Vivo V50e review: incremental upgrades but still a decent choice

After the successful launch of the Vivo V50 (review) early in February, Vivo has now introduced a more pocket-friendly, stripped-down version, the Vivo V50e. It features a different chipset, camera setup, and battery capacity, allowing it to be priced under Rs 30,000. On the other hand, both devices have the same design and include Vivo’s unique camera assistant, the built-in Smart Aura light for low-light photography. The display features of the two also remain primarily similar. What makes the Vivo V50e special in its price segment? Let’s find out in this review.

Verdict

The Vivo V50e aims to balance style, performance, and battery life in the competitive sub-Rs 30K segment. While the cameras are reliable and prioritise a natural look, they can occasionally lack sharpness and vibrancy. The Vivo V50e handles daily tasks like calling, browsing, and light gaming with ease, but power users might crave more performance, especially with iQOO and POCO offering some stellar gaming-focused options.

Display and design

As mentioned, the Vivo V50e is mostly identical to the Vivo V50 in design, without the Zeiss branding. There are new colour options available, including Sapphire Blue and Pearl White. The Sapphire Blue colour has a rich pattern that is said to be different from each other. ‘No two V50e Sapphire Blue are alike’, as per the company.

*For the Sapphire Blue variant

This variant draws inspiration from sapphire gemstones, giving the device an elegant and premium aesthetic. However, a matte finish instead of a glossy one would have been preferable for better fingerprint resistance. Be that as it may, the Vivo V50e is comfortable to hold for prolonged usage, thanks to its sleek, curved edges and lightweight design. Despite its large 5,600mAh battery, the phone weighs 186 grams and measures 7.6mm in thickness. A part of this could be attributed to its plastic unibody design, which doesn’t creek or crack when the pressure is applied.

Thankfully, there’s no compromise with durability as the Vivo V50e boasts IP68 and IP69 certifications for superior protection against dust and water. There’s also an in-display fingerprint scanner for security, which unlocks the device accurately and in a jiffy. As for I/O, we get the standard options. The phone features a USB Type-C port on the bottom edge for charging and data transfer, along with dual speakers —one beside the charging port and the other behind the earpiece. The speakers deliver decent loudness, if not the best sound output.

The Vivo V50e offers an immersive viewing experience with its 6.77-inch AMOLED display, featuring an FHD+ resolution, a 120Hz refresh rate, and a peak brightness of 1,800 nits. There’s a slight compromise in peak brightness — not just with the V50 but also its predecessor, the Vivo V40e (review). This may limit the outside visibility of the smartphone outdoors under direct sunlight, but indoors, the display is just as sharp to look at as other V-series models. The screen is surrounded by ultra-thin bezels on all sides, delivering a sharp and vibrant visual experience with excellent viewing angles.

Moreover, the handset supports HDR10+ and comes with Widevine L1 certification, allowing FHD streaming on Netflix and other platforms.

Cameras

For photography, the Vivo V50e sports a dual-camera setup comprising a 50MP OIS Sony IMX882 primary sensor and an 8MP ultra-wide camera. There’s no telephoto camera for sharper portrait shots, but it’s good to see that Vivo has not skipped the ultra-wide camera. The front camera is a 50MP Samsung ISOCELL JN1 snapper for selfies and video calling.

While the smartphone lacks Zeiss tuning, it comes with all the camera modes and capabilities of the Vivo V50. The V50e offers 4K video recording at 30fps from both front and rear cameras, wedding-style portraits (exclusively designed for India), AI Aura light for enhanced low-light photography, and three different focal lengths: 1x (24mm), 1.5x (35mm), and 2x (50mm).

The Vivo V50e delivers a natural colour profile across various shooting modes, prioritising realistic tones over exaggerated vibrancy. While shadow detail is well preserved, overall colours can appear slightly muted. The ultra-wide camera follows the same colour science, though its smaller 8MP sensor can result in noticeable noise, particularly in darker areas. Portraits feature a pleasing shallow depth of field but may lack a bit of facial detail and colour precision. Selfies maintain a natural look with well-balanced background exposure, though some finer details can occasionally be lost.

Read on to find out how it compares against Vivo V50 and OPPO F29 Pro.

Daylight

In daylight, the Vivo V50e produces colours that are closer to natural tones. While its shadows may appear somewhat crushed, the device retains detail even in darker areas. The Vivo V50 excels in capturing details and delivers vibrant tones that make subjects stand out, resulting in visually appealing images.

The OPPO F29 Pro’s 50MP primary camera favours a high-contrast look over brighter, more detailed images in well-lit conditions. Compared to the Vivo V50e, it falls short in sharpness, with details appearing less crisp and colours leaning towards pastel tones rather than natural hues.

Ultra-wide

Both smartphones deliver similar colours when switching to the ultra-wide lens from the respective primary cameras. However, thanks to its 50MP sensor, the Vivo V50 offers images with finer details and reduced graininess, particularly in shadowy areas. 

While the Vivo V50e does a decent job, it holds an advantage over the OPPO F29 Pro, which skips the ultra-wide camera for a dedicated macro shooter.

Portrait

The Vivo V50 captures portraits in 23, 35, and 50mm focal points, whereas the Vivo V50e offers 26, 38, and 53mm focal points. To balance things, we captured the above images at the maximum focal points of both smartphones with an identical aperture of f/2.0.

The Vivo V50e maintains a natural look by preserving shadows but falls short of reproducing natural tones and facial details. In contrast, the Vivo V50 brightens portraits—sometimes at the cost of shadow depth—yet delivers superior facial detail and more accurate skin and clothing colours. Both smartphones offer comparable bokeh and edge detection performance.

The OPPO F29 Pro outperforms the Vivo V50e with more accurate skin tones and superior detail reproduction. It also handles shadows better, retaining more depth and contrast. However, it struggles to maintain a natural-looking bokeh effect.

Selfie

Despite featuring the same 50MP front camera, the results differ noticeably. The Vivo V50e produces natural-looking selfies with subdued colours but falls short of capturing finer facial details. The Vivo V50 is good with detail reproduction, resulting in sharp images. However, it adopts a more vivid profile, introducing a reddish tint to skin tones and enhancing overall colour vibrancy.

Unlike portraits, the OPPO F29 Pro struggles to retain shadows when it comes to selfies. The handset tends to overexpose scenes to enhance brightness and visual appeal. However, this results in slightly inaccurate colour reproduction and a loss of finer details. If you are not seeking that, the Vivo V50e might be a better option, which also offers good exposure to background details.

Low-light (night mode)

The Vivo V50e and V50 automatically use a long exposure, typically associated with night mode, when capturing images in dimly lit environments, and there is no option to disable this feature. This might not bother most users, as the result appears appealing. The Vivo V50e struggles with details but gets the job done. The regular V50 smartphone, on the other hand, offers detailed images with reduced light flare and near-accurate colours.

Compared to the OPPO F29 Pro, the Vivo V50e delivers a more visually appealing output. While the OPPO F29 maintains a contrast-heavy look, it struggles with sharpness, crispness, and colour accuracy. The Vivo V50e performs relatively better, though some details are smoothed out to minimise graininess.

Performance and software

At the core of the Vivo V50e lies an unchanged MediaTek Dimensity 7300 SoC from its predecessor. This is paired with 8GB RAM and 128GB/ 256GB storage options. The storage is not user-expandable using a microSD card, so calculate your usage needs before investing in the device. The 256GB storage is Rs 2,000 more expensive than the 128GB storage option.

The Vivo V50e’s synthetic benchmark scores are nowhere close to the segment’s POCO X7 Pro, Realme P3 Ultra, iQOO Neo 10R, and more.

Nevertheless, its real-world performance remains dependable for everyday users. I was able to get through my day-to-day activities of browsing, streaming, and scrolling social media with ease.

Additionally, the smartphone’s thermal efficiency is on par with competitors, including the performance-focused iQOO Neo 10R. After playing BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Real Racing 3 for 30 minutes each, the Vivo V50e heated up by roughly 5.5 degrees Celsius on average. However, it is not quite swift at getting the job done like clicking multiple photos in succession and jumping between apps with multiple of them running in the background. I noticed some lags here and there when the smartphone was pushed to its limit during my usage. However, it is nothing concerning. The handset should hold well for non-gamers and editors.

Part of Vivo V50e’s smooth performance could be attributed to the software. The handset boots the latest FunTouchOS 15 layered atop Android 15 out of the box. The experience isn’t any different from the previously launched Vivo X200 series, Vivo V50, and more. You can read our Vivo V50 review to find out more about the software. To sum it up, it is not the cleanest software out there, thanks to the array of pre-installed apps, but you do get several customisation options and AI features such as object remover, translation, transcription, circle to search, and image expander. The latter expands an image from its edges to a custom proportion to resize the image, make the background wider, and more.

Battery and charging

The Vivo V50e features a 5,600mAh battery with 90W fast charging support—modest upgrades over its predecessor that make a slight real-world difference, even if not significantly reflected in synthetic benchmarks. In the PCMark battery test, the Vivo V50e achieves a runtime of 15 hours and 8 minutes, approximately 40 minutes less than the V40e. The lower score doesn’t impact real-world performance. The handset is quite efficient for streaming, gaming, browsing, scrolling, and more. During our lab test, the handset’s battery drained by 2 percent while streaming a 30-minute YouTube video and 6 percent on average after playing BGMI, Call of Duty: Mobile, and Real Racing 3 for half an hour each. 

When it comes to charging, the Vivo V50e takes 42 minutes to go from 20 percent to 100 percent using the included charger. This is on par with the V40e, which features an 80W charger but a slightly smaller 5,500mAh battery.

Final verdict

The Vivo V50e aims to bring the stylish design and wedding-style portrait photography, exclusive to the V-series lineup, to a more affordable price point. It achieves this by delivering a well-rounded experience. The sleek and premium design, vibrant and sharp AMOLED display, reliable performance, excellent battery life with fast charging, and cameras that produce natural-looking shots all contribute to making it a compelling choice in its segment.

That said, the smartphone leaves room for improvement in terms of performance, as some users may prefer more power. The display could also benefit from higher brightness for better outdoor visibility, and the cameras would be more appealing with added vibrancy and sharpness.

Still, the Vivo V50e remains a solid choice for daily users who seek a good phone with great after-sales service. The handset has been priced in India starting at Rs 28,999.

Editor’s rating: 7.6/10

Reasons to buy

• A sleek, lightweight, and stylish design that doesn’t compromise durability.
• The AMOLED display delivers a sharp and vibrant visual experience with excellent viewing angles.
• Solid, dependable battery performance.
• The primary camera captures a natural colour profile across different shooting modes.

Reasons not to buy

• Power users could be left underwhelmed.
• Ultrawide and low-light performance remain areas that could benefit from further refinement.