Vivo X300 Review: Pretty, Petite and Powerful

The smartphone realm has become quite saturated and boring these days, in all honesty. Hence, when I saw a compact flagship like the Vivo X300 tick all the boxes and be a green forest on paper, I was instantly interested. As always, the phone ended up in my lap two weeks ahead of launch and after taking it out for a spin, here’s what I think about Vivo’s new mini wonderboy.

Vivo X300 Unboxing

The brand doesn’t hold back here and offers pretty much everything you need right in the Vivo X300 box to get started. Here’s a quick rundown:

With that out of the way, here’s a quick rundown of the Vivo X300 specs for your reference before we get into the review:

Vivo X300 Design and Build

I have with me the Vivo X300 Summit Red colour option, and it’s such a stunner, with the back panel enveloped in that dark royal red hue. In low light, this could be mistaken for brown easily. It gets even better as you lift it and run your fingers through that matted-out back panel, which gives off this satisfying velvety feel.

The metal frame adds this heft to the already premium build quality and at 190 grams, it’s not a phone you can let go of easily. If you ask me, this is the best feeling phone of 2025. The buttons themselves are nicely spaced out, and my thumb never had a tough time reaching the volume rockers and power button during one-handed usage.

I also liked how my fingers found some grip at the bottom edge of that camera module. I noticed how the camera module ring didn’t leave any space for dust and grime to collect. Instead, it blends into the back panel nicely and also keeps the phone steady on a desk.

My only complaint? The Vivo X300 is such a comfortable phone to hold and operate that you may find yourself checking your pockets to see if you’ve left it behind. Yes, that’s happened to me.

Vivo X300 Display Quality

The Vivo X300’s display immediately feels like a flagship experience. Colours are vivid yet natural and there’s excellent contrast throughout, making everything from photos to streaming content pop.

I binge-watched Stranger Things Season 5 religiously on the Vivo X300, and my pinky never got tired of holding the phone for two or so hours every day. The reds in the show look quite intense, and those blacks are as deep as my dark room at night, blending nicely into the background.

The brightness, particularly, is where the X300 knocks it out of the park. Even outdoors under harsh sunlight, the visibility doesn’t falter one bit and using our Luxmeter, I recorded a very impressive 2,600 nits of HBM.

Not to mention that Vivo didn’t hold back on the audio output either, and there are dual stereo speakers here. However, it's not the loudest in the room and does muffle the dialogue at times. The sound separation is also off and required me to take to my earbuds. 

Vivo X300 Performance Tested

Under the hood, the Vivo X300 runs on MediaTek’s Snapdragon 8 Gen Elite Gen 5 equivalent, the Dimensity 9500 chipset. The results are understandably impressive across the board, and that reflects in these synthetic benchmarks:

The phone blows past day-to-day usage and no matter how many apps I had left running in the background or uncountable tabs collecting dust in Chrome, the phone never had trouble handling it all. Everything is super snappy, and you’re constantly reminded that you’re using a true flagship.

Gaming is second nature to the X300 as well, and I played Genshin Impact, CoD Mobile and a couple of other games in those frame rate-favouring settings and never noticed any micro lags or stutters even. The thermal management is surprisingly good for a phone this compact and even after an hour or so of gaming in a non-AC room, the phone barely shot beyond 38°C.

Vivo X300 Software and Updates

Using the Vivo X300 with OriginOS 6 feels like a big step forward compared to older Vivo skins. The interface is clean and modern, with layered depth and subtle animation fine-tunings that make navigation feel fluid.

I noticed how Vivo’s new "Dynamic Glow" and translucent colour system give the UI a more polished look. Menus and icons feel lighter, and the overall design has a sense of clarity that matches the premium hardware.

Some other OriginOS 6 features, like Origin Island and Flip Cards lock screen, made the experience all the more amazing. Even notifications are well-organised now and it all feels genuinely useful than gimmicky.

One thing that I did find annoying were the ad notifications I kept getting on the phone, thanks-no-thanks to the V App Store. Even when installing an app, you see these app recommendations on the installer screen, and I have accidentally installed an app or two because of this. That disrupts the premium software experience quite a bit. 

On the update side, Vivo promises five years of major OS updates and seven years of security patches for the X300. Knowing that OriginOS 6 will continue to evolve with updates adds confidence that the Vivo X300 won’t feel outdated anytime soon.

Vivo X300 Camera Tested

The Vivo X300 cameras are far from normal and did get me into the bad habit of expecting too much from a phone’s camera. In daylight, the shots come out sharp and balanced, with colours that look true-to-life rather than overly boosted.

I found myself trusting the phone to capture scenes as they actually appeared, whether it was a busy street or a flock of birds hauntingly circling humans on a boat. Dynamic range is phenomenal here, and those shadows retain details so well.

Whether it was the main camera, ultrawide or telephoto, these results were consistent throughout. Surprisingly, even the colour reproduction was similar across the lenses, thereby reducing the colour disparity significantly. The telephoto also captures some solid details, and you'll definitely gasp at the clarity upon zooming in.

Low-light performance was another pleasant surprise. Night shots look clean and detailed without heavy smudging or aggressive noise reduction. Light sources are also handled very well and they don't bleed into the picture.

Portraits benefit from Vivo’s Zeiss partnership, and there are some natural-looking bokeh styles with very pleasing subject-background separation. Selfies also come out great, and that edge detection with top-tier background mapping is off the charts.

Video recording is also very smooth, stable and made it easy to capture clips without worrying about my ageing, shaky hands.

Vivo X300 Battery and Charging

Vivo has managed to fit a large battery into the X300’s slim frame and the results speak for themselves. In everyday usage, the phone comfortably lasts through a full day of mixed usage, from browsing and messaging to photography and some gaming. In terms of screen-on-time, the phone delivered around 7 hours of usage.

The fast-charging speeds are equally impressive, with the Vivo X300 reaching up to 50% in under 20 minutes and fully charging in about 40 minutes.

Bottom line: Should you buy the Vivo X300?

At Rs 74,999, the Vivo X300 isn’t cheap, but it’s the most complete baseline flagship yet. With a stunning display on a premium body, performance for the ages, cameras that can make any flagship bow in shame and a battery that doesn’t know how to quit, the Vivo X300 has set a new bar for flagships.

If that’s what you’re looking for, the Vivo X300 is worth every rupee and renders the Oppo Find X9 instantly obsolete. It most certainly puts the Galaxy S25 to shame in every regard as well and with the latest iPhone 17 price hike report, the X300 is just too enticing a purchase. However, if the compact form doesn't appeal to you, and you need more meaningful real estate, the iQOO 15 is a great phone to consider in the segment.