Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Update: We are in the process of retesting the vivo X300 Pro and its Dimensity 9500 chipset due to some anomalies in the testing process. We will update this article when we have more information to share. 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
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