Vivo X51 Review – A powerful camera technology

The Vivo X51 impressed in the test with a brilliant OLED display with rich colors and great brightness, as well as decent performance.

Vivo X51 Review

The best individual performance is shown by the camera with an effective gimbal image stabilizer, which has proven itself very well in practice.

The price is unusually high for a smartphone in this performance class, especially in view of the gaps: certified water protection, wireless charging or a headphone output are missing on the equipment list, for example.

Technical data test for Vivo X51 5G

Smartphone Vivo X51 Review: brilliant OLED display

The Vivo X51 offers a strong 6.6-inch display that shines in the test with high resolution, brightness and color space coverage. Specifically, the OLED display offers a resolution of 2,376 x 1,080 pixels and thus a decent pixel density of 397 ppi (pixels per inch).

The high refresh rate of 90 Hertz is particularly pleasing and all content scrolls smoothly across the screen.

The enormous brightness (903 cd / m²) is also first class. This makes the candidate an ideal outdoor model, even in bright sunshine. On a comparable level, we see the nuanced color display with rich, realistic colors. The contrast measurements only show average values that are still suitable for everyday use.

The 6.6-inch OLED fills the front almost frameless, only narrow edges can be seen above and below. In addition, the Vivo only makes space for the tiny 4-millimeter front camera.

The slightly concave construction of the display, which is supposed to provide a 3D effect, has only a minimal effect in practice and is definitely not a purchase argument.

Vivo X51 test: solid performance

Equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor with eight cores and a clock rate of 2.4 GHz as well as 8 GB of RAM, the Android smartphone performed quite well in the test.

Although this is a good bit behind high-end colleagues from the same price range as the Huawei P40 Pro+ or the OnePlus 8 Pro, smooth operation and multitasking are also no problem for the Vivo.

The benchmark tests produce slightly mixed results: We measured a decent 8,632 points in PCMark, and the Vivo finished the GFX bench with a good 21 frames per second.

It is quite sluggish elsewhere, for example when loading our test PDF: 11.4 seconds is clearly too slow for a smartphone in this price range. All of this is only enough for a performance rating of 1.7 – i.e. mid-range performance at a high-end price.

Vivo X51 5G and a round configuration

Da Vivo already boasts in the product name with 5G mobile communications for the best and fastest Internet. That can no longer trigger enthusiasm. Firstly because of the current status of the 5G expansion and secondly, 5G can now be found in much cheaper competitors.

Two nano SIMs can be used in parallel via dual SIM, but you have to do without a memory card slot. 228 free GB in the delivery state should be enough for a while.

Other deficits weigh more heavily. Instead of the current ax WLAN technology, only ac standard is on board, wireless charging is not possible and an IP certificate for dust and water resistance is also missing and the price of the Vivo becomes more and more incomprehensible the closer you look.

After all, the high-quality workmanship is convincing and the weight of 182 grams is very little for a smartphone of this size. Quite a few equally large competitors weigh over 200 grams.

Vivo X51 in review: Great image stabilizer

The Vivo X51’s camera stands out because of its gimbal, a special type of suspension that is normally used to ensure image stability with drone cameras.

Videos in particular are almost blur-free and make a far more professional impression than many competitors, even if only with the 48-megapixel main camera and only if you forego the zoom function.

The camera’s special talents include sports recordings: the “Pro Sports mode”, which reduces the shutter release delay, and “Motion AF Tracking”, which the camera uses to track moving objects particularly well, ensure high-quality photos and videos.

In addition, the IMX598 image sensor has an effective night mode, which in practice has noticeably less image noise and soft focus than you are used to from smartphone cameras.

The quad camera system of the Vivo X51 consists of the said 48-megapixel gimbal main camera, a 13-megapixel portrait camera as well as the macro lens and the telescope camera with 8 megapixels each.

This gives you a choice of fivefold optical zoom, 120-degree wide-angle shots or a focus on small subjects with a distance of just 2.5 centimeters. In summary, our camera experts rate the image and video quality as very good.

Battery performance of the Vivo X51 not more than decent

The 4,315 mAh battery achieved fairly mediocre runtimes in the various test runs. The Vivo lasts for 10:54 hours in typical online operation.

You then have to wait 63 minutes until the battery is full again, which is comparatively fast and the Vivo scores a few points here. As mentioned before, wireless charging is not an option.

Vivo X51 Advantages:

• Full color 6.6 inch display
• 5G cellular and dual SIM
• Good Android performance
• Excellent image stabilizer

Vivo X51 Disadvantages:

• Expensive
• No certified dust and water protection