Vivo continues to walk the line between style and substance with its latest V-series offering — the Vivo V50e. Priced at ₹30,999, this mid-ranger packs a punch with a sleek design, vibrant display and the unique Aura Light system. But does it tick all the boxes for a phone in this competitive price segment? I took the Pearl White colour variant for a spin to find out.
Design
I’ve got the Pearl White colourway for review, which honestly looks more grey than white! There’s a “flowing water” effect on the rear, which adds a bit of glam to this mid-ranger. There’s a snazzier Sapphire Blue variant as well. The dual-ring camera module stands on the top left. The smartphone weighs about 186 gm and feels lightweight enough to use on a sustained basis, such as while gaming.
Display
The Vivo V50e sports a sizeable 6.77-inch AMOLED display. It’s super bright even under direct sunlight, with its peak brightness of 1800 nits. It offers no hindrance to legibility.
Camera
Positioned as one of its USPs, the Vivo V50e packs in a 50 MP OIS primary camera and an 8 MP ultra-wide camera. The smartphone delivers some fairly natural colour saturation and sharpness at 1x. In daytime photos of canopies and foliage against the bright afternoon sky, the smartphone does tend to overexpose the background - kind of inevitable with a bright sky - but gives lovely results when the exposure is stepped down a notch or two. Indoors, with limited light, it tends to amplify the shadows more than I’d like. At 2x, photos often do look a bit grainy when zoomed in, especially if the light available isn’t abundant. The creative, customisable AI Aura is included in the camera setup here and remains one of my favourite features to play around with. With a slider to adjust the intensity of the “ring light” and another to adjust for warmer tones and cooler tones, this function adds a lot of versatility to the shots you can capture on this smartphone.
The 50 MP front camera also captures some decent photos and is sufficient for joining in online meetings and briefings on the go. It delivers sharp photos when one is using the in-app virtual shutter button, but tends to deliver some blurry snaps when I use the physical volume button to capture shots because the phone gets slightly nudged while pressing the button.
Tech specs
The Vivo V50e runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 7300 system-on-chip, and the variant I reviewed had 8 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. The handset runs on the latest FunTouchOS 15 (based on Android 15). This brings in functionalities such as AI Erase, which does a decent job of removing aspects of a snap that you don’t want to retain in-frame. There’s Gemini integrated, which I can easily access by long-pressing the power button.
There’s also a dedicated Ultra Game mode which lets me tweak gaming sound effects, game picture-in-picture, optimise the display and minimise notifications or other disturbances during gameplay.
You do get several customisation options and AI features such as object remover, translation, transcription, circle to search, and image expander. The latter expands an image from its edges to a custom proportion to resize the image, make the background wider, and more.
Battery
The Vivo V50e features a 5,600mAh battery with 90 W fast charging support. The battery drains quite slowly, which is great news for those who are out and about during most part of the day. With my mixed usage of gaming, watching videos, attending video calls and checking emails, the device would still have around 30 per cent charge, if not more, at the end of the day.
Verdict
Despite its drawbacks, the Vivo V50e makes for a great mid-range smartphone. It offers enough features that hold their own, and added functionalities that make up for any shortcomings.
