Home » Vivo V19 Neo Review

Vivo V19 Neo Review

Written By Justine Basco
Published • June 13th, 2020
Gadget ReviewsMobile
1

Along with the Vivo V19 is its toned-down sibling, the V19 Neo. The two are pretty much identical except for the following: the latter has an older Snapdragon 675 chipset, a single selfie camera, a slower fast charging rate, colorways, and the price. Given those differences, is there enough incentive to get the Neo version? Find out in our review.

Table of Contents

Design and Construction

In terms of design, the V19 Neo is almost identical to the V19 and virtually of the same size. You’ll be able to distinguish the two by looking at the hole-punch camera (the Neo has one), and colors (the Neo is in Blue and White).

Same as the V19, we have the 6.44-inch display with a hole-punch for one selfie camera. Also found here is the in-display scanner.

On the left, you’ll find its triple card slot for two nano-SIM cards and a microSD card that’s upgradeable up to 256GB.

Located on the right are its power button and volume rocker. They’re tactile, clicky, and are placed near the center of the frame, making it easier to reach.

Up top is the secondary microphone, while at the bottom are its loudspeaker, USB Type-C port, primary microphone, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Flip it on its back, and we can see a smaller camera module compared to the V19 to house its four cameras and LED flash. Under that is some Vivo branding. Now, this set-up isn’t new anymore, but it resonates with flagship devices, and its camera bump doesn’t make the device wobble when placed on flat surfaces.

Generally, the V19 Neo also looks as premium as the V19 with a glass back and front. It has different color options with some dual-tone going on like this Crystal White variant we have. There’s also a darker Admiral Blue color option. Like most phones, it can be a bit of a fingerprint magnet, so better use a case, or use the jelly case included in the box.

Display & Multimedia

Like the Vivo V19, the Neo has a 6.44-inch screen with a Super AMOLED panel, so it has punchy colors, deep blacks, high contrast, and nice viewing angles. It also has a Full HD+ (2400 x 1080) with a good pixel density of 409ppi. It also has Gorilla Glass protection that’s not specified in Vivo’s spec sheet, and a pre-installed screen protector.

Since the Neo has a single selfie camera, it becomes less of a disturbance on the screen. Sometimes you wouldn’t even notice it’s there. But if it bothers you, unfortunately, there’s no option to hide it with a black bar, but you can control specific apps if you want them to maximize the whole display or not.

The audio experience is also at par with the V19. The downward-firing loudspeaker can be loud enough for a small room with clear highs and mids but lacking in some bass. If you want better audio quality, we still recommend connecting to an external speaker or headphones. Good thing the V19 has a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Camera

Like its big sibling, the V19 Neo is also a versatile shooter, packing four rear cameras consisting of a high-resolution 48MP primary, an 8MP ultra-wide, a 2MP for bokeh effects, and a 2MP for macro.

We get good photo quality with sharp details and natural-looking vibrant colors, especially under the right lighting conditions. Besides the standard mode, you can play around with the ultra-wide-angle, bokeh, super macro, beauty mode, and of course, its 48MP lens for more details. Its HDR isn’t perfect, but it works well too.

As for night mode, you can use the ultra-wide-angle lens with it, and the effect gives a subtle brightness without making the photos look noisy and washed.

For selfies, as mentioned, the V19 Neo comes with a single 32MP camera. For users that just want a high-resolution selfie, this will suffice. Besides, you’re still getting the software features found on the V19. Most of the time, we get bright and vibrant selfies that fall more on cooler tones. Since we get a single front shooter, there’s no option to use an ultra-wide-angle mode to take better “groufies”—which I don’t think you’ll be looking for during this pandemic.

Nonetheless, the camera app itself packs a few selfie nifty features like its predecessor, such as the beauty mode, portrait mode, and a posture feature to guide you with some poses. As for videos, you can shoot up to 4k at 60fps.

OS, UI, and Apps

For software, the V19 Neo runs on Android 10 skinned with the newer Funtouch OS 10. It’s a modern and youthful-looking interface with a ton of customization features. Although there’s no app drawer option, the interface still looks functional and dynamic.

Of course, there are some bloatware and a few pre-installed apps like Google apps, Lazada, Opera, Facebook, Kumu, and GCash that you can always remove if you’re not going to use them.

It also has Jovi, which is Vivo’s AI assistant, and it works within other parts of the interface like the photo gallery and the camera, as well as Child mode and Driving mode. Other notable features are the option to navigate with gestures, dark mode, app clone, digital wellbeing, and dynamic effects for more quirky animations.

For storage, we have the 128GB model, with a usable space of 101GB, which you can easily expand via a microSD card. It has a dedicated slot, so you don’t have to worry about losing your dual-SIM functionality.

Performance and Benchmarks

Powering this device is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 AIE octa-core CPU with an Adreno 612 GPU and 8GB of RAM. It’s a chipset announced in late 2018 but can produce numbers close to the ones found on the Snapdragon 712-powered V19. This is also the configuration found on the V17 Pro. It works pretty well in providing a stutter-free multitasking experience. Navigation is smooth, and apps launch fast.

When it comes to gaming, it can handle heavy titles like PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9, COD Mobile, and Mobile Legends. However, do expect some slow response rate when playing under the highest graphic settings. You’ll most likely tone down the settings to get a smoother experience.

The backside can heat up at some point but not to an alarming hot. For some numbers, check out the benchmark scores we got:

• AnTuTu V8 – 233,298
• Geekbench – 511 (Single-Core), 1,639 (Multi-Core)
• PCMark – 7,277 (Work 2.0)
• 3D Mark – 1,270 (OpenGL), 1,210 (Vulkan)
• AndroBench – 506.04 MB/s (Read), 192.32 MB/s (Write)

As for security, you can unlock the phone via face-unlock and the in-display fingerprint scanner. Both work snappy, but the face-unlock can struggle in challenging light scenarios. One small thing that we appreciate is the fun animations for unlocking that you can customize in the settings.

Battery Life

Now keeping the Vivo V19 Neo running is a 4,500mAh battery. In the PCMark battery test, it yielded a total of 17 hours and 6 minutes, which is a couple of hours shorter than the result we got on the V19, but still not bad. For our video loop test, we got a solid 21 hours and 7 minutes.

Charging, on the other hand, is slower at 18W and took us an average of an hour and 50 minutes to charge from 0% to 100%.

Conclusion

The Vivo V19 Neo may be under the shadow of the higher V19, but it is good enough to meet the demands of a wide variety of users. You get an impressive Super AMOLED display, a stylish design, a sizable battery, decent performance, and cameras that surely don’t disappoint your social media demands.

Although it’s not as good as the V19 when it comes to performance and front camera versatility, for the price gap, the V19 Neo delivers, and we think you’ll still be happy getting it.

The Vivo V19 Neo is priced at PHP 17,999USD 307INR 26,001EUR 292CNY 2,234.

Vivo V19 Neo specs:
6.44-inch FHD+ (2400 x 1080) Super AMOLED Ultra O display
Qualcomm Snapdragon 675 AIE octa-core CPU
Adreno 612 GPU
8GB RAM
128GB storage
microSD card support (dedicated slot)
Quad-rear cameras:
• 48MP (main)
• 8MP (ultra-wide)
• 2MP (bokeh)
• 2MP (macro)
32MP front camera
Dual-SIM
4G LTE
WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth 5.0
GPS, A-GPS, BDS, GLONASS
3.5mm audio jack
Fingerprint scanner (in-display)
Funtouch OS 10 (Android 10)
4,500mAh battery w/ 18W Dual-Engine Fast Charge
159.01 x 74.17 x 8.54 mm
176 g