Too hot to review: How well does the Vivo X Fold6 cool down?

The Dimensity 9500 is one of the most powerful smartphone processors of its generation and delivers plenty of processing power in the Vivo X Fold6. In everyday use, there’s little cause for complaint: apps launch quickly, multitasking runs smoothly, and even demanding applications don’t faze the foldable. However, under prolonged full load, it becomes clear that high performance comes at a price.

In our tests, the X Fold6 gets very warm, reaching surface temperatures of up to 46.9 °C. But things are heating up internally as well: We weren’t even able to complete the 3DMark stress tests because the device aborted the tests due to the high temperatures. This is noteworthy, as a high-end foldable, in particular, should be able to deliver stable performance for at least a certain period of time.

To determine the effects of the heat buildup nonetheless, we first ran Geekbench 6.7 on a cold device. The X Fold6 scored 3,181 points in the single-core test and 9,511 points in the multi-core test. After 15 minutes of continuous load, the scores dropped to 2,959 and 8,974, respectively. This means the smartphone loses about seven and six percent of its original performance, respectively.

At first glance, this sounds like a significant slowdown, but it’s hardly noticeable in everyday use. Even after prolonged use, the X Fold6 remains fast and responsive. For gamers and users who push the foldable to its limits for extended periods, however, heat buildup remains a point of criticism.

The Vivo X Fold6 has two sides: The Dimensity 9500 delivers tremendous performance, but the cooling system can’t sustain that level indefinitely under continuous load. For normal use, this isn’t a major issue. However, anyone planning regular long gaming sessions or other computationally intensive tasks should keep the high heat generation in mind.