vivo V21 review

 

vivo V21 (5G) review

Hey everyone the market is flooded with

great med rangers

but very few of them are centered on

social media content creation

enter the Vivo v21 5g it has some of the

best selfie videos

in this price range and the rest of the

specs are promising too

so if you're super into tick-tock or

long video calls are this the phone for

you

I'm Andrew for gs marina and this is our

review of the Vivo v21

5g

despite its target niche, the Vivo v21 5g

has the same square camera bump and

serious design language as many other

offerings from Vivo

of course, that's partially due to the

dusk blue color

and you can always go for sunset dazzle

or arctic white if you want something

more flashy

the back and frame are made of plastic

but it's premium to the touch

it's slim and easy to hold too though

you should know that it's not the

easiest

phone to keep clean sadly there's also

no mention of IP rated protection or

gorilla glass on the front

speaking of the front you'll see a 6.4

inch AMOLED with a small notch

up to the top and decently sized bezels that

are average for the class

at least the fingerprint reader sits

under the display and it works well too

the screen has a 90hz refresh rate which

we consider being an entry-level high

refresh rate don't get me wrong though

it's still

a much smoother experience than sticking

to 60hz

you have three modes to choose from and

I recommend the 90hz mode

as surprisingly it delivers better auto

management than the auto mode

and it drops the frame rate when you're

not touching the display or when you're

playing a video

sadly even in this mode few games run at

anything higher than 60fps

the panel has hdr 10 plus support and

widevine l1 certification

there's no Netflix hdr streaming yet but

it might be in the works

the phone is more than usable outdoors

thanks to the good 761 nits of

brightness we got in auto mode

there is a single speaker on the bottom

of the phone which is a bit

disappointing because we have been

seeing stereo speakers more and more in

this price range

it only got average loudness on our

audio tests

but on the bright side, it never got

screechy and vocals

and dialogue are crisps.

for today's standard the 4 000 milliamp

hour battery isn't super large but it

got an excellent 123 hours of endurance

on our battery life tests

charging is good too and with the 33

watt fast charger you'll get from zero

to 64

in half an hour which is around the

the speed that was advertised

for a full charge, you'll need an hour

and five minutes

the Vivo v21 5g runs fun touch 11.1 on

top of android 11. it's one of the

heavier skins out there at the moment

though we didn't notice any lagging

there is some bloat with all of the

pre-installed apps but you'll also find

a lot of extra features to explore and

customization options

some of that customization is all about

the visuals with extensive theme support

a lot of always-on display options and

the lock screen poster feature

in the multi-turbo menu, you can also

switch on the art plus turbo option

for faster app launching

the ultra game mode has its settings

menu and one of the best features might

be the option to turn off the display

without needing to pause your game

the game center app acts primarily as a

game store and

gamespace is a launcher for all of the

games you've downloaded in short

there are a lot of gaming options here

which while nice might not be

of much use to most of the potential

buyers of this phone considering the

fact that the chipset isn't super

powerful

it's the same MediaTek density 800u 5g

chipset you'll find on the vanilla Vivo

v21

its focus is more on power efficiency

than performance

and unsurprisingly it's not the highest

performer in this price range

that said it'll do more than fine with

most day-to-day tasks

I know I said that the 44 megapixel

the selfie camera is the highlight of this

phone

vivo V21 (5G) review

but let's start with the cameras on the

back the v21 5g has a 64 megapixel main

camera with ois

an 8-megapixel ultrawide camera and a 2

megapixel macro cam

during the day the main camera takes

great photos with plenty of detail

and little noise colors are vibrant but

not overly so

however, the dynamic range could be wider

and the sharpening can be heavy-handed

on occasion

two times zoomed shots are cropped and

upscaled through quality is good for the

most part

you could even zoom in as far as five

times and get usable images

beyond that things get mushy ultrawide

snaps are

decent colors are good if more washed

out than the main cam

the photos are not sharp but

we've seen worse so

their okay portraits were solid bokeh

is natural and subject separation was

excellent

you can even choose between different

types of bokeh portraits were okay with

non-human subjects but it take longer

for it to detect what you're shooting

the 2-megapixel macro cam can get you

usable shots if you're persistent enough

but it's hard considering the low

resolution at night the main cam takes

some very competent snaps you'll see

little noise and a lot of detail

with night mode you'll have to wait

around 3 seconds to capture a shot

but will be rewarded with sharper photos

that have better shadows and more

balanced highlights

light sources are handled well photos

from the ultrawide are dark overall and

appear

soft and smeared from up close night

mode is available here too but it's

nowhere near as useful

it hardly improved anything in most

sample shots we took

so we finally get the highlight of the

phone the 44-megapixel selfie shooter on

the front

confusingly it produces 40 megapixel

stills but it come complete with

autofocus

two LEDs and even ois that's not

something that you see every day

during the day selfies have detail

aplenty along with great sharpness and

natural colors

selfie portraits could have better

subject separation though as the

the algorithm was occasionally tripped up by

busy backgrounds

at night detail is still great but the

autofocus struggled which resulted in a

a lot of blurry selfies

the selfie LEDs aren't as game-changing

as they sound on paper either

while they do work so does the aura

screen flash system

which turns your screen white to

illuminate your face in any case you'll

have enough light to capture a good shot

the selfie camera captures 4k videos and

the footage was great

videos are sharp with plenty of detail

autofocus can misfire on occasion and

dynamic range could be better

but this is easily the best selfie video

in this class

1080p selfie videos offered extra

the stabilization that worked better than

the ultra-stable mode on the main cam

the only downside is a slight crop to

the frame

and while we're on the topic of videos

the main camera on the back can shoot

videos up to 4k at 30 fps

with the main cam, colors are vibrant and

the processing is mature

there's plenty of detail a wide dynamic

range and good contrast

reproduction of fine details like grass

could be better though

the ultrawide cam is limited to full HD

videos

vivo V21 (5G) review

color reproduction was very close to the

main cameras and contrast was good

detail is lower than from the main cam

but it's good for an 8-megapixel snapper

if you're looking for the most

well-rounded mid-ranger well this isn't

it

the red note 10 has many of the same

features

for a lower price tag and the galaxy a52

5g

is a very strong competitor with a

faster chipset

and a faster screen however it's clear

that Vivo is targeting a particular

niche

and in that sense, it does really

well the screen

chipset and battery life are more than

solid and most importantly selfie camera

performance

is unmatched in the price segment if

you're looking for top the line selfie

videos on a mid-range budget this is

definitely one to

consider and if you're not really into

5g you can always get the 4g version of

the phone which has pretty much

identical hardware