The Vivo V27 Pro has officially been unveiled in India alongside the vanilla Vivo V27. However, our focus is on the top-end Vivo V27 Pro, which succeeds last year’s V25 Pro. The Vivo V27 Pro sits one level below the company’s flagship X series. With the addition of the V27 Pro to the company’s line-up, Vivo hopes to deliver a worthy successor to the V25 Pro and a solid addition to India’s premium mid-range market. But does it succeed in doing so? In this quick hands-on review, we will look at all aspects of the Vivo V27 Pro and see if it has the potential to shake up the competition in the mid-range.
2/15
But first let’s start with pricing. The Vivo V27 Pro price in India starts from Rs 37,999 for the 8GB/128GB model. Additionally, the phone is also offered in 8GB/256GB and 12GB/256GB variant that will set you back Rs 39,999 and Rs 42,999, respectively. The Vivo V27 Pro features a slight price hike from the Vivo V25 Pro, but is it worth it?
3/15
In terms of the phone’s design, I’d have to say that the V27 Pro is definitely worth it. The phone has a sleek design with a curved screen and a colour changing glass back panel, similar to what we’ve seen on the Vivo V25 Pro. The Vivo V27 Pro comes in Magic Blue and Noble Black colour options, our model arrived in the Magic Blue finish. We’ll get more into the mechanics of the colour changing panel in our full Vivo V27 Pro review. For now, you can feel comfortable knowing the phone looks elegant and stylish.
4/15
On the front, the curved AMOLED display is protected by Gorilla Glass . The not-so premium part of the phone is the plastic frame, which still looks good nonetheless given its gloss finish. The camera island on the back of the Vivo V27 Pro is quite sizeable and houses three camera lenses and a circular LED flash that Vivo calls the Aura Light. The phone has the standard ports and buttons, with a SIM tray, USB-C port and speaker grille at the bottom, while the power and volume buttons sit on the right. Overall, the Vivo V27 Pro gets an ‘A’ for its approach to design, although the build quality does leave a little to be desired.
When it comes to the display, Vivo has equipped the V27 Pro with a 6.78-inch FHD+ Curved AMOLED panel. The screen features a 120Hz refresh rate that can be set on 60Hz, 120Hz, or on Auto (Smart Switch), while the touch sampling rate maxes out at 240Hz. The panel supports Widevine L1 certification and HDR10+ for watching content in high definition. The display boasts good viewing angles and vibrant colours. The screen has extremely thin bezels, giving you maximum screen real estate. The screen boasts a peak brightness of 1,300 nits and is easily visible in bright sunlight. Overall, the display here isn’t the best in its class but is quite good, while we have to give it extra points for the curvature.
6/15
The biggest upgrade over the V25 Pro is the chipset on the V27 Pro. Vivo uses a 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 8200 SoC paired with up to 12GB of the latest LPDDR5X RAM. The phone also comes with 128GB and 256GB of UFS 3.1 storage. The Vivo V27 Pro also uses the Mali-G610 MC6, which rivals the Adreno 730 GPU on the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. This means that the Vivo V27 Pro can handle any game you throw at it on high graphics. We tested Call of Duty Mobile and Apex Legends Mobile, both of which ran smooth on ‘Very High’ graphics with no heating issues after 40 minutes of continuous gaming. In Geekbench 6, the chip managed a single-core score of 1199 points and a multi-core score of 3462 points. Additionally, the phone also managed an overall AnTuTu score of 841,741 points. Overall, performance here rivals that of the phones with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip.
7/15
For optics, the Vivo V27 Pro gets a triple-camera setup on the back with a 50 MP Sony IMX766V sensor at the helm with OIS. The main camera is paired with an 8 MP ultrawide unit and a 2 MP macro lens. Lastly, there’s a 50 MP selfie camera up front. On the back, Vivo has replaced the traditional LED flash with a ring-shaped Aura LED light. Here are some real-world samples.
8/15
In daylight, the main camera captures a ton of detail and was on point with colour accuracy.
The ultrawide keeps pace with the main camera in daylight, offering good consistency but generates softer and less detailed images.
10/15
In low light, night mode tends to brighten images and clean up noise. Shots appeared detailed with good exposure and dynamic range.
11/15
On the front, the 50 MP selfie camera captures sharp and detailed images in daylight. There’s also a 50 MP mode for the front camera, although we didn’t notice any major difference from the default 12.5 MP shots.
12/15
The Vivo V27 Pro features a 4,600 mAh battery, which is smaller than the standard 5,000 mAh cell we see on most smartphones in the range. However, that 4,600 mAh battery was more than sufficient to get through an entire day of usage on a single charge. You can get through a full day with a fair bit of gaming, streaming content, and browsing social media on a single charge. And while the 66W fast charging support may not be the fastest in the segment, it is respectable and reliable, fully juicing up the phone in less than an hour.
13/15
The Vivo V27 Pro runs Android 13-based FunTouch OS 13 out of the box. Despite some bloatware, the software experience on the V27 Pro is well-above average. There are a ton of customisations and navigation feels smooth and fluid. There’s a dedicated Theme app and iManager app with various tools. Another standout feature is the horizontal screen functionality. We will dive more into the software in our full Vivo V27 Pro review. But for now, my experience with the UI was generally positive.
14/15
Our first impression of the Vivo V27 Pro has been generally positive. In our brief experience with the device, it is safe to say that the V27 Pro is a worthy successor to last year’s’ V25 Pro. Vivo has made several upgrades on the camera, performance, and software fronts. The new MediaTek chip borders on flagship-killer performance, while the new 50 MP Sony sensor takes excellent shots during the day and in low light. And despite its improvements, the V27 Pro retains its sleek design and vibrant curved display.
15/15
Even the battery and charging support are quite reliable. We would have preferred a higher resolution ultrawide camera as opposed to the combination of two low-res sensors for macro and ultrawide shots. We’ll reserve our final judgement on camera performance and software capability in our full Vivo V27 Pro review. However, for now, it is safe to say that the improvements here have taken the Vivo V27 Pro to the top of the premium mid-range segment, making it one of the best smartphones under Rs 40,000 in India.
