it has a glossy mirror-like finish. The rear module has a quadrilateral shape, but the cameras themselves are placed in a circular element. That combination of a circle with a large square piece and a mirror surface looks a bit odd at first glance, and from a design perspective it doesn’t really sit well with us.
But it’s really just a matter of taste, and after a few days of using it we got used to this kind of design. The downside of the mirror finish, though, is that it picks up fingerprints—especially noticeable on this kind of surface.
As for the placement of the control elements, you won’t find anything unusual here. The bottom edge has a charging USB-C port, a SIM card slot, and a microphone. The top edge is home to the second microphone and an IR sensor.
The volume control buttons together with the button to turn on the display lighting or to shut down / power on the smartphone are traditionally on the right side, which—along with the left edge—is left unprotected by the included case. Personally, we’re not fans of such cases, but the smartphone in it at least looks slimmer and almost frameless.
Premium AMOLED display
The Vivo X80 Pro boasts Samsung’s popular E5 AMOLED panel, something we already know from other flagship models. It’s rated A+ by DisplayMate. The display has a 6.78″ diagonal and 2K resolution of 1440 x 3200 px. You can also expect the almost standard high refresh rate of 120 Hz with automatic refresh-rate adaptation technology, LTPO.
In this case, pixel density is represented by the value 517 ppi, the maximum brightness can reach up to 1500 nits, and the sampling frequency is 300 Hz.
As we already mentioned in the heading, the display is top-tier, so we honestly have nothing to complain about. It hasn’t missed today’s trend of curved edges—though together with the curved rear edge, it forms a single cohesive design. That means you can hold it comfortably in your hand, despite its slightly higher weight of 219 g.
Almost 1 million points in AnTuTu
The smartphone is powered by a processor from the American company Qualcomm, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. We assume you no longer need any special introduction, so we’ll only mention the basics. It’s an octa-core processor built on a 4 nm process, with a maximum clock speed of 3.0 GHz.
The processor is backed by the Adreno 730 graphics chip, and in our case you also get 12 GB of LPDDR5 RAM plus 256 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. There’s also a version with 8 GB RAM or with 512 GB storage. With our configuration, we achieved a score of 985 683 points in AnTuTu.
The interesting thing is that the manufacturer decided to offer the Vivo X80 Pro smartphone in two versions. One with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and the other with a competing Dimensity 9000. This version with the MediaTek processor wasn’t available for long in the TradingShenzhen e-shop, but it’s been restocked already. In benchmarks, this processor achieves slightly higher scores, so it’s a very tempting alternative.
A perfect fingerprint reader
Just like the sister model iQoo 9 Pro, which we also tested, the new Vivo X80 Pro also features an excellent in-display ultrasonic fingerprint reader. Finally, we only needed a single finger touch to register the fingerprint.
Unlocking itself is extremely fast and noticeably more reliable than the typical in-display readers found in today’s smartphones. You’ll also appreciate the generous area for placing your finger, along with multiple customization options.
In the settings, you’ll find things like changing the finger-placement area design, choosing from several shapes, as well as various animations.
Cameras co-developed with Zeiss
Just like Xiaomi works with Leica on its 12S Ultra flagship, Vivo has been collaborating with the competing company Zeiss for a while now. It’s also a German company with a long-standing tradition in optics and opto-electronics.
On the back of the smartphone, you’ll find four cameras in a mirror-gloss module designed to reflect excess light. For great photography, it’s not only good software that matters—Zeiss also takes care of that—but also quality hardware. It’s complemented by a special Vivo V1+ chip, which is responsible for better image processing.
More detailed specifications of the individual cameras can be found in the table below:
Main camera 50 Mpx 1/1.31" Samsung GNV sensor aperture f/1.57 OIS Ultra-wide-angle camera 48 Mpx 1/2" Sony IMX598 sensor aperture f/2.2 Telescopic camera 8 Mpx Hynix HI-847 sensor aperture f/3.4 Portrait camera 12 Mpx 1/2.93" Sony IMX 663 sensor aperture f/1.85
Special Zeiss Natural Color mode
The built-in camera app offers, besides the standard mode, a special mode called Zeiss Natural Color. As the name suggests, in this mode the colors look more natural.
In most cases, you can clearly see a noticeable difference between the two modes. The classic mode offers more saturated colors with higher contrast, while photos in Zeiss Natural Color mode look significantly paler and less contrasty—but in most cases, the photos are still too light for our taste. Despite that, they’re closer to real life.
On the other hand, the classic mode’s colors look more attractive to the eye, but thanks to the more saturated colors they’re less natural and sometimes create overexposed areas—for example, in the sky.
Main 50 MP camera
The main camera uses a Samsung GNV sensor, which first appears here in the new Vivo X80 Pro. It produces genuinely beautiful photos with high sharpness and excellent dynamic range.
As we already mentioned above, the classic mode’s colors are more saturated with higher contrast, but thanks to the excellent dynamic range, the number of overexposed or underexposed areas is minimized. So the shadows aren’t unnecessarily too pronounced—even though you can still find a few blown highlights, especially with strong sunlight.
What’s great is that the camera doesn’t unnecessarily emphasize shadows, even indoors—so interior shots look really solid. In low light indoors, sharpness drops and you get a bit of mild noise, but overall these photos still look surprisingly excellent.
Especially in conditions like these, the Zeiss Natural Color mode has proven itself, where colors in low light look more natural compared to the standard mode—where colors are too warm and don’t match reality.
Ultra-wide camera and macro
The ultra-wide camera has 48 MP, and its quality is also very good. Compared to the main camera, colors in photos look warmer with higher contrast. With direct sunlight, though, it performs surprisingly better than the main sensor, and the resulting photos are very pleasing.
Its dynamic range is weaker, but it’s still at a good level. In strong sunlight, you get overexposed highlights on buildings lit directly, while the shaded areas become too dark and underexposed. However, this is a common issue with nearly all smartphones.
The macro mode, which also uses the ultra-wide camera, is excellent. It has autofocus, so taking macro photos is very easy.
Telephoto lens, portrait, and selfie
Vivo boasts up to 5-times optical zoom thanks to a dedicated telephoto lens. Photos taken at 5-times zoom are also good, but especially in ideal lighting. Direct sunlight—and even low light—cause distortion and unnatural colors.
The portrait lens is placed outside the circular rear camera module and isn’t part of every smartphone. It creates a nice bokeh effect (background blur) and keeps skin tones fairly natural. When shooting portraits, you can customize not only the aperture, which affects the level of background blur, but also several bokeh styles—for example Biotar, Sonnar, Planar, or Cinematic.
Below you can check out the difference between the Biotar and Cinematic bokeh styles:
The selfie camera has a resolution of 32 MP, and its quality is just average. It’s a shame that a smartphone so well equipped for photography doesn’t have a better selfie camera. You also won’t be impressed by the maximum video resolution via the front camera, which is only 1080p at 30 fps.
Night mode
In the new Vivo X80 Pro, Night mode is available in the main camera menu. However, photos are also very good even without activating it. The mode designed exclusively for night shots brightens the scene, but it slightly reduces sharpness and, in some cases, makes the photos look less natural.
For comparison, we’re showing a pair of shots taken in the standard mode, as well as using Night mode. The difference isn’t huge, but it’s noticeable. Without Night mode, you can spot higher photo contrast and a darker sky along with shadowy areas. Night mode brightens those shadowy areas too, brightens the sky, and also lifts the surrounding buildings.
In the night, the ultra-wide camera also handles things very well, though we can see different color rendering compared to the main camera. The shot quality is still very similar to the main camera, except for the mentioned differences in colors.
When using the telephoto lens, we like the shots from the main mode more. The Night mode mostly over-brightens them, which washes out details and reduces sharpness. In general, when taking photos with 5x zoom, we had quite a lot of blurry shots specifically with Night mode turned on.
Vivo X80 Pro: Video
Even Vivo, in its flagship model, brings support for 8K video, but without stabilization and only at 30 fps. In 4K resolution, standard stabilization is supported even at 60 fps. Better image stabilization is then available only at a lower resolution, 1080p.
The quality of 4K video at 60 fps with stabilization turned on is very good. The Zeiss Natural Color mode is no longer available here, so the video colors are fairly highly saturated and contrasty, but they look very attractive.
The quality of standard stabilization isn’t perfect, but it can eliminate smaller shakes. Bigger shakes and less smooth movements are still visible, so for the best quality we’d need a gimbal. When you enable the Ultra stabilization mode, a subtle button labeled “Super anti-shake pro” appears in the corner of the screen. Resolution in this mode changes to 1080p / 60 fps; stabilization is decent, but the image quality isn’t that great.
The camera app also offers a range of different filters and video styles in video mode, including a cinematic portrait-style view with a narrower vertical frame. The problem is that these video effects and styles are only available at 1080p / 24 fps resolution, which is a big shame. Considering how Vivo presents top-notch video quality on this model, they could have at least chosen 1080p resolution at 60 fps, which would deliver better video smoothness.
Night video is significantly weaker compared to video shot during the day. Sharpness is visibly worse, noise increases, but above all, video stabilization creates slight smearing in certain areas.
Battery and charging
The Vivo X80 Pro has a 4700 mAh battery with support for 80 W charging using FlashCharge technology. Besides wired charging, it also supports 50 W wireless charging and reverse wireless charging with unknown power.
As for battery life, on a single charge the smartphone lasts about 1 days, but in the evenings we in most cases still had a bit more battery left than usual. Wired charging works like this:
100 %capacity time 20 – 50 % 8 minutes and 34 seconds 75 % 17 minutes and 36 seconds 90 % 24 minutes and 7 seconds 32 minutes and 25 seconds
The good thing is that despite fast charging, the smartphone barely heats up during the process.
Since Vivo uses its own FlashCharge technology, fast charging only works with the original charger included in the box. We tested our 120 W Xiaomi Mix 4 charger, but the Vivo-branded smartphone charged with it very slowly.
The system offers many settings
The Vivo X80 Pro runs on the latest Android 12 with the Origin OS Ocean user interface. We instantly fell in love with it right during testing of previous models from Vivo and iQoo. It offers a huge number of customization options and is handled very well visually.
On the home screen, for example, you’ll find the Mood Cube icon, which brings together the system’s basic graphic settings. Here you can adjust the style and size of icons, the background, the color of the icons in the center control area, or even the corner roundness of individual elements. In the settings, we also find customization for charging animation, placing a finger on the reader, or connecting a USB-C cable. A dark mode is also included, along with display color customization or detailed notification settings.
But those are also, once again, the stumbling block of the Chinese version of the smartphone. Notifications come through fairly reliably, with only a few delayed exceptions, but they don’t show up on the always-on display the way we’re used to, for example, from Xiaomi phones. You’ll only find notifications on the lock screen or in the notification bar. Since we still use an always-on display, we personally really miss that. The always-on display only shows missed calls or SMS messages.
Another downside is the amount of bloatware in the form of preinstalled Chinese apps from the manufacturer. Some of them can be uninstalled, but not all. Google apps like Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, and similar ones are missing, but you can easily install them yourself.
Support for all bands, including B20
Unlike many other Chinese smartphone versions, the Vivo X80 Pro supports all 4G bands, including the most commonly used one in villages in Slovakia, 800 MHz, known by the abbreviation B20.
You don’t have to worry about any signal issues or the unavailability of fast 4G connection problems. It’s similar with contactless payments via NFC. The Google Wallet app isn’t among the preinstalled apps, but once you install it and set it up, NFC payments work without any issues.
Speakers and their quality
Already in one of the first chapters, you may have noticed that when describing the individual elements of the smartphone, we didn’t mention the second speaker on the top edge. That one is simply missing here, but its function is replaced by the speaker we use for calls during phone conversations.
The speaker quality is still at a very high level, despite the absence of a separate second speaker.
Vivo X80 Pro: Final review
A new flagship model from the Chinese brand Vivo, which officially entered the Slovak market this year, carries the model name X80 Pro. The smartphone pleasantly surprised us, especially in the photography area, where it clearly ranks among the top on the market. In collaboration with the German company Zeiss and a new Samsung GNV sensor, it was possible to create an excellent photo-smartphone suited for capturing great shots in any conditions.
The smartphone also doesn’t lag behind when it comes to performance—the job is handled by a Qualcomm processor, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. You’ll also like the beautiful AMOLED display with a panel from Samsung, the modern Origin OS graphical skin with lots of customizations, and support for all networks, including the 4G band B20.
Unfortunately, since we tested the Chinese version, we couldn’t avoid the amount of bloatware and notification issues. They sometimes arrive late and don’t show up on the always-on display.
Vivo X80 Pro
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPWith Global Priority shipping, you don’t pay any additional fees.
We recommend choosing Global Priority shipping, where you won’t have to pay anything extra. Customs fees and any VAT will be handled by the seller directly for you. Shipping can be selected in the cart after you enter your delivery address. Delivery with Global Priority usually takes about 15 days, but it may also take longer.
TIPExpress delivery from a European warehouse without customs duty and VAT.
This product will be delivered to you express from a local warehouse in Europe. Delivery from EU warehouses usually takes 2–10 days and is handled by a courier. When delivered, you don’t pay any extra fees—no customs duty or VAT.
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