4 reasons why I'm ditching the Pixel 10 Pro for a small Android phone you probably can't buy

A few months ago, if anyone had asked me to recommend a small phone with a reliable camera, I would have uttered the Pixel 10 Pro in a heartbeat. It packs the same specifications, save for the battery, as the bigger Pixel 10 Pro XL, making it a viable option for people who want the perks of a big phone without the bulk or unwieldy size.

More recently, however, there’s a newer star that won’t stop enticing me. It’s the vivo X300 FE, which borrows the camera-heavy DNA from its bigger siblings, the X300 Pro and X300 Ultra, while maintaining a pocketable footprint. The FE’s appeal as a pro-camera phone also makes it a worthy contender to the Pixel 10 Pro, which delivers mediocre, lackluster performance and — most importantly — a fading promise of a rich, exclusive Android experience.

I’ve spent a month testing and comparing the two phones, and here are four reasons I’m convinced to ditch my Pixel 10 Pro in favor of the vivo X300 FE.

The Pixel 10 Pro’s cameras feel boring in comparison

On paper, there’s little difference between the cameras on the vivo X300 FE and the Pixel 10 Pro. In fact, the latter has better primary and ultrawide sensors, purely by specs. Conversely, the vivo features a larger telephoto sensor, which helps it deliver better shots despite a lower magnification, as we’ll see in the next section.

In practice, however, the vivo X300 FE defies expectations by delivering better results in several different scenarios. Below are a few side-by-side comparisons that paint a clearer picture.

Daylight & zoom

Take the two daylight scenes below, for instance. The vivo captures brighter shadows, leading to greater visibility and, in turn, more detail in the darker sections of the tree.

In the second set, the edges of the flower petals appear sharper on the vivo, which also preserves colors closer to the original.

Next, since both phones can capture images at full 50MP resolution, it’s worth comparing how they fare. Both serve roughly similar images in terms of sharpness, especially at 1x. However, at 5x, some artificial sharpening becomes visible on the vivo, likely because of the digital zoom on top of its natural 3x zoom. Upon zooming closer, you can see jagged lines that are telltale of AI regeneration. While the Pixel lacks those effects, the image doesn’t appear any sharper, which is a bit disappointing for a 5x sensor.

If I were to use the shots just for social media, I would probably still choose the vivo, despite its AI-regenerated images.

At higher zoom levels, both phones use AI to reconstruct blurry or out-of-focus parts of the image. The effect becomes much more noticeable as you zoom closer. As a result, neither phone truly impresses.

Again, your level of acceptance may differ from mine, but I would rather stick to using 50MP shots and cropping them rather than zooming in.

Despite lacking detail in zoomed-in shots, the vivo X300 FE has a distinct advantage in long-range photos, and I’ll detail them in a dedicated section below.

Portraits & night

One area where the vivo X300 FE leads is its use of the right sensor for portraits. While portraits taken with the primary sensors on both phones, at 1x and 2x, are passable, the one shot that truly stands out is the 3x portrait from the vivo. It’s evidently sharper than the rest of the images in the lot below and captures my face’s textures more accurately.

Here, the Pixel limits your ability to capture portraits to just the primary sensor, not utilizing the 5x telephoto. Even if it did, it would make little sense because it would require you to stand farther away than the vivo’s 3x.

Additionally, I also see the Pixel adding a cool undertone to the colors, whereas the vivo sticks to natural tones. I will give it to the Pixel for a more uniform background blur, though both phones let you fix it in editing later.

In low light, I saw a surprising trend. Despite expecting the Pixel to benefit from a larger sensor for better-lit shots, I don’t see that translating into better detail. All of the following images, captured with Night Mode and Night Sight on the respective phones, show the vivo leading by a large margin.

While the Pixel captures a brighter sky in the first set of images, the vivo captures the cat’s details better. vivo’s edge in the second comparison is pretty evident, even though both phones used a similar long exposure timer.

Meanwhile, the third set is taken both against the light source and with minimal lighting. Here, the vivo captures the rhino (actually a wood-carved figurine), while the Pixel struggles to focus. The X300 FE also uses AI to reconstruct the titles of the books under the rhino, suggesting it might have used it for other textures, too.

Overall, the vivo X300 FE’s camera better suits my requirements, especially with a more capable telephoto sensor. In my experience, it also consistently served me better for low-light photos across all lenses, and even while zooming, despite the Pixel’s greater zoom.

Added features take vivo’s camera experience up a notch

As I mentioned earlier, the vivo X300 FE shares its DNA with the bigger, more powerful Pro and Ultra variants. This is evident from its support for an external zoom lens, more specifically, the “Zeiss Telephoto Extender Gen 2.” This is the smaller of the two external lenses that also work with the vivo X300 Ultra, and it increases the focal length to the equivalent of 200mm. That’s identical to the first-gen lens launched last year, which my colleague Hadlee Simons put through the paces not once but twice — the second time with the newer X300 Pro.

Much later, Hadlee also noted in his review of the vivo X300 Ultra’s lenses that the smaller 200mm (rightmost in the picture above) offers a much shorter focal length, at about 3 meters. This makes the lens far more versatile and useful, not just for long-range shots but also for excellent portraits.

The only two downsides to this lens are that you must purchase it separately and that it limits the cases you can use with the FE. But if you’re serious about photography and want a handy and reasonably flexible replacement for a camera, this is the way forward. Notably, while other brands also offer external lenses, vivo is the only one that also supports it on a small phone.

Beyond the hardware advantage, the vivo X300 FE also borrows heavily from the heavyweights in terms of the software experience. It gives you the same suite of Zeiss portrait presets, a wide range of LUTs and color filters, with a great degree of control over attributes. All of these features are evidence enough that a team of people passionate about photography has worked on this camera experience.

Like the bigger vivo X300 variants, the FE also offers a Street Photography mode with a less distracting interface and fewer variables, so you can just shoot photos and videos with minimal effort. Effectively, you’re getting the same experience but in a more compact form.

And if the camera alone doesn’t convince you, there are two more reasons why the Pixel 10 Pro feels so repulsive and uninviting in front of the vivo X300 FE.

Google’s Tensor G5 can’t catch a break

Pixels haven’t been particularly good at gaming or overall performance. The Pixel lineup has always used hand-me-down chipsets, which it proudly rebadged as its own custom Tensor SoCs. While that changed with the Pixel 10 Pro’s “custom” Tensor G5, it still uses older specs and continues to suffer from the same heating issues as previous generations.

In numbers, the Pixel 10 Pro’s Tensor G5 falls behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 on the vivo X300 FE across nearly every benchmark. We see a similarly dismal picture for gaming, as compared to other current-gen Android flagships. While phones with even two- to three-generation-old Snapdragon or Dimensity chips can easily hit and sustain 60fps in most graphics-intensive games, such as Genshin Impact, the Pixel barely reaches 40fps during our previous tests.

A plausible reason for Tensor G5’s lackluster performance is its CPU, which is both weaker and dated compared to even the non-Elite Snapdragon 8 Gen 5. Based on these numbers, I didn’t expect the Pixel 10 Pro to deliver stellar performance.

To test my suspicion, I played Zenless Zone Zero (ZZZ), an action RPG with futuristic elements and more cyberpunk-leaning graphics, on both phones for 30 minutes. I set the image and rendering quality to High and the frame rate to 60fps in both cases to push devices to the extreme.

The vivo X300 FE delivered smooth gameplay with barely any lag or stutter. Although the phone got a bit warm, it remained fairly comfortable to hold. Meanwhile, the Pixel felt uncomfortably hot, especially around the frame. The heating also caused extreme jitters and frequent freezes in the game.

Additionally, I recorded the external temperatures using an IR camera, and you can see why that makes the Pixel look less desirable here.

Using a case is likely to aggravate the issue, trapping heat inside and forcing the Pixel to throttle. Speaking of throttling, I couldn’t measure the extent because 3DMark’s Steel Nomad stress test would simply crash on my Pixel 10 Pro, even when I hadn’t upgraded it to Android 17 (which means app compatibility wasn’t the issue). The comparison above also shows the state of the vapor cooling chambers on both devices, which is clearly inferior on the Pixel.

Another aspect that makes the Pixel 10 Pro less favorable for gaming is that its GPU doesn’t support ray tracing. Of course, if you don’t know or don’t care about it much, then it probably shouldn’t bother you as much. But for serious gamers, the Snapdragon chip is the easy recommendation.

After these tests, what truly amazed me was how much the Pixel struggled to deliver just adequately to justify its flagship branding. To put that in context, the vivo X300 FE’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 is technically a step below the topmost “Elite” tier. And since I value performance, I would easily skip the Pixel if I were given the choice now.

Battery and charging remain as annoying as ever

Another domain in which the Pixel lags piteously is its battery life. The Pixel 10 Pro packs a 4,870mAh battery, roughly 25% smaller than the 6,500mAh pack seen on the vivo X300 FE. This smaller capacity can be attributed to Google’s — and other prominent brands’ — reluctance to adopt silicon-carbon batteries, which accommodate more charge in the same space.

The impact of the smaller battery is also observed in day-to-day usage. A full charge on a vivo X300 FE lasts nearly two days of moderate usage. The Pixel 10 Pro, meanwhile, can’t make it past the evening on most days, and the recent updates could be partly to blame. With the Pixel, I really dread having to step outside to shoot photos or videos, because I’m almost certain to end up with battery anxiety after just two to three hours. During that time, the battery drops to 50% and sometimes more, depending on the ambient temperature. None of that is a concern with the vivo X300 FE.

Playing the same HDR video at 200 nits of brightness, set precisely with a lux meter, consumes almost 6% of the vivo X300 FE’s battery, while the Pixel 10 Pro nosedives by 10%. Remember the gaming comparison above? The vivo’s battery percentage dropped by a mere 9%, while the Pixel plummeted by 20%.

While the battery continues to be unappealing, formidable almost, charging speeds further hold the Pixel 10 Pro. My colleague Robert Triggs addressed this deficit in a recent post, noting slow charging speeds as the chief reason preventing him from switching back to a Pixel 10 Pro XL. What truly baffles me is that despite the claimed 35W peak charging speed, the Pixel 10 Pro barely ever hits those promised rates. Instead, it hovers around the 25W mark, with the Pixel’s heating woes slowing it even further, stretching the time to fully charge the phone to almost 1.5 hours.

The vivo, on the other hand, gets 90W fast charging, which charges the bigger battery in well under an hour. What’s even better is that a quick 10-minute top-up on the vivo gives you about 15% more battery, which, if used reasonably, should add roughly three hours of backup. I can’t imagine the Pixel 10 Pro, which gains about 10% battery in 10 minutes, delivering more than two.

Another notable point is that, despite a noticeably larger battery, the vivo X300 FE weighs about 20 grams less than the Pixel 10 Pro, and it does so while using equally premium and durable materials. This is crucial for me, as a lower weight aligns with my requirement to use a smaller phone.

The vivo X300 FE is better in aspects that matter

Not so long ago, smartphone brands, particularly those of Chinese origin, were obsessed with increasing the size of Android phones’ displays. It wasn’t until recently that brands, including OnePlus, OPPO, and vivo, have turned their attention back to smaller phones, tapping a market previously dominated mainly by Apple, while Google and Samsung held smaller shares.

The renewed interest has led to some truly exciting devices, and easily one of the most exciting options is the vivo X300 FE. It offers many of the features you would otherwise find restricted to much bigger phones. These include a reliable gaming experience, a dependable camera, a battery that doesn’t die in a single day, and superfast charging. Add to that the convenience of an external lens that makes the camera even more capable.

The only reason I feel Pixel survives this battle is that vivo’s phone doesn’t sell everywhere the Pixel does. Currently, the vivo X300 FE is available only in Asia and select European markets, including Spain, Hungary, Austria, and Russia. Getting the lens separately may be difficult, but vivo is bundling it with the phone (which alone costs 999 euros), along with a smartwatch and some other accessories for 1,200 euros ($1,360). You would be out of luck trying to find the X300 FE in the US, and even if you do, its chances of working with a North American carrier are negligible. And that’s the only area where Pixel wins.

Everywhere else, as I’ve demonstrated above, the Pixel 10 Pro loses miserably to the vivo X300 FE.