Vivo X300 Ultra: Serious efficiency issues or just rocky start for flagship phone?
During our review, the Vivo X300 Ultra proved to be an outstanding smartphone easily capable of holding its own against other high-end offerings, such as the Xiaomi 17 Ultra or Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra (prices starting at $1,099 on Amazon). As with the Pro model, Vivo has made a noticeable leap in the X300 Ultra’s camera performance. The previous leader of our camera ranking – the Vivo X300 Pro – was superseded by the new Ultra flagship by a tiny margin. Read our review verdict to find out why.
Despite its many great qualities, the Vivo X300 Ultra also revealed several weaknesses during testing. For instance, it showed very high power consumption in our Wi-Fi battery test, with the display set to a standardized brightness of 150 cd/m². While the Vivo X300 Ultra still delivers solid battery life, it falls well short of the stamina offered by the Find X9 Pro.
Another Vivo flagship with remarkably high power usage
This raises the question: Is Vivo grappling with a fundamental efficiency issue? Back when we reviewed the Vivo X200 Ultra, the device already stood out for its relatively high idle power usage. Now its successor shows similar behavior – despite being equipped with the cutting-edge Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.
A glance at our test results reveals just how inefficient the Vivo X300 Ultra truly is. On average, the device consumes about 4.5 watts at idle, whereas its competitors use around 1.0 to 1.2 watts, meaning its idle power draw is roughly four to five times higher. On top of that, the X300 Ultra also consumes up to 70% more energy than the already power-hungry X200 Ultra.
So is the lackluster energy efficiency the result of poor software optimization or early firmware issues plaguing our review unit? In addition to the test device, Vivo sent us another X300 Ultra – a global model that we will be testing soon with the latest software version. Shortly after we published our review, the Chinese model likewise received a new update to firmware version 16.0.20.3W1. So stay tuned for further updates.
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