Vivo X200 Ultra Review: Impractical design, but an incredible camera

Phone Arena

22-05-2025

The Vivo X200 Ultra is not just any camera phone. Just look at it — there is just no way you can mistake it for anything else! It's got a giant camera bump that sticks out more than ever before, so much so that everyone who picked it up noticed that right away.
What's hiding in that massive bump is Vivo's suggestion for a new take on the smartphone camera system. Instead of compromising with the quality of the ultra-wide camera, why not make it as good as the main camera? And speaking of the main camera, why is it 24mm on most flagships? The way people perceive a picture is never that wide and when taking landscapes, photographers usually resort to wider lenses. So why not use a 35mm lens for the main camera?
All of these decisions result in a unique phone, which now claims the title for the ultimate mobile camera of 2025.
Oh, and one more thing! This Vivo has the best battery life of any phone we have tested in the last two years. Excited?
Well so were we, but because of its slightly weird design, the Vivo X200 Ultra is definitely not a phone for everyone, and Vivo seems to know it — it will, sadly, not be releasing it in Western markets. But it remains an incredibly interesting device, so let's take a closer look.
The Vivo X200 Ultra excels in areas like camera and charging, but lags a bit in the desing and update departments. What's clear is that it raises the camera bar from the already high one set with the Vivo X200 Pro.
Table of Contents: Let's start with an overview of the Vivo X200 Ultra specs:
(Image by PhoneArena) The Vivo X200 Ultra is defined by its gigantic camera bump. We are used to camera phones out of China having these supersized camera islands on the back, but this is something else. We measured that the camera bump itself is actually thicker than the Galaxy S25 Edge! It's something.
The camera bump is GIANT (Image by PhoneArena)
Because of that, the whole phone is very top-heavy, which makes it a bit weird to hold and handle. Because of this imbalanced weight, I almost dropped it on a few occasions.
It's also a bit heavier than the Vivo X200 Pro model, nearing 230 grams, but admittedly, the weight is close to that of other big phones, it's the way it's distributed that bothers me more.
A side view (Image by PhoneArena)
For all else, it feels premium and solidly put together. You have flat sides and a mostly flat screen with a very slightly taper.
One stand-out design element is the camera shutter button, placed similarly as the Camera Control on iPhones. And yes, it also has the same touch sensitivity, so you can swipe on it to zoom in and out.
Vivo includes a charging brick, a charging cable, and a case, and we have zero complaints about that. The charger is a super fast 90W at that (keep in mind that it uses proprietary technology, so don't expect to use just any Anker USB-C PD charger to get those speeds).
A big and bright screen (Image by PhoneArena)
With a 6.8-inch screen, this is definitely a big canvas, on par with your Galaxy S25 Ultras and Pixel 9 Pro XLs.
On our display lab tests, we see a slight improvement in the max brightness, so the X200 Ultra gets a bit brighter than the X200 Pro, but unfortunately the minimum brightness does not get dim enough for comfortable bedtime use and that's something we'd like to see improved.
For biometrics, you get an optical fingerprint reader embedded in the screen that's fast and accurate. We've had no issues with it.
Vivo is a camera innovator (Image by PhoneArena)
While most modern phones feature a main camera with wide field of view (usually around 23mm to 24mm), the Vivo X200 Ultra goes a completely different route with a 35mm main camera.
35mm is a great focal length for street photography and environmental portraits, but it is not wide enough for landscapes, hence the reason why very few phone makers have actually adopted it.
You have a dedicated camera button (Image by PhoneArena)
So... how do you take photos of landscapes on the X200 Ultra? Well, you have a much larger and more capable than usual ultra-wide camera. In fact, the ultra-wide camera sensor is as big as the main one (roughly 1/1.3"). We've never seen another phone with such a powerful ultra-wide lens, so that's definitely unusual. It's a 14mm lens, but with a quick tap, you can also capture 28mm images, which is much closer to that wide perspective you need for landscape shots. Finally, the third rear camera seems to be the same one as on the X200 Pro, a 200MP camera with a 3.7X zoom and f/2.7 aperture. Plus, it can focus really close, allowing for some truly astounding macro shots.
The first thing you have to decide on before starting to take pictures with any Vivo phone is the color mode. The phone defaults to Vivo's Vivid mode, which is what we've also used for the sample photos below.
However, colors with this mode are vivid indeed (we are talkign much more vivide than a Galaxy!) and if you want more realistic colors, you should definitely take photos in the Zeiss color mode.
3.7X
10X
With a 3.7X telephoto camera (85mm in case you get lost in the numbers), the zoom quality on the X200 Ultra has not changed much from the Vivo X200 Pro. Some may be disappointed by the lack of new hardware, but let us remind you that the X200 Pro had one of the most powerful zoom cameras we've ever tested, and we have the same quality with the Ultra.
In other words, this is still absolutely a top-notch zoom camera.
1.5x
2.2x
3.7x
5.9x
One place where we don't miss a 24mm perspective is for portraits. Many would argue that actually 35mm is the perfect focal lengths for environmental portraits. You then also have a 2.2x mode, 3.7x and 5.9x, and all of those are very useful for portraiture. My favorite lens is the 3.7X (85mm) one, which gives you a nearly 3D effect when you walk further back from your subject.
And indeed, the quality we get is great and the perspective feels right. Look closer and you would notice that the software is able to pick up individual strands of hair and separate them from the background with great precision.
One word of warning: notice the aggressively saturated colors from the Vivid color profile in the above images. We really wish we took those portraits using the neutral Zeiss color mode.
Vivo has its usual bokeh simulations too, which are fun (you can pick between various bokeh ball shapes).
At its widest 14mm mode, the ultra-wide camera captures excellent photos with little distortion and an excellent amount of detail. This is indeed one of the best ultra-wide cameras we have tested so far. During the day, the advantage is noticeable, but you really notice its big advantage in low light when its able to capture a lot more light than competitors.
We had our doubts about using sensor crop for most of our photos (to match the perspective of a traditional smartphone main camera), but when we actually looked at the photos, the quality is really hard to distinguish from a native lens.
Detail is excellent, there are no changes to the color science and especially during daytime you won't encounter a drop in quality.
Selfies also look nice on the Vivo, with a good amount of detail and pleasing skin tones. Video Quality
While Vivo mostly manages to go around the 35mm conundrum with a crop from the ultra-wide camera, this is not the case for video.
And you can easily see that in the footage. We bet most folks would still need that wider perspective for most of their videos and 35mm would usually be a bit too zoomed in.
That's why most videos recorded on the X200 Ultra will use the ultra-wide camera and if you try to match the standard 24mm perspective on the X200 Ultra, your footage ends up looking very noisy and details drops quite a bit. Switching to the main 35mm lens fixes that, but then your perpsective is too tight.
Overall, I think video recording is the biggest issue we encounter when faced with the 35mm lens question, and Vivo does not convince us it has any good solutions for that.
The Snapdragon 8 Elite is a familiar chip and it does not disappoint (Image by PhoneArena)
While the X200 Pro launched with a MediaTek chipset, the X200 Ultra switches to the flagship Snapdragon 8 Ultra.
Our unit also has 16GB of RAM, which definitely helps with multitasking and AI future-proofing the phone.
GPU Performance
The GPU scores, however, are interesting. We see that the X200 Ultra handles itslef better under stress as its performance after 20 minutes of heavy-duty gaming is nearly 10% better than the Galaxy S25 Ultra . Vivo X200 Ultra Software
Origin OS has a few neat tricks up its sleever (Image by PhoneArena)
The Vivo X200 Ultra runs on Origin OS which is a very interesting take on Android and it has lots of cool additions that you don't have on stock Android.
We would say that it's among our favorite Android skins. For example, it's nice how you can drag and drop files and images to a separate vault and then easily drop them as an email attachment, or quickly share them with someone.
In terms of software support, we expect four years of OS upgrades and a few more years of security updates, which is a standard among Chinese phone makers, but not as good as the seven years of OS upgrades you get from Samsung and Google. With a 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery and careful system-wide optimizations, the X200 Ultra surpasses expectations and shows mainstream phones that you can innovate here as well. On our lightest web browsing test the X200 Ultra scores exactly 22 hours, beating most rivals except for the iPhone 16 Pro Max, which lasted some 40 minutes longer.
But then for YouTube video streaming, the Vivo X200 Ultra lasts an insane 13 hours and 41 minutes. The already excellent iPhone 16 Pro Max scores "merely" 10 hours and a half on the same test and the Galaxy S25 Ultra lasts for less than 9 hours. The Vivo gets nearly 50% longer battery life than the Galaxy!
You also have wireless charging support with 30W speeds, but you need to use a proprietary Vivo charger to get the full speed.
You get very good audio quality via the loudspeakers on the X200 Ultra. They get quite loud and you get some depth to lows, which is always appreciated on a smartphone.
As for haptics, they are also very good with a nice, tight feedback, so no complaints on that either.
The Vivo X200 Ultra is an extraordinary camera phone, but with very limited availability (Image by PhoneArena)
Well, you cannot buy the Vivo in most Western markets, so the question is not really relevant here. But the Vivo X200 Ultra is clearly an incredible camera phone.
The clever idea of a 35mm main lens and a much better ultra-wide camera brings lots of benefits and results in fantastic images.
However, that gigantic camera bump is not only an eye sore — it's a serious design flaw and one that many people won't be able to forgive. As for my personal conclusion, well, this will not become my daily driver for long, but I'm taking this phone on my next trip to Italy. It's a really exciting camera and would make for a great second phone, if you have that luxury.