iQOO Z7 Pro Review : Speed thrills with design skills

iQOO Z7 Pro is a proper iQOO smartphone. We get a superb price-to-performance ratio, we get a good camera setup, very good battery and to sweeten all of that, we get a beautiful design with the curved glass on front and back.

So iQOO is back with another smartphone in the Z-series. The iQOO Z7 Pro is the latest smartphone in the company’s cheapest line of products. The Z7 Pro, however, is at the top of this Z-series pyramid and succeeds the iQOO Z6 Pro from last year.

But is the iQOO Z7 Pro a good upgrade over its predecessor? Is the smartphone actually as good a performer as the brand is claiming it to be? Is there more to the newly-launch sub-₹25,000 than just the sleek looks and curved display? Let’s find out in my review of the iQOO Z7 Pro.

iQOO Z7 Pro: Design

So the design of the iQOO Z7 Pro is fantastic. The smartphone is super slim, very lightweight, and has a premium looking curved display and back panel. The smartphone looks very good and is very handy. We got the Lagoon Blue colour for this review, and I quite like how the iQOO Z7 Pro looks in this colour. There is a blue colour at the bottom, which fades into white as you move up, giving a nice sky-like feel to this back panel. 

As mentioned, the iQOO Z7 Pro is also very lightweight and slim. During my review, I weighed the iQOO Z7 Pro at 194 grams, and the smartphone is just 7.36mm thin, making it very handy and pocketable. Not only does it work towards making the smartphone pocketable and handy, the slim and light profile also makes holding the smartphone for longer easy. Like even during hour-long gaming sessions, this won’t make you uncomfortable since it is easy to rest the smartphone on your pinky finger.

The frame of the smartphone is plastic, but with a metal finish, which adds to the premium look. Further, the camera module is placed on the top left corner of the back panel, holding the dual cameras, and the aura light flash placed right next to the camera cutouts.

The iQOO Z7 Pro 5G, in my opinion, is one of the better looking smartphones out there. It looks super premium, has a different and fun colour (there is also a black option for those who like basics), it is light, it is slim, and best of all, we also get IP52 water resistance which saves the iQOO Z7 Pro from minor splashes of water.

iQOO Z7 Pro: Display

Coming to the display, this is where iQOO has been doing surprisingly well, at least in terms of colour accuracy. Yes, this 6.78-inch AMOLED panel isn’t the most vibrant out there, but in terms of representing colours as they are in real life, the iQOO Z7 Pro is pretty good. The smartphone showcased good colour accuracy and with the 120Hz refresh rate, the display also feels very responsive and slick.

Coming to brightness, we tested it using a Lux Meter, and the iQOO Z7 Pro showed a maximum luminance of 847 nits, which is pretty good for any smartphone. Now, while the brightness is good in terms of the numbers it puts out, I found the sunlight visibility to be a bit low. In very bright sunlight, the screen looked kind of dull and wasn’t feeling very vibrant. The minimum brightness using the Lux Meter came out to be just 7 nits.

Since iQOO has used an AMOLED panel, we get punchier colours and darker blacks all around. The colours are accurate. I put this to test to a colour checker test and the iQOO Z7 Pro showcased fantastic colour accuracy with an average DeltaE of 2.0 in the RGB colour profile. In the greyscale test also, the smartphone showed a good RGB balance, tracking a Gamma of 2.2, which is very good for a smartphone, since mobile displays are tuned towards Gamma 2.2.

Overall, this is a very good display on the iQOO Z7 Pro. It is accurate in colour, it is responsive and vibrant. Just the sunlight visibility is not as good as I expected it to be, but that is something many people can easily get over.

iQOO Z7 Pro: Performance

Coming to performance, the iQOO Z7 Pro comes with a special focus on performance. Of course, this is an iQOO phone so the major focus is on performance and gaming. In terms of performance, the smartphone remains true to its price-to-performance DNA. We get a MediaTek Dimensity 7200 chip paired with up to 8GB of RAM. Now, this is a ₹22,000 smartphone and it comes with a 4nm chipset. Before even testing it, I knew that the iQOO Z7 Pro will be one of the most powerful smartphone in this range.

That guess was spot on, as the smartphone scored an impressive 713216 points on AnTuTu, coming ahead of much more expensive products like the OnePlus Nord CE 3, the Moto Edge 40, Realme 11 Pro+ and the likes. On Geekbench, the iQOO Z7 Pro beats these smartphones in the single-core test, but in the multi-core test, the iQOO Z7 Pro comes behind the Moto Edge 40 and the OnePlus Nord CE 3. Furthermore, in other CPU-based tests, the iQOO Z7 Pro, as usual, performed well. Not the best in sub-₹30k smartphones, but right up there with some of the most powerful in this bracket.

Coming to GPU-based tests, the iQOO Z7 Pro again beats smartphones like the OnePlus Nord CE 3, Moto Edge 40, Realme 11 Pro+, and the likes. 

The storage on the smartphone, however, took me by surprise. The speeds are slow as compared to most smartphones in this range. This basically means that the smartphone is good in terms of multitasking and gaming and all the heavy lifting, but the data transfer speeds aren't as impressive as other performance aspects where the iQOO Z7 Pro excels.

Coming to day-to-day usage, as expected, the iQOO Z7 Pro is snappy. The smartphone doesn’t lag, doesn’t slow down, there are no frame drops while gaming, and you can open as many apps as possible without worrying about the memory since the RAM management is also pretty good. The best part about the iQOO Z7 Pro is the thermal management. The smartphone doesn’t heat up even after long gaming sessions. The longest gaming session I had on the iQOO Z7 Pro was about an hour, and the smartphone didn’t heat up at all. Impressive, given the slim 7.36mm profile of the smartphone.

iQOO Z7 Pro: Battery

On the iQOO Z7 Pro, we get a 4,600mAh battery with support for 66W fast charging. The battery, while looking small on paper, isn’t bad at all on this smartphone. Here, we get iQOO’s software optimisation towards gaming with the Monster mode and the likes, so while gaming, the smartphone is able to save battery. For example, during a 15-minute gaming session on Call of Duty Mobile, the iQOO Z7 Pro only lost 4 percent of its battery.

In the video loop test, the iQOO Z7 Pro lasted a good 850 minutes or more than 14 hours constantly. This is great backup, especially for a 4,600mAh unit, which seems less on paper but beats many 5,000mAh battery smartphones in our tests. The charging is also good as the 66W speed fills up the iQOO Z7 Pro in just over 45 minutes. 

iQOO Z7 Pro: Camera

So for the camera testing, I was one of the few lucky ones to be invited by iQOO to Goa for testing this smartphone’s cameras. During my testing, the more photos I clicked with this phone, the more impressed I became with how nicely iQOO has tuned the cameras. The photos in good lighting conditions are sharp, the details are nice, and the photos are able to represent colours quite accurately.

Further, the dynamic range on these photos is very good. During my review, I was also using the recently-launched Vivo V29e from the sister company and to my surprise, the photos from the iQOO Z7 Pro showcased better dynamic range. The photos are nice and vibrant, and most of the times, the smartphone captures amazing shots.

This time around, iQOO has also given some other features like Camera Panning and low light portraits, which gave a slight hint of Vivo’s camera smarts spilling over to iQOO (not complaining at all).

During my time with this camera, I really missed an ultra-wide angle shooter. Now, I get that the company had to keep the price in check, but given the scenic location I was testing this camera at, I really wished there was a wide angle lens.

Overall, this is very good camera performance. I’m sure buyers of the iQOO Z7 Pro will like what the smartphone has to offer. Yes, the images are more on the vibrant side, but the details remain intact most of the time. Yes, at times there is a halo effect around lights at night, but it can be fixed with a bit of effort. Yes, there is no wide angle lens, but all these issues are minor, given just how good the images in decent lighting conditions are. 

iQOO Z7 Pro: Verdict

To conclude, the iQOO Z7 Pro is a proper iQOO smartphone. We get a superb price-to-performance ratio, we get a good camera setup, very good battery and to sweeten all of that, we get a beautiful design with the curved glass on front and back. 

Now, there are shortcomings. The display struggles with sunlight visibility despite showing good numbers on the Lux Meter. There is no wide-angle lens, and this time around we have seen bloatware make it to iQOO smartphones so that is never good. But despite all this, the iQOO Z7 Pro does what it is supposed to, and does it gracefully.