Most brands shy away from the sub-10k budget segment simply because the compromises needed to design a phone fit for purpose are pretty extensive. But after launching multiple T series phones this year, vivo has just come out with the all-new T4 Lite, which features a 90Hz display, the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chip, and a 50MP Sony camera—all for just INR 9,999.

I had the opportunity to test out the vivo T4 Lite for a week. And in this review, I’ll share my experience of using the phone in everyday life, which should hopefully help you decide if it’s worth shelling out the money for.

Design & Hardware

When making a phone with such a tight budget, design isn’t the top priority, as there are many more important things to focus on. However, this isn’t the case with the T4 Lite, which, in the Titanium Gold color, looks pretty neat. The design is premium, and the way light shimmers on the back makes using the T4 Lite an eye-catcher in every way.

Plus, the positioning of the dual camera module mimics that of much more expensive vivo phones, which adds to the premium touch.

Similarly, I quite liked the plastic sides since they are both good-looking and protect the device from drops. However, I would advise using the included case, as dropping the phone can scuff up the sides. The sides also house the fingerprint scanner, which works as expected, though not as fast as I’ve seen from other makers.

Display

The vivo T4 Lite features a 6.74-inch HD+ LCD panel with a 90Hz refresh rate. For the money, there isn’t much to complain about. The display is serviceable in almost every condition, reproduces good-looking colors, and makes for a decent media experience.

On the other hand, the outdoor visibility was somewhat less desirable, as the panel wasn’t entirely visible when exposed to direct sunlight. Nevertheless, if you just need the phone to work or study, it’s totally okay.

Performance

vivo T4 Lite comes with MediaTek’s new Dimensity 6300 chipset, which features two high-performance Cortex-A76 cores clocked at up to 2.4 GHz and six power-efficient Cortex-A55 cores clocked at up to 2.0 GHz, along with the ARM Mali-G57 MC2 GPU. My unit also came with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB UFS 2.2 storage.

I recently reviewed the OPPO K13x, which includes the same processor, and performed pretty decently. Unfortunately, the vivo T4 Lite falls a bit short, as I’ve noticed hitches and lag in everyday tasks. There was a slight delay with almost every task, whether opening apps, navigating the UI, or taking pictures.

The 90Hz refresh rate also fluctuated sometimes, which became a major distraction. That said, it’s important to mention that the performance of the T4 Lite is not bad by any means.

Benchmarks & Gaming

To put the Dimensity 6300 through its paces, I also ran a series of benchmarks. In Geekbench, the device scored 899 in the single-core and 2344 in the multi-core tests. On the other hand, in AnTuTu, the phone scored 676777 points.

Coming to gaming, I played a bit of BGMI and CODM on the T4 Lite, and the experience was okayish. At Smooth and Ultra settings, the gameplay was not ideal, with dropped frames in high-intensity areas.

Battery Life & Charging

Battery life is the strongest point of the T4 Lite, all thanks to the massive 6,000 mAh cell. Paired with the mid-range processor, the device easily lasted two days on a single charge. To put this in perspective, the days included taking multiple camera samples, playing a few rounds of BGMI, and scrolling social media.

When it was finally time to recharge, the included fast charger took the battery from 20% to 80% in just around 90 minutes. A full charge can be done in 150 minutes.

Cameras

In terms of optics, the T4 Lite houses a 50MP Sony IMX852 main camera sensor with an f/1.8 aperture. While you also get a 2MP bokeh lens, it is of little use and serves primarily an aesthetic purpose. The picture quality in daylight was pretty good. There were enough details, the colors looked accurate, and there was some HDR too. The portrait performance was also decent, with a natural depth of field and colors.

Unfortunately, the quality falls off a cliff at low light. The shots have a lot of grain, the sharpness is low, and the colors look washed out. That said, this phenomenon is present with every other budget phone and isn’t exclusive to the T4 Lite.

Like others, the video is limited to 1080p at 60fps, and the quality is usable in daytime scenarios. As usual, noise is everywhere in artificial and low-lighting scenarios, which hinders the output.

The selfie shooter, on the other hand, was pretty decent with natural colors and a good amount of sharpness. There’s a beauty filter pre-applied, but you can disable it pretty easily.

Should you buy the vivo T4 Lite?

At INR 9,999, the vivo T4 Lite is one of the very budget phones from a big company under the 10K INR segment. And for the price, it gets a lot of things right, like a pretty design, a high-refresh-rate display, decent performance, and good daytime cameras.

Sure, there are some drawbacks too, like the performance hiccups. But if you aren’t coming from a much more expensive phone like mine, you won’t notice the performance dips at all. And that’s why the vivo T4 Lite gets a recommendation from my end.