Vivo X200 Pro review: new year, new camera phone to beat

• By Sanket Vijayasarathy
Published On: 2 January 2025 | 15:21 IST Last Updated On: 5 January 2025 | 14:33 IST

The Vivo X100 Pro was, hands down, my camera phone of 2024. When I reviewed the device, I was blown away by what its cameras could do, especially in portraits. But beyond that, the phone just worked as a flagship phone with terrific hardware, good battery life, and an attractive design. One wonders how the Vivo X200 Pro can even take things up a notch, but here we are. The Vivo X200 Pro not only touts an improved camera system, but also gets a newer, more powerful chipset, bigger battery, and more.

Verdict

The Vivo X200 Pro is among the first batch of flagships that will set the standard for high-end phones in 2025, and it doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. I was already impressed with the cameras on the X100 Pro, and my appreciation has grown even more for the X200 Pro. Its ZEISS-backed rear camera system is outstanding and versatile, led by an exceptional 200MP telephoto camera. Furthermore, the X200 Pro excels in display, performance, and battery life, offering a complete flagship experience that justifies its price tag.

Design and display

The Vivo X200 Pro might seem like a bulky phone at first, but it feels great to hold and substantial in the hand once you get used to it. In fact, it is marginally shorter and slimmer than the Vivo X100 Pro. The Cosmos Black colour variant is also lighter than the X100 Pro (225 grams) by a couple of grams. The Titanium Gray option, however, is slightly heavier at 228 grams, which, as per Vivo, is due to the materials used.

The rear camera system is the main attraction and never lets you forget this as it takes up a good portion of the rear panel. The circular module is bigger in size than the one on the X100 Pro, but it doesn’t add to the overall thickness of the device, which is great. The back panel has a smooth, matte finish that is quite slippery to hold and it is advised to use the clear silicone case provided in the box. Overall, the X200 Pro feels as premium as they come and is worth every penny of its asking price. However, its weight and rear camera module make it slightly challenging for one-handed use.

The X200 Pro gets both IP68 and IP69 ratings, which means it is resistant to water splashes, water and dust. It has been tested to survive in fresh water up to 1.5 meters for up to 30 seconds.

Coming to the display, the Vivo X200 Pro gets a quad-curved screen that is subtly rounded around the sides and corners. With a 6.78-inch 1.5K AMOLED display and extremely thin bezels, the Vivo X200 Pro delivers a stunning screen that is both vibrant and immersive. The X200 Pro uses an 8T LTPO panel with an adaptive dynamic refresh rate that ranges from as low as 0.1Hz all the way to 120Hz. The display supports up to 4500 nits local peak brightness, 1.07 billion colours, Dolby Vision and HDR on supported apps like Netflix.

Another important display-related feature is that the X200 Pro supports 2160Hz PWM Dimming which reduces flicker and eye strain, especially when browsing in low light. Lastly, the display is protected by Armor Glass, which Vivo claims provides 11x better drop resistance compared to the glass on the Vivo X100 Pro.

Cameras

Coming to the main attraction of the Vivo X200 Pro: cameras. As I mentioned earlier, the X100 Pro was my camera phone of 2024, and the X200 Pro has only further impressed me. This time around, Vivo has bumped up the telephoto camera sensor to 200MP from 50MP, ensuring far sharper zoom photos that will come in handy for both portraits and macros. Yes, you can shoot some stunning macros using the telephoto lens and it is by far one of the best telephoto cameras on a smartphone right now.

You can read my camera review of the Vivo X200 Pro to check out how the flagship performs against the likes of the OPPO Find X8 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro in a standard camera shootout. Here, I’ll be taking about everything else the Vivo X200 Pro’s camera system offers.

Let’s start with the 200MP telephoto lens, which is easily the star of the show. A definitive upgrade from the 50MP primary camera from the X100 Pro, the 200MP telephoto lens not only captures detailed portraits in 3.7x (85mm) and 5.9x (135mm), but also lets you capture stunning close-up macros, like the one below.

Here’s a portrait using the telephoto lens at 135mm. Notice the sharpness of the dog’s facial features and fur along with a seamless background blur.

Below is a telephoto sunset shot taken in 10x (230mm). The camera was able to capture near-accurate colours of the sun while ensuring the overall clarity of the image.

The usual ZEISS bokeh modes exist, such as Biotar, B-speed, Sonnar, Planar, and more for you to experiment with to capture attractive background bokeh effects in low-light scenes. While portraits with these ZEISS modes look really nice, the X200 Pro tends to soften facial features in low-light conditions.

Meanwhile, Night mode has been merged with Landscape mode, and you’ll need to use the latter to capture improved low-light shots. I noticed that while Night mode offers better clarity and details (especially the sand in the image below), it punches up the colour of the sky to make it bluer than it really is.

Street Photography is a brand-new mode that can be accessed by swiping up while in Photo mode. A quicker way to access this mode is by double-clicking the volume-down button when the phone is locked. In addition to adjusting white balance, aperture, shutter speed, and exposure, Street Photography also allows you to choose between five focal lengths and four color modes, providing greater control over the type of photos you want to capture while photographing subjects on the street.

A quick word on the 32MP selfie camera, the X200 Pro captures sharp and appealing selfies though expect some softening of facial features when capturing in low light conditions. The X200 Pro is a capable phone for videography as well, offering features like 4K HDR, Dolby Vision and more to deliver high-quality videos with good stability thanks to OIS attached to the main and telephoto cameras.

Performance and software

Vivo is going with the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset, a flagship processor, on the X200 Pro. To recall, the X100 Pro uses the Dimensity 9300 SoC. Additionally, the latest flagship comes with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.0 storage. You can read my in-depth performance review of the X200 Pro to know more about how the flagship performance against rivals like iPhone 16 Pro, iQOO 13 (review), and OPPO Find X8 Pro (review).

To put it briefly, the Vivo X200 Pro is an outstanding performer, offering blazing-fast speeds in real-world usage, even if it doesn’t lead the pack in synthetic benchmarks. Powered by the Dimensity 9400 SoC, it handles demanding tasks with ease and is optimised to minimise throttling compared to its competitors in the segment.

The Dimensity 9400 chipset handles daily apps and general usage effortlessly, with virtually no lag or freezing issues. It’s also well-equipped for more demanding tasks like video editing. Gaming on the X200 Pro is a delight, offering consistently smooth frame rates while maintaining stable thermals, even at the highest graphic settings.

Vivo X200 Pro ships with Android 15 with Funtouch OS 15 on top. Out of the box, you do get a fairly large amount of pre-loaded third-party apps like Snapchat, Myntra, PhonePe, and some gaming apps like Block Blast, Rolling Twins, and Tile Master 3D. You can uninstall the ones you absolutely don’t need for a cleaner UI. You will need to spend some time tweaking the UI to your taste, after which Funtouch OS should feel easy to get used to.

Vivo is promising four years of major software upgrades and five years of security updates for the X200 Pro. This means the phone should get Android 19 four years down the line.

The latest Vivo flagship gets an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which is faster and more responsive than the traditional optical fingerprint sensor present on the predecessor.

Battery

By now, you would have seen that Vivo has made upgrades across the board. Things are no different in the battery department. The Vivo X200 Pro gets a 6,000mAh battery, which is 600mAh bigger than the one used in the X100 Pro. Vivo has managed this using a 3rd-gen silicon anode and semi-solid state technology, which allows for a bigger battery capacity without increasing its thickness.

The bigger battery does translate to better battery life, as the X200 Pro can last a full day with change on medium to heavy usage. I was able to get anywhere between 6 to 7 hours of screen on time, which included a few hours of streaming content, checking mails, social media browsing and more.

The only downside here is that Vivo has lowered charging speeds from 100W to 90W, possibly to ensure longer battery health. Even the wireless charging speed has dropped from 50W to 30W. Using the bundled charger, it takes roughly 42 minutes to charge from 20 to 100 percent. You can read my in-depth battery review to find out how the Vivo X200 Pro stacks up against the iQOO 13, OPPO Find X8 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro.

Final verdict

The Vivo X200 Pro maintains the benchmark set by its predecessor, the X100 Pro, and is the camera phone to beat in 2025. The X200 Pro also brings significant upgrades across the board.

The standout feature remains its ZEISS-engineered rear camera system, which is a benchmark for smartphone photography. At its core is an extraordinary 200MP telephoto lens, delivering excellent clarity and detail, whether capturing distant subjects or shooting portraits. This is complemented by a versatile suite of lenses, ensuring professional-grade performance in virtually any lighting condition.

The X200 Pro also shines in other key areas. Its display offers vibrant colours, deep contrast, and ultra-smooth refresh rates, making everything from streaming to gaming a delight. Powered by the latest MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chipset, the phone delivers smooth performance, handling multitasking and demanding apps with ease. Battery life is another strong point, though the downgrade to the charging speeds is a little disappointing.

Altogether, the Vivo X200 Pro is a well-rounded flagship that justifies its Rs 95,000 price tag.

Editor’s rating: 8.5 / 10

Reasons to buy:

• Excellent and versatile camera system
• Fast and smooth performance
• Solid battery life
• Stellar display

Reasons to not buy:

• Low-light portraits and selfies tend to soften facial features
• Slower wired and wireless charging speeds compared to its predecessor