Vivo V30 Pro Review: A mid-range camera powerhouse

The Vivo V30 Pro is the latest premium mid-range smartphone from Vivo. The phone was launched on February 28. At 7.45mm, it is incredibly slim — Vivo’s slimmest phone with a 5,000mAh battery — and looks stylish. The handset also has a premium feel to it thanks to the curved front and back. The company offers the device in four colors, each with a unique aesthetic element. We have the Bloom White variant with a 3D Petal pattern and sandblasted finish on the back.

The phone isn’t only about a good design. The Vivo V30 Pro also packs solid specs. It has four 50MP cameras, including a dedicated portrait camera (2x zoom) on the back. Vivo has teamed up with ZEISS to optimize colors and picture quality. The phone also features a decently powerful MediaTek processor, up to 12GB RAM and 512GB storage, a big and bright display, a 5,000mAh battery, 80W fast wired charging, and more. In this review, we put the Vivo V30 Pro through its paces to determine whether it delivers reliable and sustained performance.

Hardware/Design
Display
Performance
Audio
Battery
Camera
Software
Verdict

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Hardware & Design

The Vivo V30 Pro is a stylish phone in a slim and lightweight package measuring 164.36 × 75.1 × 7.45mm in dimensions and weighing 188 grams. The phone has a curved glass panel on the front and back, making it a little slippery in hand. The front panel is a sheet of Schott Alpha glass, while the back glass is aesthetically different across the four color variants. The Bloom White variant that Vivo sent us has a 3D Petal pattern. Waving Aqua has a Rippling Magnetic Particle design, Lush Green has a color-changing panel, and Noble Black has Fluorite AG Glass.

The phone’s frame is made of plastic and comes with a glossy finish. Vivo says the V30 Pro features a cushioning structure on the underside of its corners for better protection during hard falls. The frame has recessed top and bottom edges. The top edge has “PROFESSIONAL PORTRAIT” inscribed, which tells you how much Vivo is betting on the dedicated portrait camera. There is a microphone hole at the top, while one more sits at the bottom. The bottom edge also has room for the SIM tray, USB Type-C port, and a speaker grille with circular multiple cutouts.

As usual, Vivo has placed the power and volume keys on the right side of the phone (the left edge is free of any holes, ports, or buttons). They sit at a nice height and are easily reachable during one-handed usage unless your hands are smaller than average. Both buttons are made of plastic but are decently clicky. I won’t call them the most comfortable and premium-feeling buttons on a $500 smartphone but they aren’t bad. The Vivo V30 Pro certainly doesn’t feel cheap in hand.

The rear camera array is bulky but beautiful

The Vivo V30 Pro’s rear camera array is a vertical rectangular slab in the top left corner. It is a relatively thick slab divided into two rounded squares of equal size. The top half houses the three 50MP rear cameras and the ZEISS logo. The bottom half has a dual-LED flash and the Aura Light strip along the border. You will also find the test “AURA LIGHT” and “OIS Portrait” within this square, making it the second instance of Vivo printing “Portrait” on the phone’s body.

While we will go into detail about the camera performance and the purpose of the Aura Light square later (you can directly jump to the Camera section from the table of contents above), the rear camera layout of the Vivo V30 Pro is built nicely. It is aesthetically pleasing thanks to the symmetry added by the Aura Light square. The bump makes the phone wobble a bit when tapping on the upper-left portion of the screen (kept screen up on a flat surface), but it is a non-issue.

Slimmer bezels would have added to its look

The Vivo V30 Pro is an attractive device, no doubt about that. It has a well-built dual-curved body with a glass back. The earpiece is hidden nicely under the frame. However, Vivo could have upped the aesthetic game a little by making the bezels slimmer. The top and bottom bezels, in particular, feel a bit thick. A curved display means the side bezels are already less noticeable. If Vivo made the bezels symmetric, it would have elevated the overall look of the phone.

An extremely slippery build means a case is necessary

The overall build quality of the Vivo V30 Pro is solid. The phone feels premium in hand and has good aesthetics. However, it is extremely slippery. So much so that you would find it challenging to pick the phone up from a table. It slips away as you try to get a good grip. This gets worse if your hands are sweaty. I would recommend using a case (provided in the box in some regions) not only to protect the phone but also to add some grip to its body. Besides that, it doesn’t have any complaints in terms of design, unless you aren’t a fan of dual-curved smartphones.

We would have liked stronger protection against dust and water, though. The phone has an IP54 rating, which isn’t the best in this segment. Some cheaper phones from Samsung and other brands offer a higher IP rating. It may not be a dealbreaker but you should be wary about exposing the Vivo V30 Pro to water. The device should handle some sprinkles, spills, and light rain, but submerging it under water may not be a great idea. We hope an IP65 or higher rating will soon be common in smartphones costing above $500.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Display

The Vivo V30 Pro sports a 6.78-inch curved AMOLED display with a 1.5K resolution (2800×1260 pixels), making for a 453ppi pixel density. The company rates the screen brightness at 2,800 nits of peak brightness, which is pretty much the extreme level it can go when displaying HDR content. On normal usage, the brightness of the display will reach a maximum of 1,200 nits. In our testing, we recorded 875 nits of brightness when manually sliding the controller. In automatic mode, the brightness went up to 1,199 nits. The minimum brightness we recorded was 1.9 nits.

In simpler terms, the Vivo V30 Pro’s screen gets adequately bright depending on the lighting conditions. It is very much legible under direct sunlight. Colors may not look accurate but that is expected. When indoors, the phone dynamically adjusts the screen brightness to make it easy on your eyes. Thanks to 2160Hz PWM (pulse-width modulation) dimming, the display gets dim enough at night or in dark areas to make for comfortable viewing. The screen retains colors well even at low brightness.

Vibrant screen colors for immersive content consumption

Speaking of screen colors, the Vivo V30 Pro supports 10-bit color depth (one billion colors) with a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, 105% NTSC color saturation, and an 8000000:1 contrast ratio. The colors are bright and vibrant, making for an immersive viewing experience when watching high-quality content. Vivo offers three built-in color profiles (Standard, Pro, and Bright) with manual controls over the color temperature. This gives you the flexibility to adjust screen colors according to your preference. Having customization options is always a bonus.

The Vivo V30 Pro boasts a Widevine L1 DRM certification, letting you enjoy Full HD streaming across all major streaming apps. The phone also boasts HDR10+ support, which enhances the viewing experience already made enjoyable by vibrant screen colors. Moreover, the down-firing speaker is adequately loud (more on this later), further making for immersive video streaming. The phone is well-suited for media consumption and gaming, which we will discuss in detail in the Performance section below.

The display is smooth and highly responsive

Before we dive into the Vivo V30 Pro’s gaming performance, let us discuss the responsiveness of the display. The screen boasts a 120Hz refresh rate and a 300Hz touch sampling rate. By default, the phone is set to automatically switch the refresh rate between 120Hz and 60Hz depending on the usage scenario, but you can select either option from the Settings app. The display feels smooth and highly responsive even during intensive usage like gaming. We didn’t notice any touch lag while playing graphic-intense games.

While IP54 dust and water resistance may not be the best in this segment, the Vivo V30 Pro does boast Wet-Hand Touch technology. It ensures accurate reading of touch input when your hands are wet. This tech comes in handy during long gaming sessions when your fingers can get sweaty. You will not lose control because of sweaty fingers. It also helps when you have to pick up an urgent call and your hands are stained with water. The under-display fingerprint scanner works fairly accurately with wet fingers.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Performance

The Vivo V30 Pro is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 8200 chipset. It is a 4nm premium mid-range processor featuring one Cortex-A78 prime CPU core clocked at 3.1GHz, three Cortex-A78 performance cores at 3.0GHz, and four Cortex-A55 efficient cores at 2.0GHz. For graphics, the chipset integrates ARM’s Mali-G610 MC6 GPU operating at a 950MHz frequency. The review unit Vivo sent us comes with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, though the phone is also available in other configurations.

Vivo used this chip in last year’s V27 Pro (Review), so it isn’t a new solution. However, the V30 Pro still delivered a reliable performance. We won’t call it the buttery-smooth performance we usually get from flagships. There were a few instances of the phone stuttering when playing graphic-intense games like Genshin Impact, COD Mobile, and BGMI, particularly when we pushed it to the limit by setting graphics and frame rates as high as possible. However, in everyday usage, the Vivo V30 Pro excelled.

The device handles everyday tasks comfortably

Apart from some gaming hiccups, the Vio V30 Pro hardly ever disappointed us with its performance. It is decently fast at opening apps and does well to keep apps active in the background. Vivo claims the device can retain up to 48 active background apps. System animations are fairly smooth, so switching between apps feels a breeze. There may be a few better-performing phones in this segment, but the Vivo V30 Pro is no slouch either. To get a better idea of its capabilities, we ran a few benchmark tests on the phone. Below are the results.

Benchmarks

To start with, we ran the Geekbench test. The Dimensity 8200 isn’t an elite mid-range chip anymore and that showed up in this benchmark run. The Vivo V30 Pro scored 1,229 in the single-core CPU test on Geekbench v6 and 3,970 in the multi-core test. It scored 4,393 in the GPU test on the same benchmarking platform. These scores aren’t anything special. In fact, considering the performance we are getting out of the device, we expected better scores. Here’s how it stacks up against some other phones.

The Vivo V30 Pro was then pushed to its limit in a 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. It is an intense, 20-minute test that simulates prolonged heavy use to determine how the phone holds up. Once again, the device didn’t achieve impressive figures, though performance stability was solid at 99.4%. Its best loop score was 1,820 and its lowest loop score was 1,810.

The third test is something we have put together here at Android Headlines. In this test, we use Capcut to export a 1-minute video and note the time a device takes to complete the export. We use the same video every time, so this gives us a fair idea of how a device performs. The Vivo V30 Pro performed in the expected range, taking about 31 seconds to do the job. The graph below compares its performance with other phones in its segment.

The phone heats a little during heavy usage

As companies strive to give you more for less, they sometimes overlook certain aspects of the performance. We have noticed phones getting uncomfortably hot within minutes of heavy usage. To give you better insight, we run thermal tests on devices we review. The Vivo V30 Pro also went through these tests. Firstly, we checked its body temperature immediately after completing the 20-minute-long 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. The screen brightness was turned up.

On the screen side, our heat gun recorded a maximum temperature of 120.2 degrees Fahrenheit/49 degrees Celcius. On the back, the highest temperature was 123.6 degrees Fahrenheit/50.8 degrees Celcius. These figures are relatively high. Most phones don’t go beyond 110 degrees Fahrenheit. This means the Vivo V30 Pro can heat a little during heavy usage. Vivo says the phone has a massive cooling area of 35,141 mm² and a large vapor chamber measuring 3,002 mm². However, that doesn’t seem to be helping much.

The Vivo V30 Pro also took longer than expected to cool down. We had to wait ten minutes after the benchmark run for the temperature to drop below 100 degrees Fahrenheit/37 degrees Celcius. After this cooldown period, we went on to play Genshin Impact with the highest graphics for about an hour. The phone lagged or stuttered at times, which we have already talked about. However, it didn’t get as hot as during the benchmark test. We recorded the highest temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit/41.6 degrees Celcius after the gaming session.

Finally, we checked the Vivo V30 Pro’s body temperature during camera use. We recorded a 4K video at 60fps for 5 minutes and found that the phone reached a temperature of 104.7 degrees Fahrenheit/40.4 degrees Celcius. After 10 minutes of continuous video recording, the temperature was 112 degrees Fahrenheit/44.4 degrees Celcius. The overall thermal performance of the Vivo V30 Pro was below par.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Audio

The Vivo V30 Pro features a single speaker, which is disappointing. Most of its competitors offer dual stereo speakers. Thankfully, the speaker is fairly loud, with decent overall audio quality. Well, that may be subjective, but I don’t have many complaints. Like on other phones, we used the same five audio tracks to test the speaker’s output across five different parameters—loudness and distortion, bass, treble, vocals, and overall balance.

The speaker already sounds quite loud at 100% volume. If you press the volume up key one more time, it enables Audio Booster mode to further increase the loudness. This happens without much distortion, i.e., affecting the audio quality. However, the phone leaves a little to be desired with its bass quality. The treble and vocals are decent, giving you a reliable overall audio performance. If Vivo offered better bass, we would call it an excellent speaker.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Battery life and charging

Despite a slim profile, the Vivo V30 Pro packs a 5,000mAh battery. Combined with a decently efficient chipset, the phone delivers commendable endurance. It took us through the day even with relatively heavy use. We charged the phone in the morning and actively used it for the next 12 hours. We played graphic-intense games for over an hour, surfed the internet, watched YouTube for an hour, clicked more than 100 photos and videos, made a few video calls, and ran a couple of benchmarks, and were still left with 30% battery.

To compare its battery life with some competing phones, we performed a YouTube test on the Vivo V30 Pro. In this test, we charge the device to 100% and play a specific YouTube video till it runs out of battery. The video is played in 1080p resolution with full sound and brightness (in this case, 100% sound, not 150%). The device lasted 18 hours and 5 minutes before the battery dropped to 0. This is an impressive number. Only flagships or gaming phones have topped it so far.

Excellent charging speed with the in-box charger

The Vivo V30 Pro supports 80W fast wired charging (no wireless charging) with the company supplying an 80W charger in the box. The charging speed is impressive. Starting at 0, we got a 13% charge in just five minutes. It reached 27% in 10 minutes and 41% in 15 minutes. By 19 minutes, we had more than 50% battery, which reached 79% by 30 minutes. The battery indicator showed 100% after 40 minutes of charging. However, the “fully charged” notification didn’t show up for another five minutes, after which charging stopped.

We got this speed with fast charging turned on. The device was turned off (the battery was drained completely) but it turned back on automatically when plugged in. Vivo also offers a smart charging feature that intelligently adjusts the charging speed depending on your charging habit. If you keep your phone plugged in for long or charge it overnight, this feature will slow down the charging speed. We recommend disabling fast charging and enabling this optimization toggle to protect the battery’s health.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Camera

Vivo’s V-series has always focused on photography, and it’s no different with the V30 Pro. In fact, this phone doubles down on camera performance with four 50MP cameras and a ZEISS partnership. The primary rear camera uses a Sony IMX920 sensor and boasts Vivo’s Camera-Bionic Spectrum, a technology that enhances color accuracy and clarity in images across all lighting conditions. It also boasts OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) and PDAF (phase-detection autofocus). The camera has a 23mm focal length and an f/1.9 aperture.

The 50MP ultrawide camera uses Samsung’s ISOCELL JN1 sensor and has a focal length of 15mm and an f/2.0. The same sensor also sits on the front as the selfie camera but with a 20mm focal length. The 50MP portrait camera on the back, which is essentially a 2x zoom camera with a focal length of 50mm, uses the Sony IMX816 sensor. It offers PDAF but you don’t get OIS. The rear camera housing also includes an LED flash unit and an Aura Light ring for bright and color-accurate portrait shots even at night.

Daylight camera performance is excellent

The Vivo V30 Pro captures excellent photos in daylight conditions. By default, you get 12.5MP photos (this is true for all four cameras) with a great amount of detail and a wide dynamic range. The colors are fairly accurate, though you get a lot of control over colors. The stock camera app offers three color modes. Each produces a unique color profile with varying levels of saturation and styles. The ZEISS Natural mode appears to produce the most true-to-life colors. It is all down to one’s individual preference, though.

While you can manually capture 50MP shots, you may not want to do that. I find 50MP photos worse than 12.5MP ones. They are ruined by overexposure. I captured dozens of scenes in both modes and 50MP photos were always overexposed. This may be something Vivo can fix or improve with a software update. But the V30 Pro already gives you amazing photos with default settings. Switching to 50MP would only increase the file size without adding much to the image quality.

The portrait camera excels too

With so much emphasis on the portrait camera, it would be anticlimactic if the Vivo V30 Pro’s portrait performance wasn’t up to the mark. Thankfully, that isn’t the case. This phone gives you arguably the best portrait shots at 2x zoom of any phone in this segment. There is no loss of detail compared to the main camera. Faces look sharp and with excellent color accuracy. Subject separation and background blur aren’t perfect, but decent.

Vivo offers four bokeh styles inspired by ZEISS camera lenses: Biotar, Sonnar, Planar, and Distagon. You also get Cinematic Style Bokeh and cine-flare portrait modes. Non-portrait shots with the 2x zoom camera also come out excellent. Interestingly, the Vivo V30 Pro digitally zooms in with the main camera if you switch to 2x in the Photo mode. The portrait camera comes into play only when you switch to the Portrait mode in the camera app.

2x zoom camera samples:

The same is true for other magnification levels, so this is something you want to be wary of when capturing zoom shots. We recommend zooming in with the Portrait camera for better shots at 3x or 4x zoom. The images come out fine with decent detail and clarity. Zoomed-in photos don’t have the same level of sharpness, though. If you go beyond 4x zoom, you will lose quality drastically.

4x zoom camera samples:

The ultrawide camera could have been better

Despite a 50MP camera, the Vivo V30 Pro doesn’t give you excellent ultrawide shots, certainly not as excellent as the main and portrait cameras. While the colors are good, the details aren’t adequate. The phone also appears to be oversharpening some scenes, producing unwanted artifacts. Macro shots captured with the ultrawide lens are surprisingly better, though.

Impressive selfies during the day

While the ultrawide camera disappointed me, the Vivo V30 Pro impressed me with its selfie camera. The phone captured amazing selfies during the day. The selfies had great detail, accurate colors, and reliable skin tones and textures. Even selfie portraits came out brilliant, except for issues with edge detection in certain scenes. The selfie camera does feel part of the same setup as the two rear cameras.

Reliable low-light camera performance

The Vivo V30 Pro’s cameras perform equally well at night. The main and portrait cameras on the back offer great detail and clarity in images. The phone contains light sources well, while shadows are developed nicely without much noise. You may get sharper images if you manually enable Night mode and capture shots with steady hands. The ultrawide camera doesn’t struggle any worse than it does during the day. Images come out fine, though not as good as the other two cameras.

The selfie camera also does a brilliant job of producing well-lit photos with excellent color accuracy and detail. The overall low-light camera output of the Vivo V30 Pro was on par with what we expected after seeing the daylight camera performance. I don’t have many complaints about the phone’s cameras. The 50MP mode needs some optimization, while Vivo could also make the ultrawide output better. Otherwise, you get reliable cameras with tons of customization options for the output quality.

Vivo V30 Pro Camera Sample night selfie 1

Vivo V30 Pro Camera Sample night selfie 2

Video stabilization is so-so

This phone can record 4K videos with all four cameras, something we cannot say about most phones in this segment. The videos offer good detail and sharpness with negligible noise. The main camera gives you the best videos, though the other cameras aren’t bad. However, the stabilization is just about so-so, even for the main camera which supports OIS. Vivo seemingly focused too much on improving the photo quality and overlooked the video side of things. This still shouldn’t be a dealbreaker to anyone.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Software

The Vivo V30 Pro ships with Android 14-based Funtouch OS 14. If you are familiar with Funtouch OS, the new version doesn’t change many things. The overall experience remains the same, with Vivo offering tons of customization options for wallpapers, lock screen, AOD (Always-on Display), system fonts, system animations, and other UI elements. You can pick from various styles for your lock screen clock, AOD, fingerprint icon, face recognition, home screen transition effect, and more.

The Recent Apps menu offers an option to quickly switch between a single and a two-row tile layout. The app drawer shows expandable recommendations at the top, though you can disable it. The Vivo V30 Pro comes with a few pre-loaded bloatware, including some games. You can uninstall most of those. Funtouch OS also offers a smart sidebar for quick access to your favorite or most-used apps. There is also an Ultra Game Mode that enhances your gaming experience with extra controls over calls and notifications.

The Quick Settings panel has two large pills at the top, followed by standard circular buttons. A brightness slider is available in both compact and expanded views. In the expanded view, you also get buttons to switch the user, go to Settings, open global search, and launch the power menu. Speaking of which, a long press of the power button can be set to either launch Google Assistant or enter the power menu. If you select the former, the latter is available through the combination of power and volume-up buttons.

Let down by only two major Android OS updates

Unfortunately, despite other brands offering longer update support, Vivo’s V series remains at 2+1 years of support. You will get two major Android OS updates and three years of security patches. The Vivo V30 Pro will receive feature updates until Android 16. Security patches will stop coming in early 2027. Some competing phones, even those priced half of the Vivo V30 pro, enjoy much better update support. It is about time Vivo considers at least three Android OS updates and four years of security patches for the V series.

Vivo V30 Pro Review: Should you buy it?

The Vivo V30 Pro is primarily a phone for camera and photography enthusiasts, though it is no slouch in other areas. It gives you excellent cameras and a decent overall package. You get an amazing display, a big battery with fast charging, a sleek and curved design, good battery life, and a highly customizable software experience. The everyday performance of the phone is also in the expected lines, though it isn’t quite suited for long hours of intense gaming. Depending on your needs, you may find something better in this segment.