Review Vsmart Live: Vietnamese smartphones are worth buying the most ever

Perhaps we are no stranger to the Vsmart brand of Vingroup. Last year, Vsmart was quite successful with its first four smartphone models, Vsmart Joy 1 / Joy 1+ and Vsmart Active 1 / Active 1+ in the low and mid-range segment. After the initial success, Vsmart has continued to launch a series of new smartphones, including the mid-range Vsmart Live.

Vsmart Live announced the list price of 6.99 million dong. However, just one week after launching, Vsmart Live has been discounted one million , only 5.99 million. At this price, is Vsmart Live a smartphone worth to own or not?

Design

Vsmart Live has a fake plastic back, so the device is quite light and held in the hand for the feeling of not really “compact”, not as sure as other smartphones made from metal monolithic or double-sided glass . This plastic is also easy to scratch if not properly preserved. In return, Vsmart Live does not cause a heavy feeling when put in the pocket of the pants, in addition, users also do not have to worry about falling or dented like glass or metal.

With a weight of 170g, Vsmart Live feels quite light holding

The back of Vsmart is slightly curved on both sides to hold it firmly and hold your hand more. The version we have on hand this time is the blue version with a gentle gradient effect on the back, changing from light blue to dark blue in a top-down direction. It also has two more color options, black and white.

The back is covered with gradient colors (with blue version)

Cluster of 3 main cameras in the left corner, with Vsmart logo shaped like a flame in the middle

The “Vsmart” logo is at the bottom

On the front, Vsmart Live is equipped with a non-defective screen: no “rabbit ears”, no “water drops”. With the market already having too many smartphones with rabbit ears or water droplets that not everyone likes, Vsmart Live’s difference in daring to go against the trend is something to applaud.

No “rabbit ears”, no “water drops”, no pop-up cameras, Vsmart Live follows the traditional screen direction but still has a modern quality with an 18.5: 9 aspect ratio.

Screen & fingerprint sensor under the screen

As mentioned above, Vsmart Live is equipped with a “non-defective” screen. This 6.2-inch screen has Full HD + resolution and an 18.5: 9 aspect ratio. This is also the first Vsmart equipped with a screen using AMOLED technology.

Vsmart Live is the first Vsmart equipped with an AMOLED screen

This screen quality is quite good, comfortable viewing angle

The screen border is still thin at the edges

Rarely do any smartphones on the market have such a “flawless” screen design in the mid-range segment

According to Vsmart, Vsmart Live’s screen has a display area ratio of up to 90.3%, 100,000: 1 contrast ratio and 103% coverage of the NTSC color range. The display quality on this screen is pretty good, from brightness, viewing angles and colors. Because there are no defects, users can fully have a better entertainment experience without being “faked” in losing part of the content.

Perfect entertainment experience with “no defect” screen

One of the first features on this Vsmart Live is the in-display fingerprint sensor that uses AMOLED panel technology. Of course this sensor is still an optical fingerprint sensor only. About the fingerprint scanning speed, you will probably be quite disappointed when the sensor for scanning speed is quite slow, it takes about 1 second from pressing down on the screen until the device is fully unlocked.

The fingerprint sensor has a rather slow scan and read speed

In addition, this sensor sometimes is not sensitive fingerprint scanning, must fingerprints many times to receive fingerprints. Particularly in some cases the machine requires a password because the fingerprint reader fails too many times, although both the screen and fingers are not dirty.

Sometimes using a password is probably faster than using a fingerprint

Although only an optical fingerprint sensor, Vsmart can improve the scanning speed and accuracy of this sensor through a software update to avoid annoying users.

Camera

Vsmart Live owns three cameras, including the 48MP f / 1.7 main camera, 5MP f / 1.9 depth camera and 8MP f / 2.2 super wide-angle camera.

Vsmart Live is also the first Vsmart to have 3 main cameras

The 48MP camera on Vsmart Live uses pixel-binning technology to combine 4 pixels into one, resulting in the best quality 12MP photo, supporting when shooting in low light. Vsmart said it will soon include 48MP photography in an September update.

The image quality of Vsmart Live in good lighting conditions is good. Colors are somewhat realistic compared to reality, when seen on the AMOLED screen, it is somewhat dazzling and flattering. Dynamic range (DR) is sufficient, detail is good in both dark and bright areas.

Some photos taken with Vsmart Live

Ultra wide angle camera allows users to create photos with unique effects. Vsmart also offers the option of de-distorting four corners of the photo to give the most natural photo The weakness of this camera comes from having only 8MP resolution, as well as in some cases shooting backlit will lead to darkened images quite a lot due to poor DR sensitivity range.

Super wide angle camera for quite unique effects

Optional distortion wide angle image in the settings

In low light conditions, despite having a large aperture of f / 1.7 as well as using 4-pixel lumping technology, however, like many other mid-range smartphones, the low-light quality of Vsmart Live is quite bad. . The image is washed out and lost a lot of detail due to the noise reduction mechanism. The color also becomes much more pale than it really is. To overcome this, the camera application of the device has a separate night mode.

Night photos with 3 shooting modes. We recommend not using the ultra-wide-angle camera for night shots because the image quality is really bad

With night mode, the machine will take about 4 to 5 seconds to process. Each shot, the camera will take 8 consecutive photos and use algorithms to combine to produce the best quality picture. Compared to the usual automatic shooting mode, photos taken from night mode have more fine details, but in return have more noise. In short, this regime is only for giving and “saving” for certain circumstances only.

In addition, the new camera application on Vsmart Live also comes with some other modes such as beauty, funny AR Sticker or professional shooting mode …

AR Sticker with lots of funny pictures

Performance

Remind a little about the configuration of Vsmart Live. The device is equipped with Snapdragon 675 chip, comes with 4 / 6GB RAM and 64GB of storage memory. Note that the device does not support expandable memory and only one memory option is 64GB, so those who need a lot of storage space should consider before buying.

Vsmart Live has a mid-range configuration

The current Snapdragon 675 is still one of the most powerful in the mid-range segment. Of course, with the optimization from the VOS software and the latest version of Android 9 Pie, the daily use tasks are very smooth with nothing to blame, even the machine can play some hard-core games. “nowadays like PUBG Mobile and Asphalt 9: Legends with a high configuration level. However, for a smooth experience, we recommend users to set the graphics medium or low, although the games themselves recognize the high configuration level for Vsmart Live.

PUBG Mobile claims to have a high configuration level for the device

The player is still quite smooth at a high graphics level

With Aslphat 9: Legends, users should switch to Performance mode in settings for a smoother gaming experience, although graphics quality will be greatly reduced.

Test scores with the current two popular performance measurement software are AnTuTu Benchmark and GeekBench, Vsmart Live reached 173,385 points, including 79,000 CPU points and 33,000 GPU points (for AnTuTu), and 2372 points single-core as well as 6188 points of multi-core (for GeekBench).

AnTuTu BenchMark Score

GeekBench performance score

The battery

Vsmart Live is equipped with a battery capacity of 4000mAh, for on-screen time with mixed tasks up to nearly 5 hours. It can be said that the battery life of Vsmart Live will easily make users happy and is a strong point of this machine.

The 4000mAh battery on a smartphone has never disappointed users

Not only battery life is good, Vsmart also supports Quick Charge 3.0 technology with fast charger included in the box without users having to buy more.

summary

Strength:

– Screen “not defective”, AMOLED technology for good display quality

– Configuration is quite comparable to other products in the segment

– VOS 2.0 pure Google for a smooth experience

– Has super wide angle camera

– Good battery life, with a quick charger in the box

– Long after-sales service and guarantee

Weakness:

– Low quality plastic case

– The dark camera is not really good

– Fingerprint sensor in the screen for unlocking speed is not fast