Despite being in high demand, compact phones seem to continue to be a niche for device makers. Only a few brands out there cover this segment adequately, and the list is even shorter outside of China. Well, meet the Vivo X200 FE, a pseudo-flagship handset—in the same category as the OnePlus 13R, OnePlus 13s, or Samsung Galaxy S25 FE, among others—that wants to fill this space.

The X200 FE isn’t exactly a budget phone, but it’s not as expensive as other devices that top—or even exceed—the $1,000 price tag. Its price tag places it at a nice spot in the flagship segment. Plus, its compact form factor makes it stand out in an industry populated by “mini tablets.” Add in a massive battery, long life, and remarkable cameras with ZEISS optics and tuning, and overall, you have a pretty attractive—although not perfect—package. Below, we will review all the pros and cons of this handset.

Vivo X200 FE

Rating

€799

Vivo X200 FE is a solid pseudo-flagship phone that combines pretty good cameras, a huge battery, high performance, and premium design in a compact package.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Matte-textured glass finish, highly resistant to fingerprints and scratches
• Dimensity 9300+ chip performance and efficiency is excellent
• A massive battery whose size is surprising in a compact body
• Clear, vivid and bright AMOLED display, visible even in sunlight
• Battery charges from 20 to 100% in just around 45 minutes
• Main and periscope cameras offer great results
• Premium glass and metal build with IP68/IP69 rating

Cons

• 8MP ultra-wide sensor is too out of place in the powerful camera system
• No wireless charging
• Despite stellar performance, UFS 3.1 storage and USB 2.0 are not up to par for its price range
• Extremely slippery design

Disclaimer

The manufacturer provided us with a review unit of the Vivo X200 FE. We used it as our primary device for approximately one month before writing this review, which was not sponsored.

Buy at Aliexpress

Vivo X200 FE: Specs

Vivo X200 FE Review: Hardware and Design

The design of the Vivo X200 FE is one of its strengths. With a display measuring just 6.31 inches and a body weighing around 188 grams, this is one of the few premium phones you can truly use with one hand without feeling like you might drop it. This point alone could be a great plus for many. After a long time—years—using phones of at least 6.7 inches, the change felt refreshing. I really thought I would find the screen too small, but I got used to it quickly.

The phone’s frame is crafted from aerospace-grade aluminum. In terms of real-world use, it feels sturdy, durable, and premium. There have been no signs of scratches in the time I have used it. Regarding the overall design, it is simple, clean, and practical. The rear panel features a textured glass finish that does an excellent job of resisting fingerprints and smudges. However, it also makes the phone quite slippery, so you’ll need to be careful if you like to carry it “uncased.”

The overall build quality is solid, with no creases or flex. As you may expect on a high-end “camera-focused” phone, the camera bump is notably raised. That means you’ll notice a lot of wobbles if you try to use the phone’s screen while it is laid on a flat surface—again, if you prefer not to use a case.

Beyond the aesthetics and in-hand feel, the X200 FE comes with an IP68 and IP69 rating. This means it’s fully protected against dust and can even handle high-pressure water jets. I submerged it in water for testing, and everything continued to work correctly. However, you will find that using the wet screen becomes complicated. This is a familiar situation for most phones out there, though.

The display has protection, but probably not the kind you’re used to. There’s a layer of Schott Xensation Core glass, a rarity in a segment dominated by Corning. Anyway, the phone comes with a pre-applied plastic protector that has been pretty resilient so far.

The phone is available in up to four colors: Amber Yellow, Frost Blue (our unit), Luxe Black, and Pink Vibe. It’s noteworthy that the availability of certain colors may be limited to specific markets. That said, Vivo includes a color-matching case. The case seems quite durable and feels nice in the hand. However, the material’s finish also makes it a bit slippery—though less so than the bare phone itself.

As for the ports and buttons, you’ll find the volume and power buttons on the right side, a USB-C port at the bottom, and a stereo speaker setup. Personally, I prefer the volume and power buttons on different sides of the frame, as the placement makes it easier to take screenshots with one hand. Anyway, I got used to having the buttons on one side after a few days.

The USB-C 2.0 standard is a bit of a curious choice at this price point, as it limits data transfer speeds. While this isn’t a dealbreaker for most users, it is something you should know. Surely those who tend to constantly transfer large files between their phone and PC via USB would have preferred a more current, faster standard.

In short, the Vivo X200 FE is designed as a legitimate compact premium phone. It’s good-looking, durable, and reliable. You will not find compromises in this section.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Display

The screen is a key aspect of our smartphones—especially premium ones. Fortunately, the Vivo X200 FE also excels in this section. The phone sports a 6.31-inch 8T LTPO AMOLED panel with a 2640 x 1216p resolution and a smooth 120Hz refresh rate. How does this translate into the real world? A sharp, smooth as butter user experience.

Whether you’re watching a series, a movie, or even a sporting event, the experience with the Vivo X200 FE’s display is truly pleasant. HDR-compatible content takes full advantage of the device’s display, boasting its ability to represent everything from deep blacks to bright highlights without the “black smearing” effect of cheap displays. It’s extremely responsive as well, which is especially notable when playing titles that require rapid reaction times.

The LTPO tech allows the refresh rate to dynamically adjust from 1Hz to 120Hz based on the content. In my experience, this happens perfectly smoothly, without lags or hangs here and there.

Regarding brightness, Vivo claims a peak brightness of 5,000 nits. That said, you won’t get these brightness levels under normal conditions but rather under certain specific situations (such as watching HDR-supported content) and in certain sections of the display. Anyway, I have been able to use this phone without any problem even in bright sunlight. Special mention to the operation of automatic brightness. Even though it may seem like a basic feature, not all phones handle it well. However, the Vivo X200 FE is capable of offering you the ideal levels for practice in every situation. This isn’t a device where you have to constantly adjust the brightness bar, which is just great.

Vivo has also integrated a 2,160Hz PWM dimming that will help your eyes not feel fatigued even during long reading sessions or late-night scrolling. My visual experience with this phone has been quite positive under any lighting conditions.

The screen has a responsive optical fingerprint sensor embedded, which is fast and reliable. I can’t recall a single instance where the fingerprint reader failed.

Overall, the Vivo X200 FE delivers a great viewing experience. It undoubtedly feels like one of the best phone displays you’ll find in this segment.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Performance

Under the hood, the Vivo X200 FE is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 9300+, a flagship-grade processor from the previous generation. This chip is paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM—12GB in our unit—and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. While the Dimensity 9300+ is still a powerhouse, the inclusion of UFS 3.1 storage is a bit of a curious choice at this price point, as many rivals have moved to the faster UFS 4.0 standard. This, along with the slower USB 2.0 port, is the only real hardware compromise.

In day-to-day use, the phone feels incredibly fast, fluid, and responsive. Apps open instantly, multitasking is seamless, and there is no hint of lag or stuttering, even with a demanding workload. The performance gap between the Dimensity 9300+ and newer processors is minimal and something most users will never notice.

For gamers, the X200 FE performs really well. The vapor chamber cooling system (3800 mm²) also has a lot to offer. Although it’s not a gaming phone, it has enough raw power to satisfy the vast majority, even considering its compact screen. However, keep in mind that this is a compact handset. Therefore, there’s less inner space available for heat dissipation than in larger devices.

In Call of Duty: Mobile, both “Graphics Quality” and “Frame Rate” are set to “Max” by default, with features like anti-aliasing and real-time shadows turned on. Changing the frame rate to “Ultra” sets the graphics quality to “Medium.” However, every round will be extremely smooth and lag-free with these settings. In Genshin Impact, the game automatically sets the graphics quality to “High,” with most graphics options set to “High” (except for “Shadow Quality,” which is set to “Medium”) and 30fps. You can play it at 45fps by setting “render resolution” to “medium.”

Vivo has put a lot of effort into the gaming aspect of the device. Funtouch offers an “Ultra Gaming” mode that goes far beyond what Android natively includes. It does the typical thing, which is to optimize available hardware resources to get the best possible performance while you play. However, you’ll also find a lot of additional options that aren’t just bloatware but quite useful. These options will be available from a sidebar that you can display by sliding from the left side of the game UI.

These “gaming boosters” are divided into two main sections: “Performance Panel” and “Game Tools.” As the name suggests, the former allows you to intuitively tweak the game’s performance and display the touch sampling rate using a pair of sliders. Game Tools, on the other hand, includes a plethora of options, including mapping actions to motion gestures and screen recording, and enabling 4D vibration feedback for improved haptics. You can even activate “Charge Bypass” to play connected to a power brick without draining your battery.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Benchmarks

In synthetic benchmarks, the X200 FE delivered excellent scores. Due to its compact form factor, it’s not the smartphone that handles heat the best. However, we also can’t say that the device suffers from overheating under high-demand conditions. It’s just a little warmer than other handsets out there.

Geekbench:

Starting with Geekbench 6, the device achieved scores of 2,189 and 7,029 on the single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.

3D Mark’s Wildlife Extreme Stress Test:

We also ran the 3D Mark’s Wildlife Extreme Stress Test on the phone. This is one of the most demanding graphics benchmarks out there. It pushes your phone’s hardware to the limit, to the point where some models are even unable to complete it due to the temperature they reach. So, it’s ideal not only for testing your phone’s GPU but also its thermal control capabilities.

The benchmark consists of running 20 laps of the same graphically demanding test. At the end, the Vivo X200 FE managed to complete the test with a 58.4% stability score. This is perhaps where the smaller form factor becomes noticeable. That said, it will only impact your gaming experience in the most demanding titles and at the highest settings after a certain period of time.

Antutu:

We also put the handset to the test in the very popular Antutu benchmark.

Vivo X200 FE Review: thermals

Regarding thermals during benchmarks, the results were quite acceptable for a powerful compact phone. Below you can see the maximum temperature the device reached during each test.

We also tested the Vivo X200 FE’s thermals during 4K/60fps video recording, the most demanding recording setting available.

While the storage and USB port choices are a bit underwhelming, the core performance delivered by the Dimensity 9300+, the LPDDR5X RAM, and the 12-core Immortalis-G720 GPU is really good.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Battery Life and Charging

One of the most surprising and impressive aspects of the Vivo X200 FE is its battery. Despite its slim and compact form factor, the phone is powered by a massive 6,500mAh silicon-anode cell. This is a capacity you would typically find in a much larger, more expensive device, and it is one of the biggest batteries available in a smartphone today.

This massive battery delivers exceptional endurance. In our tests, the phone comfortably lasted a full day and a half with moderate to heavy usage, and even the most demanding users should be able to get through a full day with charge to spare. More specifically, we are talking about easily achieving 10+ hours of on-screen time if you use Wi-Fi most of the day or around 8:30+ hours with heavy use of mobile data.

Charging the phone is equally impressive, thanks to 90W fast charging support. With a compatible charger, you can fully charge the phone from 20 to 100% in just around 45 minutes, according to the company. In our tests, the phone charged from 1% to 100% in just over 55 minutes. That said, the device doesn’t include a charger in the box in Europe, so that’s something you should check. However, the handset supports both USB-PD and PPS charging protocols, so you can exploit its charging capabilities with non-proprietary adapters. I also tested it with a third-party 65W USB-PD charging brick, and it worked perfectly.

Below you can find the results of the Vivo X200 FE in our battery endurance test compared to other devices.

One of the advantages of these huge batteries is that you can limit their charge to extend their lifespan. Since you don’t need 100% capacity for your daily use, you can charge it up to 90%, for example. In fact, Funtouch 15 offers an option that allows you to do just that on this device.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Software

The Vivo X200 FE comes out of the box running Funtouch 15, which is based on Android 15. Vivo promises four years of Android updates, so it should receive even Android 19 in the future. This particular model is set to get monthly security updates as well. During our tests, the phone received four updates to improve camera quality and add a security patch. The device is set to get Android 16 in November along with the other, more expensive Vivo X200 models, by the way.

The software experience is a mixed bag of clean design and useful features. At first glance, the interface looks quite streamlined and practical.

However, looking at the colorful “Material” design language of the Pixel phones, the countless customization possibilities of One UI, or even riskier bets like Apple’s Liquid Glass, Vivo’s UI may be starting to feel a little “outdated.” On the good side, the OS is as stable as it can be, offering a well-optimized, smooth/snappy experience. Gone are those times when custom skins from Chinese Android brands negatively impacted performance or introduced more problems than solutions.

The software also offers some AI features that are actually useful. There’s an AI writing assistant integrated into the Notes app, a live call translation feature, and an AI Transcript Assist that can summarize spoken conversations. Vivo also includes its DocMaster tool, which simplifies file conversion and editing. You’ll also find Google’s Gemini integration, bringing features like Circle to Search and on-screen content translation.

Vivo integrates its own Gallery app, which, as you might imagine, also offers AI-powered features. There’s an “AI Photo Enhance” option that restores—or boosts—the quality of your photos. However, I must say that, at least currently, the result is a mixed bag. Often, it helps improve the photo, but in other cases, the AI processing leaves notably artificial results—especially in portraits. On the other hand, the AI-powered eraser works quite well and even lets you remove unwanted reflections from glass in pictures. Vivo’s Gallery app also offers an option to quickly generate PDF files with the images you want.

While the OS is pretty good, there are a few things here and there that could be better. Vivo includes its widget section within the app drawer, which can be a bit disruptive for users expecting a clean app list, for instance. Customization fans will also find their options somewhat limited. For starters, the launcher doesn’t support third-party icon packs, which is a bummer.

There’s also no option to remove the bottom app dock, leaving a large, empty space between the dock icons and the rest of the home screen. While you can solve these problems by downloading a launcher, it would be great to have these options natively. Hopefully, Vivo can address these couple of things in the upcoming updates.

Either way, the OS still supports Android’s theming feature. So, you can apply a uniform color tone to most of your app icons and key UI items. You can also change the icon shape (square, circular, or “squircle”). Sadly, there are apps whose icons don’t support the theme feature, which is a bummer if those apps include some of your favorites. There is also an option to hide the name labels of the app icons on your home screen for an even more minimalist look.

If privacy options are important to you, Funtouch 15 will likely satisfy you. You can encrypt access to your apps using a PIN or biometrics. If you prefer, there’s also an option to directly hide the app from the drawer and home screen. You can also check when apps have accessed your location, camera, and microphone in chronological order.

Vivo X200 FE Review: Camera

The Vivo X200 FE is a camera-focused phone, which its rear bump makes clear. You won’t find huge 1-inch sensors here, but the overall package makes for a remarkable content creation experience. There are three sensors, the main one being a 50MP Sony IMX921 with an f/1.88 aperture and a 1/1.56″ size. It’s not the most powerful sensor available out there, but it’s capable of delivering really good results full of detail.

However, you might be even more interested in the 50MP periscope Sony IMX882 sensor with support for 3x optical zoom. This is almost the same periscope lens as the vanilla Vivo X200, with the difference that the company opted for an M-style prism on the FE model. What’s the difference? Well, this format allows for a slimmer phone design, but it also means losing the lens’s macro capabilities. That’s right, you won’t find a dedicated “Macro” mode on this phone. So, keep that in mind if it’s important to you.

Both lenses boast OIS and ZEISS optics, which, in theory, should improve light transmission and reduce the lens flare effect. That said, both the main and telephoto sensors offer excellent performance. Special mention to the almost-instant shutter speed, something that even some premium flagship phones struggle to achieve.

Main camera samples:

Starting with the main lens, the results are generally good in all lighting conditions. Photos are detailed and vivid, without the dreaded “washed-out textures” effect that other brands suffer from due to overly aggressive image processing. HDR management is another strong point of the Vivo X200 FE, showing a good balance of lights and shadows.

When night falls, the main sensor continues to perform quite competently. However, at this point it becomes more noticeable that we’re not dealing with a proper flagship. You’ll primarily notice significantly worse light control, although the level of detail is still acceptable—there is no “oil paint” effect typical of mid-rangers. Just be careful in scenes with many artificial light sources.

3x telephoto samples:

Regarding the periscope sensor, it offers excellent image quality. The best thing is that, unlike some other similar solutions, there’s no “foggy effect” in the photo. Vivo has been offering some of the best camera phones available for years, so they have a lot of experience with image processing, and you’ll notice that here. The camera app offers four preset zoom levels: 0.6x, 1x, 2x, 3x, and 10x. However, if you long-press the zoom selector, you can use a carousel to fine-tune the zoom levels up to 100x. Although, as you might imagine, the images at the maximum digital zoom level will be barely usable in most cases.

Below you’ll find samples taken with the 3x telephoto periscope lens.

If you are interested in even higher zoom levels, 10x zoom results are better or worse depending on the scene. There are cases where the “AI reconstruction” is more evident than in others. In my experience, the device is capable of delivering “almost optical” quality up to 5x zoom. Beyond that, the AI’s participation in photo reconstruction will be much more evident.

Regarding nighttime performance, the 3x telephoto sensor continues to perform quite well, similar to the main camera. Texture details aren’t blurred in the shadows, which is great. It may easily be one of the best 3x telephoto lenses available out there, and it’s nice to have it in a handset that doesn’t cost as much as a premium flagship.

Ultra-wide samples:

For the ultra-wide lens, there’s nothing to write home about here. The handset has an 8MP lens that’s quite out of place with the rest of the camera package. These sensors are more typical of affordable phones, and we would have liked to see something better on this device. The best we can say about the Vivo X200 FE’s ultra-wide camera is that it’s simply “usable.” As expected, it performs just acceptable in ideal lighting conditions, but don’t expect a level of detail similar to that of the other sensors. Still, Vivo’s decent image processing helps improve things a bit.

In low-light situations, the ultra-wide sensor is barely usable. Light control is quite poor, and details become blurred easily. These are the situations when it’s most noticeable that we’re talking about a low-end camera. A 12MP sensor at least would have been much more suitable for this phone.

By the way, the phone offers a “Supermoon” mode:

Regarding Vivo’s camera app, it offers a ton of “styles.” There are the three main ones: Texture, Vivid, and Zeiss. The latter is the mode that promises the most realistic results, and it’s the one we used for camera testing. However, Vivo sets the “Vivid” mode by default, aware that most users prefer photos with punchier colors for social media.

There’s a set of other styles you can play with and experiment with to get the results you like best. There are even dedicated modes for “Food” and “Stage”—a mode designed for taking photos at concerts, taking advantage of the phone’s zoom capabilities. You can also enable a “Smart Focus” setting that will automatically track subjects. The camera app is full of modes and options that photography fans will appreciate.

As an interesting fact, the phone’s flash is not monotone. It can switch between different levels of cool and warm. You can adjust the tone manually or let the phone do it automatically based on the scene. Vivo calls this “Aura Light,” whose intensity is also adjustable. There are even a pair of discreetly integrated front-facing flashlights for selfies.

Should You Buy the Vivo X200 FE?

The Vivo X200 FE is one of those great phones that, unfortunately, is not available in the US market. However, it was launched for €799 in EU countries and from ₹51,990 in India. At this point you could probably get it for less. This phone is a serious competitor to other compact devices like the OnePlus 13s and the Google Pixel 10 in its range. It’s an easy recommendation for anyone in the market for a compact phone that doesn’t compromise on the core experience.

You should buy the Vivo X200 FE if:

• You want one of the best camera experiences available in a sub-flagship phone.
• You are looking for an affordable pseudo-flagship device that is not primarily focused on performance, cutting costs in other aspects.
• You want a phone whose battery will easily last more than a day even with intensive use.

You should not buy the Vivo X200 FE if:

• The quality of the ultra-wide camera is really important to you.
• You prefer phones with large screens.

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