I purchased the vivo X300 Pro.
Control AI Processing to Your Liking
The vivo X300 Pro is a smartphone equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity 9500.
It’s a camera phone made in collaboration with ZEISS, featuring a 50MP SONY LYT-828 main camera and a 200MP Samsung SK5HP9 periscope telephoto camera.
Many recent smartphones create fake details with unsolicited AI processing, but the vivo X300 Pro allows you to suppress this processing as much as possible through its settings.
This review is based on the 12GB+256GB version, running PD2502_A_16.0.20.7.W10.V000L1.
On AliExpress, the vivo X300 Pro can be purchased for around $707 until 11/20 by using the store code available on the product page and the promo code JP1175.
- High-performance MediaTek Dimensity 9500
- Bright 1700-nit display
- Equipped with a 200MP telephoto camera
- 6,510mAh battery with bypass charging support
- Video output support via USB 3.2 Gen 1 port
- IP69 + IP68 water and dust resistance
- Slightly underwhelming battery capacity
- Night shots are excessively bright
- Weak bass from the speakers
| Item | vivo X300 Pro |
|---|---|
| OS | Android 16 |
| RAM | 12GB / 16GB LPDDR5X Ultra |
| Storage | 256GB / 512GB / 1TB UFS 4.1 |
| SoC | MediaTek Dimensity 9500 |
| Display | 6.78-inch 2800 x 1260 20:9 Aspect Ratio 120Hz Refresh Rate AMOLED |
| Size | 161.98 × 75.48 × 7.99mm |
| Weight | 226g |
| SIM | nano SIM + nano SIM |
| Rear Camera | 50MP (f/1.57 OIS / SONY LYT-828 IMX09A) + 200MP (Telephoto f/2.67 OIS / Samsung SK5HP9) + 50MP (Ultra-wide f/2.0 / Samsung S5KJN1) |
| Front Camera | 50MP (f/2.0) |
| Battery | 6510mAh |
| USB Port | USB Type-C (USB 3.2 Gen1) |
| Bands | 5G NR: n1/n2/n3/n5/n7/n8/n18/n20/n25/n26/n28A/n34/n38/n39/n40/n41/n48/n66/n77/n78/n79 4G FDD-LTE: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B18/B19/B20/B25/B26/B28A/B66 4G TD-LTE: B34/B38/B39/B40/B41/B42/B43/B48 3G WCDMA: B1/B2/B4/B5/B6/B8/B19 2G GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz |
Index
It comes with a manual, a protective case, a charging cable, and a charger.
A protective film is pre-applied.
The charger is a type that is limited to 44W fast charging in 100V regions.
Display: Easy to See Outdoors
The vivo X300 Pro has a 6.78-inch display with a 2800 x 1260 resolution.
It’s a flat display, so it’s easy to see to the edges.
An ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is built into the bottom of the screen, allowing for quick authentication even with wet fingers.
The pixel arrangement is a diamond pixel layout.
When I measured the brightness with an LX-1336B while displaying a full white image at maximum brightness, it reached a peak of 1715 nits.
It’s very easy to see even outdoors during the day.
It’s a unit that indicates the degree of brightness; the higher the number, the brighter it is.
Indoors, it is said that a display is hard to see without around 400-500 nits, and outdoors, 800-1000 nits.
Incidentally, many models limit their maximum brightness unless auto-brightness is turned on.
The brightness can be tuned to your preference and can be trained on a per-app basis.
There are plenty of features to reduce user strain, such as a comfortable sleep mode that cuts blue light and warms the screen to help you sleep better, a mode to suppress flicker with PWM dimming, and a “motion prompt” feature to reduce motion sickness.
It supports a 120Hz refresh rate.
Per-app settings were not available.
Using Touch Sample Rate Tester, the touch sampling rate was about 300Hz on average for both single-touch and multi-touch Movement Rate.
Unlike the OPPO Find X9 Pro, which compromises with a stingy 125Hz, this phone has invested a decent amount in areas that users might not easily notice.
This relates to the sensitivity of the screen when you touch it.
A higher number often means the screen will respond to your touch more quickly.
However, the final touch latency is not determined by this alone; other factors can influence it, sometimes resulting in greater overall touch delay.
As a rule of thumb, a Movement Rate that is about twice the screen’s refresh rate is normal, over three times is high, and gaming phones often reach 5-6 times.
The touch latency measured with WALT Latency Timer was a total of 39.5ms.
This is the time it takes for the screen to respond after you touch it.
The smaller this number, the faster the response.
Gaming phones are around 25ms, while typical smartphones are generally in the 30ms to low 40ms range.
It has Widevine L1, allowing for high-quality streaming playback on services like Amazon Prime Video.
It supports a double-tap gesture to turn the screen on and off.
Back: The Camera Bump is Massive
The back has a matte finish, making it smooth and resistant to fingerprints and smudges.
The camera bump is quite massive and has a strong presence.
It weighs 228.7g.
Considering the OPPO Find X9 Pro weighs 226.2g and has a 7,500mAh battery, the vivo X300 Pro’s battery capacity of 6,510mAh feels a bit disappointing.
Although 6,510mAh is still quite large compared to phones from a few years ago…
Camera: Finely Adjustable
The vivo X300 Pro features a triple camera setup:
- 50MP (f/1.57 OIS / SONY LYT-828 IMX09A)
- 200MP (Telephoto f/2.67 OIS / Samsung SK5HP9)
- 50MP (Ultra-wide f/2.0 / Samsung S5KJN1)
Handheld photos are saved here.
In contrast to its rival, the OPPO Find X9 Pro, the vivo X300 Pro allows you to explicitly turn off AI processing for telephoto and night shots.
With OPPO, you can’t turn off AI processing, which can cause fine text to break up or misinterpret scratches as part of a design and enhance them. The vivo X300 Pro, however, lets you capture what you see as it is.
It’s wonderful that the option is provided for users to choose for themselves; if you just want photos that “look beautiful at a glance,” you can turn on AI processing.
There’s also a mode called “Unprocessed lighting” which allows you to take natural photos with minimal processing like HDR.
The left photo is in normal mode, and the right is in “Unprocessed lighting” mode. You can see that the normal mode photo is brighter overall, especially in the red areas.
The colors in the “Unprocessed lighting” mode are closer to the actual scene.
This mode is particularly effective indoors. When I took a picture of grilled meat, the normal mode made it look overly bright and enhanced, while the “Unprocessed lighting” mode produced a darker image, which was a more realistic representation.
There are also options to shoot in 50MP or 200MP.
In 200MP mode, you can take high-resolution photos that are about 35MB per file… but when you zoom in and look at the details, you can see signs of processing, such as slightly smudged text.
It might be good when you want a “high-resolution photo,” but it’s not suitable if you want a “high-definition photo.” It’s better to think of it as just a gimmick.
For burst shooting, you can choose between prioritizing speed or quality.
There’s an option to reduce glare, which helps clean up photos with strong light sources.
Even with it off, glare wasn’t a major issue most of the time, as shown here.
You can choose whether the zoom buttons display as focal length or zoom ratio.
Tele-macro photography is also possible, allowing you to shoot from about 15cm away.
In Landscape & Night mode, photos are taken with daytime-like brightness even in the dark.
It’s nice that it can capture details that are hard for the human eye to see, but it requires editing to convey that it’s a night scene.
It would be better if the tuning could strike a balance between a night-like atmosphere and detail…
The telephoto camera captures the scene as you see it.
When you try to photograph the moon by zooming in normal mode, an image of the moon is automatically synthesized.
This is probably a feature for people who naively rejoice that they “took a beautiful picture of the moon in Supermoon mode,” but it’s about time they stopped this…
By adjusting settings in Pro mode, you can photograph the real lunar surface.
However, Pro mode is limited to 10x zoom.
Speakers: Weak Bass
The vivo X300 Pro is equipped with stereo speakers.
It’s the type with a speaker grille on top, and it’s asymmetrical.
The bass is quite weak; bass sounds are almost inaudible unless you turn up the volume.
Vocals and mid-to-high frequencies are easy to hear.
There is no built-in DAC.
While it doesn’t have features like Dolby Atmos, it does have “Super Audio,” which allows for adjustments for video and games, and “Audio Super Resolution,” which enhances the sense of resolution.
For earphones, you can also customize the sound to your personal preference.
Checking the supported codecs with Bluetooth Codec Changer, it supports AAC / aptX / aptX HD / LDAC / LHDC.
LHDC V5-compatible earphones are not manufacturer-locked and can be used with devices from other companies.
Ports: 90W Charging and Bypass Charging Support
The vivo X300 Pro is IP68 & IP69 water and dust resistant, so minor splashes are not a problem.
It supports 90W fast charging and also 40W wireless charging.
The USB 3.2 Gen 1 port allows for high-speed data transfer and also supports video/audio output via DisplayPort Alt Mode.
Bypass charging and charging limit settings are available, helping to extend battery life.
You can also enable bypass charging only during games.
The battery icon in the status bar can be changed to a somewhat nostalgic round shape.
It’s not possible to display only the battery percentage text.
Supported bands are:
- 2G GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
- 3G WCDMA: B1/B2/B4/B5/B6/B8/B19
- 4G TD-LTE: B34/B38/B39/B40/B41/B42/B43/B48
- 4G FDD-LTE: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B18/B19/B20/B25/B26/B28A/B66
- 5G: n1/n2/n3/n5/n7/n8/n18/n20/n25/n26/n28A/n66/n34/n38/n39/n40/n41/n48/n77/n78/n79
It supports Wi-Fi 7 and I was able to connect at a link speed of 2882Mbps.
As it’s the Chinese version, the 6GHz band is disabled.
The power and volume buttons are on the right side.
On the left side, there’s a shortcut button that can be configured to launch the camera, start recording, switch to silent mode, or open an app.
It can be configured for two actions: a double-press and a long-press.
Performance: High CPU Performance
The vivo X300 Pro is equipped with the MediaTek Dimensity 9500, which boasts CPU performance and power efficiency that rivals or even surpasses the Snapdragon 8 Elite.
In Geekbench 6, the package-name-spoofed version (unaffected by the manufacturer’s dishonest boosting) scored 2916 in single-core and 8355 in multi-core, while the regular version scored 3260 in single-core and 9644 in multi-core.
It seems to be controlling performance based on the package name.
The OPPO Find X9 Pro, which also has the Dimensity 9500, scores 1295 single-core and 6120 multi-core in the spoofed version, significantly suppressing performance for everyday use outside of gaming, which inevitably leads to better battery life. In contrast, the vivo X300 Pro isn’t as suppressed.
While it’s good that it delivers high performance even outside of gaming, combined with its 6,510mAh battery, this contributes to the feeling that “its battery doesn’t last as long as the OPPO Find X9 Pro’s.”
Many manufacturers have been caught cheating by detecting famous benchmark apps like AnTuTu by their package name. They then loosen thermal controls or lock the clock speed to a higher frequency to artificially inflate scores during the benchmark.
This behavior is different from normal app usage, leading to situations where “the benchmark scores are great, but the performance in other apps isn’t as good.”
Since each manufacturer’s boosting behavior is different, comparing boosted results is meaningless.
Therefore, it’s important to change the package name to disguise the benchmark as a general app and get the correct, non-boosted score.
Geekbench is a benchmark that quantifies the CPU’s processing performance, used in tasks like background blurring and text processing.
Single-core performance is important for light, everyday tasks, while multi-core performance is crucial for heavy tasks like gaming.
A single-core score of 1200 and a multi-core score of 3000 or more is generally sufficient for a comfortable experience.
In the package-name-spoofed 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test, the score went from 7344 to 3357.
Wild Life Extreme is a benchmark that uses the Vulkan API to quantify GPU performance with 3840×2160 resolution graphics.
A higher score means smoother 3D rendering in games, and a high Stability percentage means the device can maintain high performance for extended periods.
However, this is just a general, simplified indicator for Vulkan API usage. Considering that most popular games hardly use the Vulkan API, the score isn’t very useful. Its main purpose is to check how hot the device gets when the GPU is used.
It only allows for inferences like, “if it performs well in Vulkan, it will probably perform well in OpenGL too,” or “if it gets hot, it will likely struggle to maintain FPS in real games.”
The PCMark Work 3.0 (package-name-spoofed version), which measures performance in everyday tasks like document editing, scored 16810.
As was evident from Geekbench, this result also shows that the performance throttling is not as strict compared to brands like OPPO.
This benchmark quantifies processing performance for tasks like web browsing and editing images and videos.
A higher score indicates faster processing, but since balancing battery consumption is also important, a lower score is not necessarily bad.
A score of 8000 or more is generally sufficient.
It is equipped with UFS 4.1 storage and LPDDR5X Ultra memory, but the random read/write speeds are not particularly fast.
Sequential read/write speeds affect the speed of copying large files and video encoding/decoding.
Random read/write speeds are for small file operations, and this speed is more important for app and game usage.
When playing the CPU-intensive game Genshin Impact for 30 minutes in performance mode with all graphics options set to max, 60 FPS setting, in Nod-Krai, and measured with Scene 8, it averaged 59.4 FPS with a power consumption of 74.41mW per FPS.
The battery temperature rose to a maximum of about 42°C.
The power efficiency is almost the same as the OPPO Find X9 Pro.
Lower power consumption per FPS indicates better power efficiency.
Good power efficiency means less battery drain, while poor efficiency leads to rapid battery depletion.
Phones with poor power efficiency in games tend to have high battery consumption in other apps as well, often making the battery feel like it drains quickly.
Average FPS (frames per second) indicates how smooth the display remains, with higher being better.
(To be more specific, a high average FPS combined with few “janks,” or stutters, results in a subjectively smoother experience.)
When playing the GPU-intensive game Honkai: Star Rail for 30 minutes in performance mode with all graphics options set to max, 60 FPS setting, spamming Himeko’s technique in Penacony’s “Golden Hour,” it averaged 38.7 FPS.
The GPU performance is still no match for Snapdragon, and thermal throttling dropped the frame rate to around 30 FPS after about 10 minutes.
Frame interpolation is available, but it’s limited to Chinese versions of games.
You can force-enable it by running the following ADB command with the specified package name. It can also be automated with tools like Tasker.
gpid=`pidof -s com.HoYoverse.hkrpgoversea`
settings put system gamecube_frame_interpolation 1:3:$gpid:60:120
Conclusion
- High-performance MediaTek Dimensity 9500
- Bright 1700-nit display
- Equipped with a 200MP telephoto camera
- 6,510mAh battery with bypass charging support
- Video output support via USB 3.2 Gen 1 port
- IP69 + IP68 water and dust resistance
- Slightly underwhelming battery capacity
- Night shots are excessively bright
- Weak bass from the speakers
The vivo X300 Pro features a ZEISS-collaborated camera and allows you to suppress AI processing, which means that, unlike other camera phones, fine details like text are less likely to be smudged when using telephoto zoom.
Thanks to the 200MP periscope telephoto camera, both distant landscapes and tele-macro shots are beautiful, and if you purchase a separate teleconverter/tele-extender, 800mm photography becomes possible.
Although not covered in detail, there is also a street mode that allows for fine parameter adjustments and software-based changes to the shape of the bokeh. I think it’s suitable for those who want the option to control various settings themselves, rather than relying solely on AI.
The fact that it falls short in terms of battery life compared to other smartphones due to its battery capacity and performance throttling policy is something I hope to see improved in the next generation model.
On AliExpress, the vivo X300 Pro can be purchased for around $707 by using the store code available on the product page and the promo code JP1175.