Oppo’s Find X series have improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, but there was always something that held one back from making an unqualified recommendation. With the Find X9 Pro, that changes…and how! You get an insane camera setup with Hasselblad tuning, a battery that demands a double-take, hardware that checks every box on a tech enthusiast’s wish list, and all of these come together to rock the apple cart of how much more you can expect at its price. Is the hype real?
Gone are the distinctive large circular camera arrangement and slim edges of old, replaced by flat edges and a squircular camera island that’s neater but has the effect of making the design somewhat staid and reminiscent of the OnePlus 15. It’s a standard iPhone-esque slab design almost, down to the presence of the Snap Key and Quick Button, the former customizable for switching between ring profiles or launching the AI Mind Space app (among others) and the latter to launch and operate the camera. In a year that saw ultra-thin phones, the X9 Pro is happier in its thicker skin – at 8.3mm thick and 224 grams, it is a handful, although the smoothed edges of the frame make it comfortable to hold. No scrimping on durability, with an IP69 rating and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.
On the front is a 10-bit, Full HD+ resolution 6.78-inch AMOLED display that, save for the slightly lower resolution, does it all – 1-120Hz refresh rate, 3600nits peak brightness/1nit lowest, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ content, plus a snappy ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner. But it’s under the hood where the X9 Pro surprises, with the all-new MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chipset paired with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512GB of UFS 4.1 storage, a combination that goes toe-to-toe with the Qualcomm and Apple chips in this year’s flagship devices. On gaming and everyday performance, the phone doesn’t miss a beat, whether you’re recording 4K video or playing games like Genshin Impact or BGMI, and the vapor chamber cooling system does well to keep temperatures down and performance consistent over longer durations. ColorOS 16 is refined, with useful AI features – AI Mind Space for taking/analyzing screenshots/notes/voice memos, writing/summarisation, transcription etc – but there are many pre-installed apps which take the shine off the experience.
Yet, the bragging rights are reserved for the massive 7,500mAh battery, packed into a form factor slimmer than the iPhone 17 Pro models (typically around 5000mAh) – a battery this capacious guarantees two days of use between charges, and even on a heavier day, one didn’t need to reach for the charger till well past a sane bedtime. A larger battery doesn’t come at the cost of fast charging, and you still get 80W wired charging that goes from dead to full in 1.5 hours…plus 50W AirVOOC wireless charging with the proprietary charger. No built-in magnets for Qi2/MagSafe charging, though.
Yet, you’d get a lot of this in the OnePlus 15 as well, and where Oppo pulls decisively ahead of its stablemate (and the competition) is the cameras. Sample this – the rear camera setup has a 50MP Sony LYT-828 OIS primary sensor, a 50MP ultra-wide sensor, and a 200MP Samsung HP5 periscope telephoto, and all of these have been Hasselblad tuned to (chef’s kiss) perfection. The ultrawide delivers good dynamic range and plenty of detail and accurate colors in good light, but photos are a bit soft in low-light conditions. No such low-light issues on the primary shooter, where there’s plenty of detail across lighting conditions. The telephoto does well till 10x – push it beyond that and the images go a bit soft as image processing algorithms (and questionable AI at extreme levels) try to fill in the details. If you’re telephoto-inclined, might I recommend the optional 3.28X Hasselblad-branded teleconverter kit (₹29,999) that lets you stretch to 20X and 40X zoom levels and fully utilize the power of the 200-megapixel telephoto camera – works beautifully for portraits too, with all that natural bokeh courtesy the add-on lens. One downside, unmounting the teleconverter lens with the slide-on mount plate every time you need to shoot something else is a bit of a hassle, but the results are well worth the effort.
A confident leap forward, the Find X9 Pro is Oppo’s most refined and mature flagship yet, one that does well across all major parameters, and downright excels in some.
Rating: 9/10
Price: ₹1,09,999 (16/512GB)