Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Vivo has just launched the X300 series, and these are the first phones with MediaTek’s new Dimensity 9500 processor. MediaTek promises some notable horsepower and efficiency gains for this chipset, but what’s it like in a real-world phone? I put our X300 Pro review unit through a series of benchmark tests, and the results are quite disappointing.
I need to preface this by saying that vivo has consistently been one of the most disappointing brands when it comes to benchmark tests, particularly stress testing. We saw this play out with the X200 Pro, while the identically equipped OPPO Find X8 Pro fared much better. Nevertheless, we’ll let the figures do the talking here.
CPU performance: Custom cores still on top
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
We used GeekBench 6 to compare the vivo X300 Pro to a handful of devices, including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 reference device. Pitting a commercial phone against a reference device isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, as reference devices can often be built with improved cooling and/or performance-focused tuning in mind. This still gives us a vague idea of what to expect, though.
Unfortunately, the X300 Pro lags behind even the Galaxy S25 Ultra in terms of single-core and multi-core performance. It even scores marginally lower than the last-generation X200 Pro and Find X8 Pro in the single-core portion, although it delivers significantly higher multi-core scores than both Dimensity 9400 phones.
I’m not sure about the reason for these low scores. It’s possible vivo has specifically tuned the Dimensity 9500 CPU for battery life rather than peak performance, so other phones with the chipset could offer higher scores. But it is interesting that the year-old Snapdragon 8 Elite delivered superior results, which is a testament to Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU cores.
Dimensity 9500 GPU: What’s stability, anyway?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
We were only able to run a Wild Life Stress Test on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 reference device, but it’s clear that the X300 Pro can’t match either the reference device or the S25 Ultra for peak graphics performance. The phone also failed to achieve the peaks of its predecessor, which is very curious given it’s newer and supposedly more powerful GPU.
However, the Dimensity 9500 phone achieves 60% stability in this test, compared to the reference device’s 57% stability. It also beats the Galaxy S25 Ultra (52.5%) and vivo X200 Pro (40.3%), although it couldn’t contend with the Find X8 Pro. Still, the fact that the phone outperformed its predecessor by the end of the test is promising for other upcoming phones with the Dimensity 9500. I do also wonder about the Snapdragon chip and whether commercial devices might see similar performance degradation.
Wild Life Extreme and Solar Bay stress tests are downright disappointing. The Wild Life Extreme benchmark reveals ~45% stability, which is a steeper decline than the X200 Pro (47.1%), Find X8 Pro (57.5%), and Galaxy S25 Ultra (51.7%). The phone started with the highest peak performance, but only the X200 Pro had worse scores by the end of the test run.
The vivo X300 Pro continues the company's trend of poor sustained performance for the X series, while also lagging behind the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
The Solar Bay stress test is another good workout, and the Dimensity 9500 claims a 119% boost to ray tracing performance. The X300 Pro indeed started off stronger than other phones but ended with just ~42% stability, lagging behind the S25 Ultra, Find X8 Pro, and X200 Pro.
The handset also offers peak temperatures between 42 and 43 degrees Celsius (107 to 109 degrees Fahrenheit), as well as average temperatures ranging from 37.5 to 40.5 degrees Celsius (99.5 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit). This is an improvement over the X200 Pro, while the S25 Ultra is cooler in most scenarios, and the Find X8 Pro is significantly cooler in all scenarios.
Does that mean the Dimensity 9500 is a dud?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
It’s clear that vivo’s default implementation of the Dimensity 9500 is quite disappointing. That isn’t a surprise, as the company’s X series phones have historically prioritized camera performance and imaging hardware over sustained performance. However, it is unfortunate that the X300 Pro lags behind the Galaxy S25 Ultra in most benchmarks across both peak and sustained scenarios. It’s especially lamentable as Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones are already in the wild, so we anticipate that this gap will increase with the Galaxy S26 series.
It’s not all bad, though, as the phone is trending in the right direction in terms of temperatures. There’s clearly still room for improvement here, but it’s cooler than its predecessor. It’s also possible that we could see performance and thermal gains via system updates when the global device launches.
In any event, these test results don’t mean MediaTek’s latest chip is a failure; this is just one phone from a single manufacturer. I’m keen to see whether history repeats itself and whether the upcoming OPPO phones will run cooler and at more sustainable levels.
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