Thursday, December 24, 2020

Vivo V20 Pro 5G Review

 The Vivo V20 Pro is a solid offering, and one that competes fairly well with the OnePlus Nord (Review). Features such as 5G, 4K 60fps selfie video recording, the crisp AMOLED display, and quick charging help this phone put up a strong fight against OnePlus' offering. However, the V20 Pro does fall a bit short on the value front.

Vivo V20 Pro 5G Review

Vivo's latest addition to its V20 series is the Vivo V20 Pro. It's an upgraded Vivo V20 with a more powerful SoC and a second selfie camera for a slightly higher asking price. This makes it a direct competitor to the OnePlus Nord. It's priced at Rs. 29,990 for the sole configuration which has 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

Just like the Vivo V20, the Vivo V20 Pro focuses on design and cameras. Vivo claims it's the slimmest 5G smartphone in its segment, which should appeal to many buyers looking for a slim and light smartphone. However, is it any good? More importantly, should you pick this over the OnePlus Nord? We aim to answer these questions in this review.

Vivo V20 Pro 5G design

The Vivo V20 Pro looks more or less identical to the Vivo V20. It's slightly shorter but just as wide, and relatively slim. The Sunset Melody colour that I have is 7.49mm thick, but if you pick the Midnight Pass trim, the phone is a tiny bit slimmer at 7.39mm. It's also light at just 170g thanks to the plastic frame, which feels quite sturdy.

The power button on the right has a textured finish making it easy to identify by touch. The rounded edges of the frame make the V20 Pro comfortable to hold and use with one hand. The SIM tray is placed at the bottom, but unlike the Vivo V20, the V20 Pro does not have a hybrid tray or a dedicated slot for a microSD card, and only two Nano-SIMs are supported. Considering you only get 128GB of storage, power users might find this a bit limiting.

The patterns created on the Sunset Melody colorway when light hits the back panel look very funky. Vivo has used a matte-finish back made of Corning Gorilla Glass 5, so it doesn't pick up fingerprints easily, and should offer good protection against scratches too. The camera module doesn't protrude much, which is nice.

The display on the Vivo V20 Pro is once again very similar to that of the V20. It is a 6.44-inch full-HD+ AMOLED panel with Schott's Xensation Up cover glass. Colours are rich, it gets very bright, and there's HDR support too. There's no high refresh rate, which is something the OnePlus Nord has the upper hand with. Then there's the notch. Due to the second selfie camera, the V20 Pro has a wide notch which makes this phone look rather old-fashioned. A dual hole-punch cutout would have been a better choice.

Vivo V20 Pro 5G performance and software

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G in the Vivo V20 Pro gives this phone a much-needed performance upgrade over the Vivo V20. Not that the latter was a slouch, but above Rs. 25,000, it's good to have a more competitive SoC. With 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, the V20 Pro breezed through benchmarks. Real-world app performance and multi-tasking are also handled very well. The lack of a high refresh rate is a bit jarring, especially if you're coming from a phone with a 90Hz display, but otherwise the experience is good. The Vivo V20 Pro also has dual-band Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 5.1 and GPS, but no NFC or FM radio.

Videos look great on the Vivo V20 Pro thanks to the vivid AMOLED panel. HDR videos on YouTube play smoothly, but some streaming apps such as Netflix failed to detect this display as HDR-capable. The volume level of the speaker could have been better, especially for listening to media outdoors, and the sound quality is quite average.

Vivo V20 Pro 5G cameras

The Vivo V20 Pro boasts of impressive camera specifications. For selfies, you get a 44-megapixel primary camera with a f/2.0 aperture and autofocus, and an additional ultra-wide-angle 8-megapixel camera. On the back of the phone, you get a 64-megapixel primary camera with an f/1.89 aperture, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera with autofocus that doubles up as a macro camera, and a 2-megapixel monochrome camera which is only used to enable the ‘Graded B/W' filter in Photo mode.

Vivo V20 Pro 5G battery life

The Vivo V20 Pro features a 4,000mAh battery which lasted for a little more than 16 hours, in our HD video loop test, which is more than what the OnePlus Nord managed. You also get 33W fast charging, so the V20 Pro can be charged up to roughly 93 percent in an hour. With my typical usage, I was easily able to make this phone last for about a day and a half, or sometimes a bit more.

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