Vivo X90 Pro Review: A Flagship Phone That Fits in Your Hand
Vivo X90 Pro
The Vivo X90 Pro offers an excellent camera suite, making it suitable for most avid mobile photographers. Zeiss, one of the leaders in photography, imaging, and lenses, co-engineered this smartphone, ensuring that you can capture your vision through its cameras.
Aside from its photography chops, the X90 Pro also delivers a great one-handed experience due to its tall and thin build. You can efficiently operate it with one hand, and you won’t get tired of holding it for long because of its lighter weight.
Even so, this compact build does not diminish the premium feel of the Vivo X90 Pro. Its curved glass makes it elegant, while its premium black vegan leather back would make you want to touch it so much that you’ll be tempted to use the phone without a case.
Although Vivo isn’t as popular as its other competitors, like Samsung and Apple, the camera suite on this phone can give them a run for their money. The only downside of this device is that it has a lot of bloatware, which can be easily fixed by uninstalling them when you open it the first time. So, if you want the best smartphone camera on you all the time, you should go for the Vivo X90 Pro.
When you mention “flagship smartphone,” the first thing that comes to mind to many is the massive offerings from Apple and Samsung. And while many have already accepted that you can’t easily operate top-end devices with one hand, Vivo has proven otherwise with the X90 Pro.
So, how did Vivo achieve this handy size without compromising performance or screen size? Let’s find out.
Vivo X90 Pro Package Contents
The Vivo X90 Pro comes in a premium black box with a leather-like texture, which emulates the finish on the back of the phone. Inside, you’ll find the phone on top and two more boxes underneath. The box on the left has the SIM ejector tool and the silicon case it comes with, while the one on the right has the 120-watt USB-CGaN chargerand the accompanying USB-C to USB-C cable.
Unfortunately, the phone doesn’t come with headphones or a USB-C to 3.5mm jack adapter. So, if you don’t have one yet, you’ll have to invest in a pair of wireless earbuds or provide your own USB-C headphones to enjoy personal music.
X90 Pro Specifications
The X90 Pro is Vivo’s top-of-the-line global offering. Although you’ll find a higher-end Vivo X90 Pro+, it’s only available in China.
The Vivo X90 Pro is no slouch, though. Here are the specs of the model we’re reviewing today:
One surprising thing about the Vivo X90 Pro is that it’s not powered by the usual Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 you could find on most other Android flagships, including theiQOO 11, which is Vivo’s best offering in the gaming phone space. Instead, it sports the less popular MediaTek Dimensity 9200.
And although it’s not the processor we’re used to, it still offers good performance, which we’ll see later. The review unit also comes with 12GB RAM and can utilize 8GB more from its UFS 4.0 internal memory, allowing you to have a massive 20GB total for extreme multitasking.
The X90 Pro is also equipped with a large dual-cell 4,970 mAh battery. Although it’s not the biggest battery on the market, it’s more than enough to last a day. Furthermore, the included 120-watt charger can juice it up from flat empty to full in half an hour. So, even if you forgot to plug in your phone before bed, you’ll have more than enough for the day by charging it while enjoying your morning coffee.
Benchmark Performance
Of course, if you invest in a flagship device, you expect to get flagship performance. But what do the benchmarking apps say about the MediaTek Dimensity 9200? Can it keep up with the latest and greatest chip from Qualcomm?
Geekbench 5
The Vivo X90 Pro earned 1,380 points in single-Core and 4,222 points in multi-core testing from this test. Comparing these results from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 powered iQOO 11, it’s 88 points behind in single-core and 518 points behind in multi-core operation.
The iQOO 11 also outclasses the X90 Pro in the GPU department. The latter only scored 9,039 points in Vulkan testing versus the 9,408 points of the former. Nevertheless, these scores are still ahead of the last-generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+.
We also put the Vivo X90 Pro through its paces with 3D Mark’s Wilfe Life Extreme Stress Test. This benchmark runs a 20-minute high-performance regime to see the phone’s stability and performance under heavy loads, and we were surprised by the results.
The X90 Pro gained the best loop score of 3,716 points—about 68 points ahead of the iQOO 11 with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip. But what impressed us the most was its stability. The phone was still able to score 2,842 even after thermal throttling.
The phone only had a stability rating of 76.5%, but it achieved this without active cooling. The Vivo X90 Pro has a 40 square cm vapor chamber, plus 24 heat dissipation layers, allowing it to remain stable and avoid thermal throttling. What’s more impressive is that its lowest loop score is still higher than the best score the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1+ achieved during its first run.
Vivo X90 Pro Look and Feel
Benchmarks are like the drag strips of smartphones. They show you how fast it would go from zero to sixty and how quickly it would go down the quarter mile. But they don’t show you how it feels to drive the phone daily.
So, how does the Vivo X90 Pro feel when you use it every day?
Holding the Vivo X90 Pro in Your Hand
The phone’s dimensions are 164.1 x 74.5 x 9.3mm—it’s taller than the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max. However, it’s significantly narrower at just 74.5mm (2.93 inches), making it easier to hold for most people.
This form factor allows the Vivo to have a slightly larger diagonal screen size than the iPhone 14 Pro Max (6.78 inches vs. 6.7 inches) while maintaining the comfort of holding it. And although the X90 Pro is thicker than both the iPhone and Samsung, when you consider the massive camera bumps of these phones, the difference becomes negligible, especially if you put your phones in a case.
The Vivo X90 Pro is also lighter than the iPhone 14 Pro Max and Galaxy S23 Ultra. At just 214.9 grams (7.58oz), the phone is 26 grams lighter than the former and 20 grams lighter than the latter. Although it may seem negligible on paper, if you’re holding your phone for a long time, you’ll feel the difference.
One unique trait the X90 Pro has over its competitors is its Vegan Leather back. The premium textured touch feels good to touch, tempting you to use the phone without a case. You also get a massive camera bump at the back, which houses the three cameras. You might notice a fourth hole in the camera bump, but it seems to be a provision for the 90mm periscope camera found only in the X90 Pro+.
Overall, the Vivo X90 Pro has excellent handling characteristics, and you won’t regret choosing this phone. One thing to note, though. Your fingers will touch the massive camera bump at the back if you hold it horizontally while gaming. So be sure to wipe it off after playing to ensure clear photos.
Funtouch 13 OS
Vivo uses the Funtouch 13 skin over the stock Android 13 experience. While it does have snappy response times, it also comes with a lot of bloatware. Every time you finish downloading an app from the Google Play Store, the phone pushes its V-Appstore, which gets annoying.
It also has the iManager app, which is useful for monitoring your phone’s performance. But if you know your way around Android, most of its settings are already included in the stock Android experience. It also comes loaded with several apps, like Spotify, LinkedIn, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, Viu, and more. Although this is convenient if you already have an account with them, it’s a hassle to remove them individually if you don’t use them at all.
As smartphones increase their longevity, especially among flagships, we must look at their update schedules. Vivo confirmed that the Vivo X90 and X90 Pro would receive three major Android upgrades and three years of security updates. That means you can expect the phone to get up to Android 16, and you’re guaranteed protection until 2026.
Vivo X90 Pro Photography and ZEISS
Aside from its flagship specifications, the biggest thing the Vivo X90 Pro offers is its photographic capabilities, developed in partnership with Zeiss. This company is known for its camera lenses and has previously worked with prestigious camera brands like Sony and Hasselblad.
Vivo X90 Pro Rear Cameras
If you’re into mobile photography, the Vivo X90 Pro is one of the best smartphone shooters on the market. Its partnership with Zeiss truly shines in the images that it creates, and you get great pictures in almost all lighting conditions.
Whether you’re shooting under the harsh midday sun, in a dark parking lot, or inside a car with challenging lighting, you get clear, defined photos. The phone also emulates grainy film well in dark images, giving it a natural look.
There are also several photo modes, including Sports, Night, Portrait, Panorama, Long Exposure, Supermoon, Astrophotography, Landscape and Architecture, Food, and Double Exposure. You also get HDR, Zeiss Natural Color, and Macro mode on the main Photo mode.
However, you don’t need all these extra modes as the main camera is already a great shooter. But if you’re an advanced photographer, you’ll appreciate the Pro Mode. It lets you control everything—from the basics, like ISO, shutter speed, and white balance, to focusing, metering, and exposure values. Apple still doesn’t have this mode, despite existing on Android for years.
The Natural Color effect uses Zeiss' technique to reproduce colors as you see them. This means your images appear as natural as possible without requiring you to do any post-processing. With the Vivo X90 Pro, your photos will look how you see them, allowing you to translate your vision without effort.
You can also record videos at up to 8K resolution at 24 FPS. And although the Vivo X90 Pro’s video recording capabilities aren’t as excellent as the iPhone 14 Pro Max, it offers several features, like Cinematic Mode and Ultra Stabilization, to help it catch up a bit.
Selfies With the Vivo X90 Pro
The X90 Pro also lets you take great selfies and gives you three filter options. The first filter, Style, enables you to apply five iconic Zeiss bokeh styles—Biotar, Sonnar, Planar, Distagon, and Cinematic—and more.
The second filter set is more for beautification, makeup, and posture, while the last filter is artificial bokeh. The beauty filter is quite advanced, allowing you to change several settings, including skin tone, whitening, facial features, etc. You also get a posture guide in the second filter set so that you can make different poses for your selfies.
And even if you’re shooting with the less capable front camera, your photos still have the Zeiss treatment, allowing you to shoot high-quality images from the front of the Vivo X90 Pro.
Should You Buy the Vivo X90 Pro?
After all this, the great question remains: should you buy the Vivo X90 Pro? If you’re looking for a top-end smartphone that’ll deliver a premium experience and excellent image quality, then look no further.
The phone will fit great on most hands without compromising on screen size. You get great performance from the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 chip, even if it isn’t as popular as the Qualcomm chip. And best of all, it can give both the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and the Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max a run for their money in the photography department.
The Zeiss branding on the Vivo X90 Pro isn’t just a gimmick. Instead, it allows the smartphone to deliver consistently great photos, allowing you to push your creativity further beyond its limits.
Your phone’s camera app doesn’t show this, so it’s easy to miss.
You’re not getting the most out of what you pay for iCloud+.
You don’t need to fork out for expensive hardware to run an AI on your PC.
You’ve been quoting these famous films wrong all along!
Flagship price, mid-range phone.
Some subscriptions are worth the recurring cost, but not these ones.
