A few months ago, I wrote that the telephoto camera is the only lens that matters any more, at least when it comes to Ultra-class flagships. As phones got better, cameras became where manufacturers tried to stand out. As cameras got better, telephoto lenses became the next point of focus. The most recent Ultra phones from Xiaomi, Oppo, and Huawei have all made the telephoto, above all, their selling point. Vivo’s X300 Ultra is doing something different.
Instead of pushing its telephoto hardware to further extremes, Vivo has mostly left it be. The company has focused its efforts on a significantly improved 35mm main camera, unique among the competition for its narrow, natural focal length. Combined with the best ultrawide camera in any phone and new pro-level video features, the result is a camera system that feels equally balanced between all three rear lenses. It’s a less flashy approach, but the total package is more versatile and useful than its rivals and my favorite to use so far.
The main camera is certainly the best of the three. The 200-megapixel, 1/1.12-inch-type Sony Lytia 901 sensor delivers a serious jump in both size and resolution from last year’s X200 Ultra. But it preserves that camera’s best feature: a 35mm-equivalent focal length. That’s narrower than most other phones — 23–26mm is typical — but closer to what photographers tend to look for in their default lens because it feels natural, close in scope to the human eye. It’s also closer to the focal length many phones used to use. If you’ve ever lamented the fact that your main camera feels more and more like an ultrawide, this is the phone for you.
The telephoto camera also has 200-megapixel resolution, with an 85mm focal length and 1/1.4-inch sensor, essentially the same specs as the X200 Ultra. The slightly narrower f/2.7 aperture might make the X300 look like a downgrade, but improved stabilization and sensor and processing tweaks give this iteration an edge overall.
Then there’s the ultrawide. This also hasn’t changed much year over year, but remains unique for its sensor size. It’s larger than the one on the iPhone 17 Pro’s main camera and supports optical image stabilization too. It’s in every sense a main camera spec with an ultrawide lens on top. No other ultrawide comes close.
The selfie camera is the only one that isn’t especially impressive: a 50-megapixel shooter with a comparatively small 1/2.76-inch sensor. It’s fine; the other cameras are great.
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Photos across all three rear lenses are of remarkably comparable quality, in almost any lighting. About the only difference I could find is that the telephoto and ultrawide are more susceptible to motion blur when shooting fast subjects like cats or cars, and even then only when it’s dark. Otherwise, picking between the lenses feels like choosing the right focal length to frame a shot, without the usual worries about tradeoffs in quality. Photos are helped by naturalistic color-processing and a wide range of quite impressive film simulations. Vivo’s color science is my favorite in any phone, and this year is no exception.
Vivo hasn’t just focused on still photography. This year it’s doubled down on video, though the upgrades here are really targeted at professionals. You can now record 4K, 120fps, 10-bit Log video across all of the three rear lenses, can import custom 3D LUTs, and use a Pro Video shooting mode for full manual controls. If you don’t know what half of that means, you’re not alone! This stuff is beyond the needs of most of us, myself included.
Like rival Ultra phones, there’s also a set of camera add-ons and accessories. My colleague Allison Johnson has already spent time playing around with Vivo’s camera grip and separate 200mm and 400mm telephoto extender lenses, which can take extraordinary shots at range that no other phone could ever manage. While at MWC Barcelona 2026, I got to briefly play around with the custom SmallRig camera cage developed for the phone too, which squeezes stabilization, cooling, and a fill light into a pretty compact package. All of these are sold separately and play into Vivo’s claim that the X300 Ultra can be the base of a semi-professional camera system if you want it to.
This is a phone though, not just a camera, so I’d better talk about the rest of it too. For me the big letdown in the X300 Ultra is its drab design. My black model is a pretty dull-looking device, and while the two-tone effects on the green and white versions are better, neither is a patch on the camera-inspired aesthetics of the latest Xiaomi and Oppo phones. The X300 Ultra’s camera island is also exceptionally raised, almost as thick as the phone, and for some reason Vivo has also ditched the physical shutter button, which I miss.
Other specs are on a par with rival Ultra phones, but impressive compared to Apple and Samsung: a combined IP68 and IP69 protection rating, a colossal 6,600mAh silicon-carbon battery, and a 144Hz refresh rate for its 6.8-inch OLED display. Then there’s the standard flagship stuff, like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, up to 1TB storage and 16GB RAM, and a decent promise of five years of Android OS updates and seven years of security patches. The phone runs on Vivo’s OriginOS, much improved on its older software but still the weakest of the major players, with a bland design and too many preinstalled apps and ads.
Ultra flagships are as much tech demos as consumer products. They’re an excuse for phone companies not only to show off their technical abilities, but also to lay down a vision for what makes the “best” phone right now. As processors and displays and water-resistance ratings have coalesced into universal standards that have proved tricky to improve upon, it’s the cameras where manufacturers can set out their stalls. And Vivo’s pitch is clear: The best camera is the one that’s great across every lens, not just one or two.
As tech demos go, this feels like a pretty practical one, price aside. The X300 Ultra isn’t launching in either the US or UK, but is available across Asia, along with a handful of European countries including Spain, Italy, and Austria. Its €1,999 (about $2,340) price certainly isn’t cheap, and its photography accessories add on hundreds more, though it costs about the same as a 1TB iPhone 17 Pro Max in those same markets. It’s expensive, but for what you’re getting, it probably should be.
I don’t think this is the best phone you could get for that money. It is a very good phone, with an excellent display, big battery, and flagship performance through and through. But the design is bulky, and boring, and maybe just a bit ugly. Vivo’s software often annoys me too. Xiaomi’s 17 Ultra is a slightly better all-round package, with a striking design and more polished OS. But the X300 Ultra’s three extraordinary lenses are so consistent, and so consistently excellent, that when I use the camera all those other worries fall away.
If I was putting my own money down right now, I’d buy the Xiaomi. But if I just had to pick who’s winning this year’s Ultra camera contest, Vivo gets my vote.
Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge