vivo X500 Pro Max review

Fast and bright 6.85-inch LPTO OLED display

The vivo X500 Pro Max comes equipped with a display that's similar, but not the same as last year's vivo X300 Pro. The new Pro Max offers a bigger 6.85-inch panel with higher 1440 x 3168px resolution and a faster 144Hz refresh rate (up from 120Hz last year).

When it comes to HDR capabilities, the display doesn't disappoint - HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are on the menu.

The display's maximum brightness is excellent, as expected. In general use with Auto mode enabled, we measured brightness levels roughly in line with what the vivo X300 Pro could achieve. We recorded 2,100 nits with a white swatch covering 75% of the screen and 3,500 nits with a smaller 10% patch. So rest assured, sunlight legibility outdoors should be excellent.

Interestingly, the X500 Pro Max also offers an additional brightness boost in the gallery and YouTube apps, something we didn't see on last year's model. In these apps, the max brightness climbed to 2,793 nits with a 75% patch and almost 4,500 nits with a 10% patch.

The minimum recorded brightness is just 1 nit, which is ideal for pitch-black environments.

Refresh rate

Since the display uses an LTPO OLED panel, it's capable of granularly adjusting the refresh rate between 1 and 144Hz. When the display is idle or when the picture is static, the system will dial down the refresh rate to 1Hz to preserve energy. It will then ramp up to 120Hz immediately when you start using it.

The high-refresh-rate behavior is okay, but with the general caveat that applies to all Android phones: the 144Hz is available only in certain apps and games that support uncapped refresh rate support, and, mind you, there aren't many of those. Vivo doesn't even mention which games the phone was optimized for.

Additionally, in the default Smart adaptation refresh rate setting, Chrome and some other apps are capped at 90Hz, so if you want to run them at 120Hz, you'd need to select the High setting and force your favorite apps to run at 120Hz. The High refresh rate setting still adjusts the refresh rate dynamically, it's just more lax with the ceiling.

And last but not least, the display can't always match the video's frame rate. We tested the phone in 24fps, 30fps and 60fps videos on YouTube, and we found that the screen ticks at 30Hz in 24fps videos. Not a deal-breaker, but it's worth mentioning.

Battery life

Depending on the region, the vivo X500 Pro Max comes with either a 7,800 mAh battery or a 6,750 mAh unit. Of course, Europe gets the lower capacity, while the rest of the world can enjoy a bigger cell. We ran our tests on the global unit, so expect lower results from the European variant of the X500 Pro Max. Compared to the vivo X300 Pro last year, both capacities pose a significant upgrade, which is reflected in our battery test results.

The X500 Pro Max achieved an impressive 24:06h Active Use Score with a particularly strong showing in the web browsing and video streaming tests. That's enough to easily overtake most of its competitors and comfortably rank above its spiritual predecessor, the vivo X300 Pro. It's also enough to beat the X300 Ultra as well.

The only competitor with better battery life is the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max, and the difference isn't all that big.

Charging speed

Vivo X500 Pro Max's charging capabilities haven't changed much for the last few generations. It still gets 90W wired fast charging over vivo's proprietary FlashCharge charger, while the wireless charging caps at 40W, but again needs to be paired with one of vivo's original chargers. The handset also supports reverse wired and wireless charging.

In our tests, the vivo X500 Pro Max showed decent charging speed, but it was far from impressive. It barely managed to beat the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and the Google Pixel 11 Pro XL to the finish line, taking exactly 1 hour to charge from 1% to 100%. The Pixel was even faster at the 15- and 30-minute checkpoints, which doesn't exactly look great for the vivo.

But fret not, we also have to remember that, unlike the Pixel, the vivo X500 Pro Max has a massive battery to fill. And when you account for that and look at how many milliampere-hours it manages to replenish in the first 30 minutes, it's actually charging at a pretty decent clip. By that metric, the X500 Pro Max matches phones like the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, which may otherwise appear faster in the chart below going by the percentage points alone.

Vivo offers a handful of charging options that can potentially extend the battery's health. You can turn off fast charging altogether or turn on smart charging that learns from your charging habits and tops up the battery right before you pick up the phone. You can also limit the charging capacity from 80% to 100% in 5% increments.

Speakers

The vivo X500 Pro Max features a set of hybrid stereo speakers. One is positioned at the bottom, taking on the role of a main speaker, and another one sits at the top and doubles as an earpiece. Naturally, the bottom one is louder with more pronounced bass.

In our loudness test, the speakers achieved a "Good" overall score of -26.4 LUFS, which is a notable step down from the vivo X300 Pro last year and is also quieter than the X300 Ultra.

Sound quality-wise, the device didn't impress. Last year's speakers sounded better, and some of the competitors like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra sound warmer and fuller thanks to the more pronounced bass. Although the vivo X500 Pro Max is decent enough in this regard, it sounds straight up flat in comparison. In fact, among the direct competitors, only the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max has worse-sounding speakers than the vivo X500 Pro Max.

Use the Playback controls to listen to the phone sample recordings (best use headphones). We measure the average loudness of the speakers in LUFS. A lower absolute value means a louder sound. A look at the frequency response chart will tell you how far off the ideal "0db" flat line is the reproduction of the bass, treble, and mid frequencies. You can add more phones to compare how they differ. The scores and ratings are not comparable with our older loudspeaker test. Learn more about how we test here.