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When I declared this spring that Vivo\u2019s X300 Ultra had the best cameras in any phone, two things made it stand out in my mind: its excellent main camera with a narrow 35mm focal length and what remains the most capable ultrawide in any phone worldwide.<\/p>\n
You won\u2019t find either in the new X500 Pro Max. It has an impressive camera system with world-leading dynamic range and the same great telephoto lens found in the Ultra. But it\u2019s lost a little something of what made its predecessor quite so special.<\/p>\n
$2000<\/span><\/p>\n The X500 Pro Max is the latest in a trend that\u2019s seen China\u2019s major Android players roll out Pro Max models, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Honor, and now Vivo. The new models close the gap between their previous Pro flagships and camera-centric Ultra models \u2014 or, if you prefer to be cynical about it, are an excuse to slap \u201cMax\u201d on the box to better mask RAM-induced price hikes. A little of column A, a little of column B, I suspect.<\/p>\n The Pro Max adopts plenty of flagship features found in the older Ultra. It\u2019s the same size, for one, and has a matching 1440p, 144Hz OLED display. It\u2019s got an even bigger battery \u2014 7,800mAh \u2014 which breezes through two days of use, with similar 90W wired and 40W wireless charging. Unlike the Ultra it doesn\u2019t use the latest Snapdragon chipset, but its MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro delivers roughly comparable performance. It even features the exact same periscope telephoto camera, one of the best in any phone. Then there\u2019s the price: \u20ac1,799 (about $2,000) puts this squarely in the ultra-premium bracket.<\/p>\n But despite all that, this isn\u2019t a true successor to the X300 Ultra, which is still rumored to see a direct sequel sometime next year. The X500 Pro Max still sits half a step down in Vivo\u2019s hierarchy, and so it would be a little unfair to expect it to match or beat the older Ultra. The problem isn\u2019t that this camera is worse<\/em> than that phone\u2019s, though, but that it\u2019s much less unique<\/em>.<\/p>\n Vivo\u2019s familiar circular camera island returns, complete with Zeiss branding.<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s an odd speckled, almost glittery finish to the phone\u2019s body behind the camera. <\/em><\/p>\n As you\u2019d expect from a step-down model, the 50-megapixel, 1\/1.28-inch-type main camera sensor is both smaller and lower resolution than the Ultra\u2019s, impacting its quality. But the newer phone offsets that a little thanks to one edge on the Ultra: It uses Sony\u2019s new Lytia L910 image sensor, which features LOFIC technology that enables a wider 17-stop dynamic range, with the enhancements primarily in the highlights.<\/p>\n But the X300 Ultra\u2019s camera wasn\u2019t only notable for technical quality. I loved the fact that it adopted a 35mm focal length, and am disappointed that the Pro Max returns to the same 24mm focal length found on iPhones and countless others.<\/p>\n This, like most phones\u2019 main cameras, is a wide-angle in truth. It\u2019s designed to take in as much of a scene as possible, reserving the ultrawide for truly large landscape shots. It\u2019s part of why I\u2019ve taken to stepping back and using the telephoto by default on many phones, enjoying the tighter framing and better bokeh, but that often brings other quality compromises, especially in lower light.<\/p>\n I\u2019m stubborn about shooting with my cameras\u2019 full focal lengths whenever I can, and you should be too.<\/p>\n A 35mm main camera, by contrast, feels closer to many of the kit and prime lenses you might grab for a regular camera, narrow enough to use for portraits and purposeful framing. It sits more evenly in between the 14mm ultrawide and 85mm telephoto, giving you natural options across the range. You could of course just use the X500 Pro Max\u2019s 24mm main camera and zoom in a little, but then you\u2019re wasting some of the sensor and relying on digital zoom tricks, rather than making the most of the lens\u2019s optics. I\u2019m stubborn about shooting with my cameras\u2019 full focal lengths whenever I can, and you should be too.<\/p>\n The design has a clever trick to mask the depth of the camera island: The body itself slopes up to meet it.<\/em><\/p>\n If there\u2019s a saving grace to the decision to return to a wider main camera, it\u2019s that it helps make up for the X500 Pro Max\u2019s other shortcoming: a much smaller ultrawide camera sensor.<\/p>\n The ethos of the X300 Ultra was that all three lenses should deliver comparable quality. As such, it treated its ultrawide like another main camera, with a large sensor and even optical image stabilization, a rarity on wide lenses. In fact, its sensor is the same size as the X500 Pro Max\u2019s main camera<\/em>, so a repeat of that feat was never especially likely, but the 1\/2.75-inch-type ultrawide in the X500 Pro Max is still a notable step down.<\/p>\n Taking the phone to a nighttime Champions League game, there was a clear gap in quality moving from the ultrawide to the other two lenses. Under the bright stadium lights, the ultrawide blew out the white details on the pitch and player kits and left the crowd in comparative darkness. The main and ultrawide were able to bring more detail out of the dimly lit spectators and better handle the highlights on the pitch, without entirely giving up on the contrast that gave the scene its character.<\/p>\n 1\/19<\/strong>The main camera is excellent, but its default angle is rather wide.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s important to put these gripes in context: This is a truly excellent camera system for a phone, and still more capable than any you can officially buy in the US. The returning telephoto in particular is exceptional; every lens benefits from Vivo\u2019s naturalistic color-tuning, developed together with Zeiss, and video capabilities include Log recording and 4K at 240fps slow motion. It supports Vivo\u2019s teleconverter lenses too, including a seriously chunky 400mm option. It\u2019s just a shame that the most interesting elements of the Ultra\u2019s camera haven\u2019t trickled down to its first Pro Max too.<\/p>\n Strangely, another phone I\u2019ve tested this month feels like it picked up where the X300 Ultra left off: Oppo\u2019s Find X10 Pro Max, a pretty direct rival to this phone. Its triple 200-megapixel camera system still uses a wide-angle main camera, but at least includes a substantially improved ultrawide camera to create that same feeling that each of its three rear lenses is of comparable quality.<\/p>\n All I hope now is that when the X500 Ultra rolls around come spring, it builds on the success of the older Ultra, and perhaps finds new ways to make its cameras stand out. After all, if the Pro Max costs \u20ac1,799, the Ultra could cost substantially more \u2014 and will have its work cut out to prove it\u2019s worth it.<\/span><\/p>\n Photography by Dominic Preston \/ The Verge<\/em><\/p>\n Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Good<\/h4>\n
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The Bad<\/h4>\n
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