vivo iQOO Z3 5G hands-on review

Software

Unlike its Chinese counterpart, the international iQOO Z3 runs on Funtouch 11.1 based on Android 11 instead of vivo's newer OriginOS. Vivo promises two years of software updates and three years of Google's security patches. Anyway, the OS isn't any different from what we've seen so far from vivo's handsets. It's aiming for simpler design, less clutter. Still, we found some third-party apps like Netflix, Snapchat , Facebook, etc. Most of those can be uninstalled except Netflix.

Home screen, notification shade, app drawer, recent apps

The Extended RAM feature is available, which allocates some of your storage space for extra RAM. This one adds 1GB of extra RAM on the base 6GB model and 4GB on the 8GB variant.

Main Settings menu

We are pleasantly surprised by the variety of HRR options. You get 60, 90, 120Hz, and, of course, Smart switch. The latter doubles down to 60Hz when you are not touching the screen and also keeps it there for the gallery and apps like YouTube and Netflix. In some rare cases, there are incompatibility issues with some apps such as Quora and Twitter, for example, but the most commonly used ones ran at 120Hz. To our surprise, forcing the HRR at 120Hz made sure everything was at 120Hz.

Camera

We took a couple of samples with the main and ultrawide cameras, so you can decide on your own how well the device fares. Interestingly enough, you can't force the HDR mode - it can only be switched off or set to auto.

Camera samples: Main • Ultrawide • Main • Ultrawide

A couple of snaps with the full 64MP resolution too.

64MP main camera samples

And, of course, a 4K video sample for you to assess.

Early verdict

Despite its aggressive pricing, the iQOO Z3 5G has some tough competition to face. We've got the considerably cheaper Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro and the Xiaomi Poco X3 Pro - both very capable and powerful midrangers. However, they are also both missing the 5G modem, which the iQOO Z3 uses as a staple.

So if you are after some future-proofing and want to be one of the first to benefit from the developing 5G network, the Z3 seems like a nice bargain as a whole package. But if you are looking for your best bang for the buck, you should probably look for it elsewhere.