The Vivo V27 Pro looks very premium and there are a few quirky features working for it like the colour changing design and a wedding mode for the camera. The smartphone is also quite powerful, showing one of the highest scores in its segment in all the benchmark tests we threw its way. The Vivo V27 Pro is, without a doubt, a worthy successor of the V25 Pro and the V23 Pro before it.
Vivo has come up with yet another mid-range smartphone with a curved display and a colour-changing back panel. The Vivo V27 Pro has been launched as the successor to the Vivo V25 Pro, with several improvements like a new chip, a more lightweight design, along with several new camera features. The Vivo V27 Pro has been launched at a price of Rs 37,999 onwards in India, which places the smartphone in the premium mid-range segment. However, does the Vivo V27 Pro offer enough to justify the price? Let’s find out.
Starting with the design, the Vivo V27 Pro shares a lot with its predecessor, the Vivo V25 Pro. The smartphone has a curved display, along with a frosted glass back, which changes colours when exposed to sunlight. On the back panel, we also see a new camera module design, which is a bit of a throwback to the Vivo V23 Pro that was launched back in 2021. The Vivo V27 Pro’s camera module also has a new ring-shaped LED flash, which is a new addition. For our review, we got the Magic Blue colour, which changes into a shade of dark blue when exposed to sunlight.
Up front, things are similar to the predecessors. The Vivo V27 Pro has a curved 6.78-inch hole-punch display. The front orientation is on the taller side, and the Vivo V27 Pro doesn’t feel too big in your hands, which is good. The smartphone is also lightweight, weighing just about 182 grams, making it easier to hold and use for a prolonged period of time.
Overall, this is a tried-and-tested design approach from Vivo, and the V27 Pro takes a lot from its predecessors in terms of design. This time around, we see a new camera module and a different chassis, as compared to last year’s Vivo V25 Pro.
Coming to display, the Vivo V27 Pro uses a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with an FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. The display is very similar to what we have seen on other Vivo mid-range smartphones. Given that this is an AMOLED display, the colour accuracy is good and the display feels quite premium while watching videos and movies.
The RGB balance seems a bit on the cooler side on this display, but the colours remain accurate. We get three colour profiles – Standard, Pro, and Bright. Here, Standard is the default, which is somewhere in the middle of saturated and true-to-life colours. Pro is more true-to-life, and bright is more towards the saturated side. The display looks and feels quite premium in most scenarios. It is also sharp, meaning there are no rough edges or any signs of pixelation.
We also get a 120Hz refresh rate, so this is also a very responsive display. Swiping through UI, opening and closing apps, everything feels snappy and slick on this display. We can also adjust the refresh rate to 60Hz for saving battery, and there is also a “Smart Switch” mode, where the display adjusts its refresh rate according to the content on screen.
Coming to performance, this time around Vivo’s V-series mid-ranger comes with specifications that match the smartphone’s price. We get a 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 8200 SoC paired with up to 12GB LPDDR5 RAM. The performance jump is significant, as compared to the predecessor. The Vivo V27 Pro showed good numbers in all the benchmarks we ran on the device, coming close to (and even beating in some tests) one of the most powerful mid-ranger in the market currently, the iQOO Neo 7.
On AnTuTu, the Vivo V27 Pro scored 848939 points, which is one of the highest on any mid-range Android device we have tested in the past year. On Geekbench, the Vivo V27 Pro beat its gaming-centric cousin in the single-core test, the iQOO Neo 7, scoring 1220 points, while in the multi-core test, the Vivo V27 Pro scored 3695. On PC Mark, another CPU-based benchmark, the Vivo V27 Pro scored 10,831 points, which is also a very good score for a mid-range Android device.
In GPU-based benchmarks, the Vivo V27 Pro actually beats the iQOO Neo 7 according to our records. The smartphone scored 6,616 points on 3D Mark, which is higher than the iQOO Neo 7’s 6591 score. Further, in GFXBench testing, the Vivo V27 Pro again showed higher numbers, except for one test. In the Car Chase and Manhattan 3.1 tests on the GFXBench benchmark, the Vivo V27 Pro scored 3,323 points and 6,194 points, respectively, while in Aztec Ruins, the smartphone lagged behind the iQOO Neo 7 marginally, scoring 2875 points as against the 2878 points for the iQOO.
In the storage speed tests also, the Vivo V27 Pro showed good numbers, but wasn’t the fastest, like we saw in several CPU and GPU-based tests. The smartphone’s UFS 3.1 storage showed a sequential read speed of 1546.81 and a random read speed of 325.31. Further, the sequential write speed on this UFS 3.1 storage came out to be 973, while the random write speed turned out to be 292.12.
Coming to gaming, here also the Vivo V27 Pro surprised us with its performance. The smartphone gave a constant 60FPS frame rate with a 100 percent stability in Call of Duty: Mobile, while on Asphalt 9, the Vivo V27 Pro put out a 57FPS frame rate with a stability of 95 percent. While the numbers on Asphalt aren’t the best out there, this is brilliant gaming performance for a device not meant to be performance or gaming-centric.
Apart from benchmarks also, the gaming experience on the Vivo V27 Pro is as good as it gets on a mid-range device. The smartphone runs all games on full settings and there are no lags or frame drops even during long gaming sessions. Very impressive. The Vivo V27 Pro doesn’t even heat up as much, which is good for a smartphone that is not made with gaming in mind.
Coming to battery, the backup on the Vivo V27 Pro is also pretty good. During my usage, the Vivo V27 Pro easily gave me over 7 hours of on-screen time, which basically means more than 1.5 days of usage. Good for any smartphone of today. In our battery tests also, the Vivo V27 Pro fared well.
The Vivo V27 Pro drained only 3 percent battery during a 15-minute session of Call of Duty: Mobile. Watching YouTube videos for 30 minutes on the highest-possible resolution also drained just about 3 percent of the smartphone’s battery. Further, GPS Navigation for 1 hour, however, drained 8 percent of the smartphone’s battery.
Apart from the good battery backup, we also get 66W fast charging, which charged the Vivo V27 Pro from 0 to 100 percent in about 46 minutes, according to our test.
Coming to cameras, this is where Vivo has the biggest focus. The Vivo V27 Pro uses a 50-megapixel primary shooter, an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens, and a 2-megapixel macro shooter. This time around, Vivo has also given a very India-centric camera feature, which is a wedding mode, placed within the portrait mode of the smartphone.
The camera on the Vivo V27 Pro is pretty good. The images out of the main shooter are sharp and nicely detailed. We get a primary Sony IMX766 shooter with optical image stabilisation. This shooter clicks nice images in ideal lighting conditions, where the colours and dynamic range on the photos is nice, and the images don’t normally lose detail. The 50MP primary shooter also adds a bit of depth on its own, so that’s a good thing.
In low light conditions, the camera captures a lot of light from any source it can find. Now, while this brings out the light and colours in images in the dark, it also adds to some lens flare and the light seems blown-up in many scenarios. However, the colours and details in low light images are good.
One thing that Vivo has improved this time around is that the colours are consistent in both normal and ultra-wide images from this camera. The images in ultra-wide, however, aren’t as detailed or sharp as the ones from the main shooter.
Coming to the portrait mode, this is probably my favourite camera feature on the Vivo V27 Pro. The portraits on the Vivo V27 Pro are brilliant. The edge detection is on-point, and the background blur is also very good. The portraits look very much like shots from a DSLR camera, and you can also adjust the background blur on images after clicking them. The portrait mode is also where the much-hyped wedding mode is also present. In the wedding mode, we get three colour profiles, which adjust the colours depending on the lighting. In all three colour profiles, the photos are very beautiful. The camera detects edges perfectly, and the colours in all three profiles have their own traits working for them. Here are a few samples in wedding mode, neither of which were clicked in a wedding.
So that was our review of the Vivo V27 Pro. The smartphone looks very premium and there are a few quirky features working for it like the colour changing design and a wedding mode for the camera. The smartphone is also quite powerful, showing one of the highest scores in its segment in all the benchmark tests we threw its way. The Vivo V27 Pro is, without a doubt, a worthy successor of the V25 Pro and the V23 Pro before it.
However, with a Rs 37,999 starting price, the Vivo V27 Pro competes with the likes of the OnePlus 11R, Moto Edge Fusion, Samsung Galaxy A73 and the Realme GT2, which are more common among the online audience. The Vivo V27 Pro, on the other hand, is more of a camera or design-centric offering, which doesn’t appeal much to those who are looking for the best performance for their money. However, given Vivo’s massive offline sales channel, the colour-changing will persuade a lot of people.