Even though the official launch of Vivo V40 5G was quite recent, the phone blew everyone's expectations out of the water quickly due to its camera prowess. For a two-lens shooter, its camera system is equipped with ZEISS optics lens technology. Plus, with a starting price of RM 1,999, this sets the model as a mere mid-range smartphone but with high-end camera quality.
Here's our experience on the Vivo V40 5G.
Editor
Jodee Tan chevron_right
Table of Contents
ProductNation Reviews
- Design & Build: More Elegant Than I Expected
At first glance, this is a really sleek, slim and elegant looking smartphone. Vivo V40 5G's body is apparently made of a glass front, plastic frame and glass back, according to the brand. It's also branded with IP68 and IP69 ratings.
For us, the back felt like a semi-matte metal material, and feels smooth as well as premium to the touch. Moreover, below the phone is the double-speaker unit and one USB C port.
Almost spanning a size of 7 inch, the phone still didnt feel too massive for small hands like mine, probably due to the fact that it weighs just 190g! Officially, it has the dimension of 164.2 x 75 x 7.6 mm.
Another thing that I was, as always, not too keen on is how the camera module was set. To be frank, I am not a fan of protruding cameras on the back (whether it's Apple or Samsung, everyone's the same). It's the same here for Vivo V40 and I feel that the only way to protect the camera is to use Vivo's Official V40 5G's phone cover.
I will give it to Vivo for blessing the V40 5G with a very elegant and pretty purple cover.
- Display: Shiny Enough
The screen size is 6.7 inch, and rocks an AMOLED panel with HDR10+ and 120Hz visual support. Brightness-wise, it can achieve 4500 nits (peak). In my eyes, video visuals look fairly balanced in saturation as well as sharpness. This is expected due to the AMOLED panel.
Another thing to note is because of the panel's rounded edge to its back cover, the phone feels easy to hold and that it reduces chance of my fingers accidentally pressing anything at the screen's edge.
- Performance: The One That'll Take Care of You The Whole Day
This phone is powered by Android 14 OS and Vivo's Funtouch 14 UI. Its chipset is a Snapdragon Gen 3, which is focused at fast connectivity, smooth gaming performance and support for lossless-music playing.
To be clear, our unit is the 12GB RAM variant, with 256GB storage available. Vivo V40 5G is available with its entry specs at 128GB and 8GB RAM, while being 512GB with 12GB RAM at the highest. Sadly, storage is not expandable even with a MicroSD.
While I can't say much for playing lossless music since I do not have access to any, I will say that sounds are at least average when emitted on speaker.
Gaming - Doing Alright, Nothing Significant
I could comfortably play on the phone without it getting overly warm. It will still get warm, just not as hot as I'd expect for a "metal-feel" back cover. Moreover, I hardly encountered any visual disruptions when I ran Ragnarok Global Origin at medium graphics level, 60FPS. Overall, average and should suffice for some Genshin Impact-level games.
Battery - Big & Steady
Now it's time to talk about that 5,500mAh battery pack. I had left the phone on with multiple tabs opened, as well as my Ragnarok game on, and continued to browse Youtube, the phone barely took just 1% from 10 minutes of our activity. Maybe I should've pushed the phone harder, but it seemed to me (and my colleagues) that the battery is quite efficient.
Upon checking, many other reviewers clocked a 13 hours runtime, so this phone should comfortably last you a day out (with the typical casual email checking, photo-taking, browsing Youtube and playing games).
This phones also register a great 80W charging efficiency. Sadly it does not support wireless charging but at least you don't need to tether yourself to the wall for over 30 minutes (from 20 - 100%).
- Camera: Great Quality If You Know What You're Doing
Time to talk about the star of the show; that Zeiss optics-supported camera set up. This phone boasts the following camera features:
- 50MP ZEISS OIS Main Camera: Captures stunning details with advanced sensors and optical image stabilization.
- 50MP ZEISS Ultra-Wide Camera: Perfect for group shots and landscapes with its 119° field of view.
- 50MP ZEISS Group Selfie Camera: AI-powered selfies with detailed facial contours.
- ZEISS Multifocal Portrait: Offers multiple focal lengths for versatile portrait shooting.
In our tests, the sun (like all cameras) would be the best way to make the Vivo V40 5G shine. Main camera wise, it handles portrait and night modes really well, often giving camera subjects a nice natural depth especially for humans, by which everyone's facial features usually look flat. But on Vivo V40, you can get professional-like quality as if it's taken with prime (fixed) DSLR lenses. Bokeh also looks very naturally-blurred; a winner in our books!
Even if dark settings caused some graininess to appear (more on this soon), those Zeiss optics do make photos look better than average. In my books, definitely above average camera performance. Plus, they snap fast!
The one quip I have with the Vivo V40, is that it performs slightly under expectation when sunlight is lacking for day photos (if you deactivate night mode). To the naked average eye, photos look decent, but users with eyes that are used to professional quality would notice that details can sometimes slip under the phone's camera AI technology. Often, graininess and odd lighting appears.
Speaking of lighting, kudos to Vivo for including its "Aura light" in the flash, which you can adjust during live-shooting, or turn off. This helps to keep the temperature (or white balance) of photos and videos decent.
- Why Buy This (Conclusion)
- Great camera optics
- Sturdy battery life
- Beautiful, elegant design
- Very light despite its big screen size!
This is overall a great phone for most users who wants a good camera phone to shoot whenever, especially outdoors. While the camera workaround is not as beginner friendly for photo-lovers, it's sufficient for enthusiast-level users to play with aplenty. Otherwise, that big battery life is also worth picking up the phone for if you don't care as much about camera quality.
- End of review -