Vivo X60 Pro review: Can its updated gimbal system win over other flagship phone options?

Note: This review was first published on 12 July 2021.

Overview

Much like its predecessor, Vivo is bringing back its ultra-thin aesthetic to the new Vivo X60 Pro. Also returning is a new-and-improved Gimbal Stabilisation 2.0, which was built upon the existing Gimbal Camera System in the X50 Pro. The older gimbal provides three-axis stabilisation in the main camera, but Gimbal Stabilisation 2.0 offers two additional axes of stability to bring VIS five-axis stabilisation.

This 5G-capable phone is also getting a spec bump from mid-range chipset previously to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, which was built on the same architecture that made last year's flagship-tier Qualcomm processors. Even though it's not Qualcomm's true flagship Snapdragon 888, Vivo said that using SD870 gives it 10% higher CPU and GPU performance than the SD865, which also ties in with our understanding as reported here.

Other perks are its edge-to-edge AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate and 240Hz response rate, on top of 33W FlashCharge fast-charging for its 4,200mAh battery. Together, the Vivo X60 Pro sounds pretty good on paper, right? 

Not really. Its price of S$1,199 asks a lot out of its customers to choose it over other 2021 Android models with true flagship components within the same price range. Vivo has to contend with models like the Xiaomi Mi 11, ASUS ZenFone 8, and the base version of the Samsung Galaxy S21 if it's going to convince you to part with your money. 

Can the Vivo X60 Pro even keep up with all its features, especially with an updated gimbal system for its camera? Let’s find out.

Design & Handling

If it’s not broken, why fix it?

Vivo decided to re-use the ultra-thin design on the X50 Pro, with the Vivo X60 Pro on hand at just 7.59mm thin (Shimmer Blue is apparently slightly thicker, but we don't have that colourway on-hand to confirm). As a result, it’s easily the slimmest phone we’ve handled this year - so much that snapping on its included jelly phone case kept its thin look and feel.

On the rear is a plastic-based frosted finish design. We liked how Vivo kept the camera housing so thin that it’s almost naked to the eye - there’s only a visible rim around the glass that protects and houses all the other cameras (unlike the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra). This also offers a flushed surface between all the rear lenses, unlike other rear phones' cameras with individual rims for each lens (iPhone 12 Pro Max) or slightly depressed lenses (Samsung Galaxy S21 series). 

The phone not only looks lithe, but it feels slim in hand too. If we had to nitpick, the bezels at the bottom are very slightly thicker, but it doesn’t affect the phone’s functionality or use. 

Like its predecessor, the rear is also resistant against fingerprint smudging, and the button placements are all identical. Your power/lock key and volume rockers are to the right, and the bottom row of ports, card slots, and speaker grille are also very identical. Beyond the 0.4mm saved, the Vivo X60 Pro is similar to the X50 Pro in build and appearance. In general, we have no complaints about its physicality.

Display & Audio

The Vivo X60 Pro has a 6.56-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,376 x 1,080 pixels (FHD+). It also has a refresh rate of 120Hz. The panel quality is similar to the ASUS ZenFone 8 and Samsung Galaxy S21/21+ phones, but note that there are also true budget flagships that cost less such as the Xiaomi Mi 11 that offers a higher resolution AMOLED panel (1440p) and at the same refresh rate.

Having a lower resolution panel above 6.5 inches isn’t noticeable unless you have a 1440p phone of similar size at hand to compare. That said, the colours are astounding (expected for an AMOLED panel) and are well-calibrated out of the box. The bezels lining the display are uniform on all sides, and the middle notch for the front camera is barely noticeable during use. X60 Pro gets this right and attention to little details like that favour its premium design language. 

The single, bottom-firing speaker quality cuts close to mediocre, and it’s certainly unexpected for a flagship-lite device asking for S$1,199. Comparatively, it’s less impressive than the Mi 11 and ZenFone 8, and those two already pale next to the Oppo Find X3 Pro.

The audio is muddy. The lack of separation is reminiscent of single-side, in-ear headphones for driving from the early 2000s. Not having dual speakers plays against the quality X60 Pro wants to serve because it becomes evident that you only hear audio on one side of the device when you watch videos in landscape mode. Some phone makers would make the call speaker double up during media playback to provide stereo sound or a more balanced experience, but the X60 Pro doesn’t do that. For the first time in a while, we actually have to penalise a phone for its audio quality, especially for the price it commands. 

If you’re not big on built-in speakers, this flaw doesn’t affect your usage if you opt for wireless earbuds or headphones. 

UI & Features

Vivo X60 Pro comes with Android 11 cloaked under its proprietary Funtouch OS.

The UI leans towards stock Android, opting for a cleaner look that feels well-spaced and neatly aligned. That said, it still misses out on the minor details. Some elements are divorced from its overall design language - for example, the volume slider and brightness slider would still be stock Android’s dot-and-slider combo. They don’t quite match the chunky, white tabs in the Notifications menu. 

Also, the ‘dot’ representing current brightness uses a different icon when you go into Settings - as seen above, it's just a regular old dot at the Notifications pull-down menu, but it’s a tiny sun icon in Settings. These mismatches aren’t deal-breakers, but we certainly expected more polish for a phone competing in the four-figure price category.

A nice built-in utility app is iManager, where Vivo provides you with a snapshot of your apps installed, battery, network speed, storage use, alongside a host of one-tap optimisation features like Game Mode. 

Some of the other built-in apps pay a tiny homage to other more established versions - like the Compass app, which is clearly a clone of the iPhone’s, and a Likee app that’s basically a TikTok clone. 

There’s also at least one advertisement app pre-installed (the Vivo app, which basically brings you to its smartphone sales page). It can’t be uninstalled through normal means, but it’s not very intrusive since you can tuck it deep inside the App Drawer. The Likee app is much more repulsive- it also draws your attention with ad-like overlays and dialogue boxes that appear on top of anything else you may be up to. It’s very jarring and highly unwelcomed, but fortunately, it can be uninstalled.

If you’re a fan of FunTouch OS, you’ll surely enjoy how much neater the UI currently feels. Old but useful features, like displaying real-time network speed (under Settings > Display & Brightness > Status Bar), are still around.

Other features of the Vivo X60 Pro are its in-display fingerprint sensor, NFC support, Dual nano-SIM slots (with no microSD card tray), all work as intended and are must-haves for its premium positioning. 

Is the feature set perfect for a phone that’s up against budget flagship rivals? No - at least, not without IP-rated waterproofing, a feature also missing on the Xiaomi Mi 11, yet present on a Galaxy S21/S21+ and ZenFone 8.

Also, built-in ads and apps - really now, Vivo? For S$1,199?

Imaging Performance 

A selling point of the Vivo X60 Pro (and its other X60 devices) is the partnership with optics and imaging brand ZEISS. Vivo said that the ZEISS collaboration extends to “optical lenses, sensors, image processing, and other multi-modal features”, even though the brand was unclear on the exact ways ZEISS contributed to the X60 range’s imaging capabilities.

Vivo X60 Pro’s triple rear camera configuration consists of a 48MP main and two 13MP secondary shooters (telephoto with 2x optical zoom and ultra-wide with 120˚ FOV), while the front camera is rated 32MP.

Gimbal Stabilisation 2.0 

While it’s identical to the regular X60, the Pro version we're testing here gets Gimbal Stabilisation 2.0 that's built upon the existing Gimbal Camera System in the X50 Pro. The older gimbal provides three-axis stabilisation in the main camera, but Gimbal Stabilisation 2.0 offers two additional axes of stability to bring VIS five-axis stabilisation.

The enhanced system grants the user two stabilisation modes in videography - Standard Stabilisation and Ultra Stable. The latter mode locks your video recording quality at 1080p/60fps, but the stability it confers feels like a camera panning seen in a typical Marvel Cinematics Universe film. Here’s our sample test:-

Play

While Ultra Stable truly works, we’re unsure how it can translate into regular use for the average phone user. The previous Vivo phone’s gimbal stabilisation tech was already practical enough. Ultra Stable’s added stability makes your recording feel artificial, though it does lend a more professional sheen to the footage. 

That said, if you don’t have the X50 Pro, you’d definitely want to try the X60 Pro to understand why Vivo pushes the stabilisation feature so fiercely for this phone. If you’ve already tried or owned the X50 Pro with the gimbal camera, you’re not going to find it vastly different on the X60 Pro, save for the highly-situational Ultra Stable feature.

Play

For comparison, we tried the same exercise with an iPhone 12 Pro Max. You’ll realise that there are no visible differences between the sensor-shift stabilisation on the Apple phone (shot on default 720p60fps settings) compared to Vivo’s Ultra Stable Mode. That’s not to say Vivo or Apple isn’t fantastic, but it emphasises how the second-generation technology isn’t as unique as Vivo made it out to be. 

On to the camera test images!

Sample Images

If you can excuse the sudden foggy weather (timestamped so you know it was shot in very bright daylight), the X60 Pro's main shooter does a decent job at getting nice shots in. It's a little flat in colour when comparing it to other phones of its price range, but we'd happily accept a main camera of this quality.

The ultra-wide camera is serviceable too, and it's capable of correcting fish-eye distortion to a pleasant degree.

If you stick to its 2x optical zoom, the X60 Pro can also deliver quality images. However, it doesn't have a good digital compensation once you go beyond its optical zoom limits, like the 10x and 20x examples below. Sure, the gimbal helps, but the photos get grainier the further you venture.

2.5cm focusing distance is just too little to work with. That said, the macro images it can take are quite pleasant, save for a few hitches like getting it to focus right and the general digital treatment it adds to bring out details.

All in all, X60 Pro's imaging system is responsive, pleasant to use, and produces decent images. It's not something to write home about, but the cameras can offer the shots you want if you can tame the gimbal. We did feel like Vivo oversold ZEISS's involvement in its cameras, though.

Benchmark Performance

Inside the Vivo, X60 Pro is a “flagship lite” chipset, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870. It shares the same architecture that makes up the SD865+ (2020’s flagship processor for Android smartphones), but it’s clocked at even higher speeds. So if the specs hold true, the X60 Pro might outperform even SD865+ phones like the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE.

The choice of SD870 is also a marked improvement from the X60 Pro’s predecessor, which touted a mid-range chipset. So, even if X60 Pro isn’t a true blue SD888-tier flagship device, it’s still significantly better than before.

We’re definitely gonna put it up against this year’s true flagship phones if the X60 Pro wants to be seen as a high-end phone so badly. Of course, we’ll also compare it against last year’s mid-range devices too. 

JetStream 2.0

JetStream 2 combines a variety of JavaScript and Web Assembly benchmarks, including benchmarks that came before, like SunSpider and Octane. It primarily tests for a system’s and browser’s ability in delivering a good web experience. It runs a total of 64 subtests, each weighted equally, with multiple iterations, and takes the geometric mean to compute the overall score.

AnTuTu 

Note: As of 9th March 2020, all AnTuTu benchmarks were removed from the Google Play Store. This move likely arose from Google's attempts to relieve the Play Store of apps that violate their policies. AnTuTu is working with Google to restore their app listing. For this review, we used the APK file that was available on AnTuTu's website.

AnTuTu is an all-in-one benchmark that tests CPU, GPU, memory, and storage. The CPU benchmark evaluates both integer and floating-point performance, while the GPU tests assess 2D and 3D performance, the memory test measures available memory bandwidth and latency, and the storage tests gauge the read and write speeds of a device's flash memory.

Geekbench 5

Geekbench CPU is a cross-platform processor benchmark that tests both single-core and multi-core performance with workloads that simulate real-world usage. Geekbench 5 scores are calibrated against a baseline score of 1000, which represents an Intel Core i3-8100.

3DMark Sling Shot Extreme

3DMark Sling Shot is an advanced 3D graphics benchmark that tests the full range of OpenGL ES 3.1 and ES 3.0 API features, including multiple render targets, instanced rendering, uniform buffers and transform feedback. The test also includes impressive volumetric lighting and post-processing effects. The test's Unlimited mode ignores screen resolutions.

We’re also collecting scores with 3DMark’s new benchmark, Wild Life. Below are the test’s Unlimited Mode scores.

Wild Life was released after we’ve returned the X50 Pro and Galaxy S20 FE review units, so no scores were recorded for these devices. We’ll continue building up our score database as more phones roll in.

Performance Benchmark Remarks

There’s likely some performance manipulation going on with the X60 Pro because it reports excessively high AnTuTu scores (even though it’s consistent). That said, the handset can definitely hold its own against other true flagships, and our user experience wasn’t negatively affected - if we look beyond its built-in adware. 

Battery life

Our standard battery test for mobile phones has the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email

By default, X60 Pro has aggressive battery saving features enabled where every app is subject to Smart Control. It reads your usage habits and decides whether the app should run in the background. Also, there’s Battery Saver active when it’s not plugged in - once you go below 90%, it disables most background processes, restricts vibration, and disables 5G. So it’s worth a visit to Settings > Battery and giving your phone’s power management features a once-over before you start using it in earnest. 

The Vivo X60 Pro was able to clock in 917 minutes of uptime with its 4,200mAh battery. That’s by far the longest uptime in our test we’ve seen this year, and this is after we’ve disabled its battery-saving features to ensure no interruptions occur during our benchmarking.

The long uptime was partly expected given its relatively lower performance next to SD888 phones. In comparison, the SD865+ based Galaxy S20 FE (with its 4,500mAh battery) was 152 minutes shy. Thus, it looks like both Vivo and Qualcomm managed to do something amazing with the Snapdragon 870’s battery efficiency. However, further testing is needed with other SD870 phones to know if it’s a consistent trait with this chipset. 

The Vivo X60 Pro also has 33W FlashCharge fast-charging via its proprietary adapter provided in the box. The phone took 30 minutes to charge from 0% to 50% and 70 minutes to charge from 0% to 100% with that adapter. 

Conclusion

Value notwithstanding, the Vivo X60 Pro almost feels like a decent phone for everyday use. It offers an intuitive user experience, a sleek body, a pleasant display panel, a reasonably decent set of cameras, and long battery life. It does several things well for a phone of its calibre (premium mid-range, flagship-lite, whatever you call it), but it does so by trading its competitive advantages away.

For one, the improved gimbal camera doesn’t translate into a massive boon for photo-taking (even less so if you already own the X50 Pro or have a steady pair of hands). The stabilisation works well, but it will not turn heads because that already happened with the Vivo X50 Pro. Ultra Stable feature is more of a showcase of what Vivo can do, but that level of stability isn’t necessary for daily use. With advances in OIS and EIS techniques thanks to AI, the lead that a physical built-in gimbal once had is also eroding, as we've seen what an iPhone can accomplish.

The phone itself has a pleasant UI, which is refreshing among the many reskinned Androids we’ve laid hands on. But, Vivo undid that goodwill by having too many unneeded ads and pre-installed apps, as laid out in our Features section.

It hosts current-generation features like NFC and an in-display fingerprint sensor, but these are also in budget flagship phones that the X60 Pro is up against. Between its similarly-priced rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S21, ASUS ZenFone 8, and Xiaomi Mi 11, these alternatives at least had either 1440p or IP-rated waterproofing to bump up their value proposition.

Vivo X60 Pro’s choice of having neither was a little too much to bear, and that’s with our willingness to overlook how you’re not getting a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 in the X60 Pro either. 

The audio quality also did no favours to the Vivo phone. If anything, medium-to-heavy users of music and videos would likely consider another device based on this alone. 

That leaves us with its excellent form factor and amazing battery life. Its longevity may satisfy some folks, but buyers would also need to consider if they can say no to the ASUS ZenFone 8’s imaging quality, or the 1440p display on Xiaomi Mi 11, or perhaps the Samsung Galaxy S21’s robust ecosystem and UI polish. These alternatives are true flagship phones too.

The vibrant competition Vivo faces give us pause before recommending it as a top-of-mind purchase. Unfortunately, this choice dilemma results in the X60 Pro losing a little of its lustre, despite the phone being relatively well put together.

Really, if you’re able to fork out close to S$1,200, there are so many other true flagships with other perks to consider, even before you look at this pretty phone. Even the S$999 non-Pro based Vivo X60 that loses the gimbal stabilisation feature is still a hard choice against the ASUS and Xiaomi options.

So let's take a look at the Vivo X60 series' strong suit. At the $1,000 price point, Vivo's options excel in its attention to design, handling and extreme battery life. Also, if you're a Vivo fan and this is a logical upgrade for you, hop over to their official Shopee e-store to get one.