Vivo V29 review: Putting you in your best light

Note: This review was first published on 10 January 2024.

Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder

We can’t imagine there’d be too many people who’d be in the market for a phone catering to the needs of live streamers or TikTok celebrities. But here we are, with the Vivo V29 midrange handset with all the selfie perks in one device.

Let’s start with its biggest selling point. Vivo V29 has something called Aura Light 2.0, which is an additional ring light alongside its existing LED flash and triple rear camera setup. Aura Light 2.0 goes beyond what conventional smartphone flash offers, emulating the ring light used by most live streamers and TikTok dancers. Without spoiling too much, it exceeds our expectations, so you’ll have to read the review to see how it fares.

Other interesting perks are its physicality, with its 7.46mm body and 186g weight, making it a very lightweight alternative to heavier midrange handsets on the market. It also comes in a unique, translucent 3D finish that defies the standard, “boring” midrange smartphone palettes.

Despite its attention to a lithe form factor, Vivo also managed to squeeze in a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with above-average resolution, peaking at 2,800 x 1,260 pixels and 120Hz refresh rate.

While it sounds like an impressive design language with a built-in feature set to satisfy live streamers, we also want to know if the S$649 Vivo V29 (12GB RAM + 256GB storage) holds up as a standard midrange smartphone or something better.

Practical looker

A careful look around the Vivo V29 will tell you that Vivo put in a lot of effort to make the phone physically appealing. Despite its huge camera lenses and ring light, the phone keeps everything nearly flush and neat inside a rectangular camera island, minimising awkward bobbling when placed face-up on a desk.

This is even before you get to its unique, translucent, three-dimensional colourway on the rear, which stands out among boring or plain-looking midrange alternatives (our review unit came in a dreamy, gradient-toned Starry Purple). The rear finish is surprisingly stain-resistant, with no smudges or marks in our bare-naked daily use (in other words, without slapping on a phone case).

To finish off its aesthetic appeal, Vivo V29 used high-polish, aerospace-grade metal borders that also do not smudge or stain easily. 

If the Vivo had opted for a flat display instead of its curved appearance, the V29 would’ve scored full marks in the looks department.

Vivo V29 isn’t just pretty for the sake of it, and the Chinese phone brand ensured that it did get other perks beyond its camera features.

For instance, the 6.78-inch, 60-120Hz refresh rate AMOLED panel it carries has a higher screen resolution (2,800 x 1,260 pixels) than most midrange alternatives with Full HD resolution. Our only complaint is the lack of HDR10 support, which we’ve come to expect on phones of every price bracket and tier. However, the higher resolution is easily more perceptible than HDR10 support on a small screen, so the trade-off is acceptable.

It’s also very slim and light, at 7.46mm and 186g, respectively. Most midrange phones start at 8mm and weigh 200-210g onwards for this screen size, which can be tiring for some during use. Vivo V29 doesn’t have that issue.

These little tweaks are what separates Vivo V29 from other mobiles, and it caters well to people who enjoy compact, lightweight handsets that don’t compromise on display sharpness and clarity.

As with most beautiful things and people, the Vivo V29 is not perfect. The phone has below-average audio performance with its single, downward-firing speaker, offering bloated mids with little definition in high notes. Its speaker position is also awkward since you’d likely cover the audio vents when watching videos in landscape mode. 

It also lacks an official IP rating certification, so it lacks water or dust resistance. It's not that the phone would get damaged upon a small splash of water, but without tested certification, it's unclear how carefree one can use it, and it is best to be cautious. That said, the lack of such certification is not out of the norm for midrange phones.

Finally, the slim profile also means forgoing a 3.5mm wired headphone port, which could have been helpful for users who didn’t include a pair of true wireless earbuds in their phone-buying budget. For an affordable pair, you can consider these from Creative.

User Interface, user experience

Vivo V29’s day-to-day operations feel typical for a mid-range smartphone. You won’t get flagship-quick bootups or speedy app launches. It does, however, handle in-app browsing fluidly.

The optical in-display fingerprint sensor is a nice touch that complements its slim profile, and it’s highly accurate; it doesn’t trigger on unregistered fingers and yet triggers within a second. We’d prefer a slightly higher placement for better access (food for thought: can phone companies make fingerprint detection and placement customisable? That would be rad).

Another notable feature (and a major plus point) coincided with our Vivo V29 review period: we could use the Android 14 version of FuntouchOS after a firmware update. To us, it’s crucial that phones of every pricing bracket get regularly updated for security reasons, and V29 does not disappoint with such a timely software upgrade despite its mid-range classification.

Beyond these noteworthy points, Vivo V29’s core features mostly focus on its camera capabilities, which we’ll go into detail under our next section, Imaging.

Imaging

A big selling point of the Vivo V29 is the built-in ring light meant to emulate professional-grade ring lights used by live streamers and internet celebrities. 

According to Vivo, this ring light (Aura Light 2.0) offers 360° even lighting, has nine times larger surface area for coverage, and 36% more brightness than its previous iteration. The shape of Aura Light 2.0 also meant that you get the same ring effect reflected in the iris of your eyes when taking portrait videos or photos.

Other perks of this ring light include Smart Colour Temperature Adjustment, where Aura Light 2.0 compensates its bulb temperature by reading the environment. Whether you’re in a fine dining restaurant with low, warm lights or partying it up at a club with strong, cool neon lamps, Aura Light 2.0 will compensate accordingly to give you a skin-accurate selfie. 

To use Aura Light 2.0, you must find its setting under the Flash subsection inside the default camera app. Auto Mode for the ring light works perfectly fine unless you want to micromanage the temperature for a different effect. 

Under sufficient lighting, Aura Light 2.0 won’t make much of a difference, but it’s quite clear that its light is extremely powerful despite its size (as seen in these daytime before-vs-after photos). You’re almost guaranteed to get well-lit selfies in the darkest of places.

Beyond its ring light comes a standard camera package. Its main camera on the rear is 50MP with optical image stabilisation (OIS) at f/1.88, paired with an 8MP ultra-wide angle shooter for wefies at f/.2.2. There’s also a 2MP monochrome camera, but there’s no B&W shooting option in its default camera app. We presume that the third camera is there to provide more image data to enhance your main camera shots. 

The front camera is a 50MP shooter with AutoFocus at f/2.0, which really emphasises the phone’s vanity-first approach.

Vivo also put in extra effort to offer a “short video” mode called Micro Movie (the second-last option in your horizontal menu). It’s clearly targeted at users who create content for TikTok, with six different genres (casual, food, travel etc.) and roughly three to four variants per shooting genre.

A missed opportunity on the Vivo V29 is the lack of a mirrored surface on its rear camera housing. Instead of having a blank space with small text, Vivo could’ve put in a reflective aluminium or silver rectangle next to Aura Light 2.0. Doing so would vastly improve its useability: a mirrored surface provides posing hints if you’re taking selfies, or helping others take theirs.

Now, on to more imaging samples.

Image Samples

It’s overall imaging performance feels sufficient, with strong colour performance and great detail retention if you’re into taking tons of photos up close. Objects outside of its main focus point tend to lose detail (check out the leaves on trees, the sides of buildings etc., in our samples), but we’re keeping expectations tempered since it’s not a flagship-grade handset.

The ultra-wide photo quality is nothing to write home about. If we could, we'd skip using it where possible. It's sufficiently sharp but not as colour accurate as its main camera.

Benchmark Performance

The Vivo V29 uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 778G, a 2021 mid-range processor that was the first to inherit a handful of flagship-only Snapdragon features like its audio (Snapdragon Sound) and gaming capabilities (Snapdragon Elite Gaming). You can learn more about the chipset here. 

Comparatively, that pits SD778G against its newer counterparts. Qualcomm went for a rebrand and has since named their mid-range chips differently in 2022. Case in point, the SD778G is succeeded by the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 in 2022, and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 2 in 2023. 

Putting it to the test

To find out how the competitors line up specs and price-wise, check them out in this link.

To find out more about the tests we conduct and what they relate to, we've jotted them down here.

Benchmark Performance remarks

Why Vivo would use a 2021 chipset for an October 2023 handset is anyone’s guess, but you must remember that phones around the S$649 mark (Vivo V29’s official retail price) can come with higher-powered chipsets. From our mid-range phone buying guide alone, you already have the Poco F5 Pro with an old flagship processor at S$100 less, a flagship-grade AI processor on the Pixel 7a at a similar price point and even the Redmi Note 12 Pro+’s MediaTek Dimensity 1080 that trades out power for battery uptime. Outside of our buying guide is the Samsung Galaxy A54 at just S$588. No matter how you cut it, Vivo’s decision to use a non-flagship chipset that’s older than its competition makes it a tough fight for the Vivo V29. The benchmarks say as much, too.

Battery Life

Our new battery benchmark uses PCMark for Android’s Work 3.0 Battery Life test to determine a modern Android-based smartphone's battery uptime in minutes. This controlled benchmark simulates real-world usage with a combination of both web and social media browsing, video and photo editing, parsing data with various file formats, writing (on documents), and more. 

At 4,600mAh, the Vivo V29 pulls in an impressive 12 hours 48 minutes of battery uptime. We attribute it to its low power draw (as seen in the Benchmarks section) despite having a display above 1080p. 

While it lacks wireless charging, the Vivo V29 has above-average wired fast charging at 80W with the charging adapter provided in the box. The downside is that Vivo V29 uses an odd 11V/3.7A combo to hit 80W, which means you need to find specific third-party chargers that can give the same output combo to hit its maximum wattage. Our battery monitoring tool showed that Vivo V29 needs about an hour to attain a 0-100% charge with the included charging adapter.

Conclusion

The Vivo V29 comes across as a niche offering in a crowded midrange smartphone market, but it does fulfil its niche well. 

If you take away its ring light and photography/videography features, it becomes a stylish, but standard midrange smartphone with performance and a price tag to match. It’s sufficient for day-to-day use, with perks like a high-resolution AMOLED panel, dual 5G SIM support, and long enough battery life to get you through the day.

Competition is tough for the phone, because there is no shortage of alternatives, each with its own strong suit. For example, it lacks HDR10 support like the Redmi Note 12 Pro+, and it doesn't have the AI chops seen on Google Pixel 7a.

It also lacks certified water resistance and doesn’t have good external speakers, but those are not as crucial as its disadvantages against other midrange mobiles.

However, if you value the Aura Light 2.0 ring light and its strong main camera performance, the S$649 Vivo V29 becomes a very attractive option for Android phone users who prioritise its selfie or portrait-taking capabilities. 

Frankly, the built-in lights are far from what professional-grade (or even Taobao-grade) ring lights are truly capable of, but the light’s portability and output are commendable. You don’t need to drag extra accessories around, and it’s sufficiently bright enough for dimly lit or dark venues. You can adjust it further if it’s too bright, too.

Having a strong battery uptime also means that the ring light won’t consume too much of your juice when you start a photo-taking spree. Ultimately, you still get livestream-quality lighting in a pinch, even if you’re just out for a night of fun with friends.

We assume that the same target audience is also prone to losing their belongings in the dark, and Aura Light 2.0 far exceeds your standard smartphone torch feature, making it extra useful for them.

All this comes on top of its light and thin aesthetic, replete with a dreamy default colourway that stayed stain- and smudge-free during our review period.

In the right hands, Vivo V29 can be your best friend, putting you in the best light.

The Vivo V29 (known as Vivo V29 5G in Singapore) retails at S$649 in Starry Purple and Noble Black, at official Vivo storefronts (Bugis Junction, Causeway Point, NEX), and retail partner outlets, such as Lazada, Shopee, Best Denki, Challenger, Courts, Gain City, Harvey Norman, other authorised sellers.