Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) stand out among various metal-ion batteries as promising new energy storage devices due to their excellent safety, low cost, and environmental friendliness. However, the booming development of portable electronic devices and new-energy electric vehicles demands higher energy and power densities from LIBs, while the current commercial cathode materials are difficult to meet the new requirements for battery performance in emerging markets owing to their low theoretical capacities. Vanadium oxides, for their abundant reserves, low cost, and high capacity, are considered to be strong candidates for anode materials for next-generation lithium-ion batteries. In this work, we firstly briefly summarize the research progress of traditional cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, followed by an overview of vanadium oxides as potential cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries, and we distill, categorize, and summarize the efforts that have been carried out on vanadium oxides in recent years. In the end, based on the advantages and disadvantages of vanadium oxide materials, several reasonable outlooks on their future research directions, challenges, and modification methods are proposed according to the current research status to satisfy the needs of both basic research and practical applications.