Vivo X100 Pro Review: The Best Portrait Camera Of 2023
Vivo's flagship, unlike its counterparts. Chinese brands Opp and Xiaomi do not hold grandiose presentations in the capitals of Europe and Asia.
But among Android fanatics, especially those involved in mobile photography, the Series X has become one of the most anticipated releases of the year. That's because the latest flagship phone Vivo And the new X100 Pro is no exception.
In fact, I'd "probably" pass up the X100 Pro in one particular category: in portrait photography, the X100 Pro is the best performing phone right now.
The X100 Pro features a 50MP periscope zoom lens and a floating APO design from Zeiss with new Vario-Apo-Sonnar elements. What does that mean in simple English? The lens can move back and forth to focus objects at different distances. Vivo also equips its camera with a fast f/2.5 aperture and a relatively large 1/2 inch sensor. The result is the most powerful zoom lens on a smartphone.
But that's not all, Vivo also has a great software algorithm - one I've praised for the last few years - that constantly adjusts HDR to achieve a balanced dynamic range. There's also a vintage filter that makes images look less digital and more like images from an analog film camera.
Here are some 100mm photos I took with my phone over the last few weeks. Zoom lenses are so good at producing organic, bright shots with natural bokeh that they inspired me to become an amateur street photographer and take at least hundreds of photos every day.
Vivo's zoom lens is capable of producing sharper and noise-free images than most other smartphone zoom cameras. The difference is very visible in low light conditions. The cat image below is noise-free compared to low-light zoom images taken with a smartphone.
I especially like this low angle shot of the espresso machine. Note that there is subtle background and foreground bokeh (blurred depth of field) that gives the image a depth that cellphone photos typically lack.
In addition to the zoom lens, the X100 Pro also has a 1-inch main camera, but this isn't anything new like last year's excellent X90 Pro Plus.
Apart from that, the phone is also similar to last year's X90, with a similar design with a curved OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. This phone has a new chip, the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9300, but it is not as efficient as its rival, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3.
The Dimensity chip is powerful enough to handle most everyday tasks, but battery life doesn't seem to be as long as Snapdragon-based phones, and the X100 Pro lasted longer than usual. Anyway, there's nothing to worry about, there's just a small gap.
The X100 Pro isn't anything special in terms of processing power, display, or user interface. What makes it stand out is the camera system, especially the zoom lens. It was so beautiful, I wanted to stop and take photos of the surrounding environment.