0:00 Finally, the embargo has come up. The final one that I can give you the full details now on Oppo's flagship ultra phone, so the Find X9 Ultra. I've been using it now just a little over 2 weeks. I got this in China, took a lot of sample footage, over 800 photos and video. So, I've tested this phone out thoroughly, and I'm going to cover in this video all the pros and cons that I've encountered, and why I think this is the ultra phone to go for if you're in the market for the absolute top end. And yes, this phone is global now, finally. So, you don't get much included in the box. And if you missed my unboxing, well, you didn't miss much because we get some paperwork, a type A
0:45 to type C cable, and a SIM tray tool. That's it. There is no super VOOC charger and no case. So, take a look at our design, the build. So, screen here is with well, reasonably slim bezels. We've got a 50-megapixel camera there at the front, capable of 4K 60 maximum, 4K 32 as well with that. And I found that in general, the UI here, this is ColorOS that it is running, based off Android 16, is very fast and fluid uh most of the time. I have occasionally seen like a little tiny bit of an animation uh slight hiccup. So, it isn't quite perfect, and I'm sure with firmware updates, they're going to improve upon that. But it is a build quality that I am very fond of,
1:31 the look of this phone here. Now, it does weigh 235 g. We have what they call a eco leather. In fact, it's a synthetic leather here, so like your your fake leather. Gives it a good texture, some nice grip. And what I love about it is it resists fingerprints, so you do not see them. You've got your Oppo here, Hasselblad partnership again, of course. And that is all metal here, so it's all out of um an aluminum frame. We have the snap key here that you can dedicate to various different shortcuts. You could launch, for example, AI translations or whatnot. And then the camera button here, too. Location has been tweaked, so I find it to be all right. I'm not accidentally triggering it. And what I have disabled myself personally is I don't like the
2:17 zoom features. So, when I'm in the camera and then using this, it's not going to be doing the zoom for me cuz I found it a little too sensitive, but you can tweak the sensitivity. And yes, you can use it as a two-stage camera button, too, which I'll demonstrate. So, I can tap here and press down just a little bit, it focuses, tap again, and it's going to start recording because, well, I'm in the video mode. But, you get the idea for photo mode, it does the same thing. So, the frame is very nice. It's 8.7 mm if you're not including the camera module. Now, this camera module, it sticks and juts out a little bit. And I've just done a comparison with this, the X300 Ultra from Vivo, and that juts out even further. When you look at them here side by side, you see what I mean.
3:02 That one sticks out a little bit more, even though the frame is thinner, the camera module is sticking out there. Now, when you're using it and you have it down on a table, it's steady, okay? It barely rocks. It's not like my Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which is all over the place. No, this is very good unless you touch it the really at the absolute top there, then you may notice something. So, cameras, of course, let's talk a little bit about them. We have their true color camera, which does detect the light and balances that according to the scenario, the situation, ambient light, and colors and whatnot. We've got an ultrawide 50 megapixels. The star of the show is that 10x optical zoom camera, 50 megapixels, which is impressive they've been able to fit that in. So, you don't need one of those tele extenders to get the 10x
3:48 anymore because it's built right into the Find X 9 Ultra. Main camera 23 mm and that is 200 MP, so not a 1-in sensor. Three times optical is also 200 MP. We've got 8K video recording at 30 frames per second, a first for um Oppo to actually bring that to us, which is really good. Dual tone LED flash. All up, great build quality. Down the bottom here, finally, we've got our type-C port that it does support video out and we have dual nano SIM support there. Loudspeaker loudspeaker microphone and IR on the back of this, too, as well, including IR focus. So, I think it's a good-looking phone. I really do like it. I'm fond of it. So, we can
4:33 shoot 4K 30 and 60 with this front-facing camera in these bright, sunny conditions. It's doing okay. I have noticed that on this first firmware, it can overexpose a little bit and I find it to be sometimes a bit bright, but you are able to go and tweak the exposure and turn that down a little bit and it will save that preset. But, I'm using it at the default settings right now for this review. Rear camera video now, this is the 50 MP ultrawide. It's 14 mm for photo. Again, with video, it does crop in for the electronic image stabilization. Oppo's focused a lot on improving our video quality and giving us more options. So, I'm really happy to see that we now can shoot with uh log and that is also up to 8K 30 frames per second with that log footage. And you can then go and use and apply LUTs to
5:19 grade that yourself. This is now the main 200 MP sensor using optical image stabilization. Very steady, very smooth. And I can go over to our three times. Just look through these trees here to the monastery that is in the distance and the stability is excellent. Very good. This is a six times preset. And now 10 times optical. Very, very good that I'm impressed. And the flexibility of being able to shoot log footage and apply lots later to this is great. And going all the way up to 4K 120 frames per second and 8K 30 frames per second. This is finally the ultra-wide again.
6:05 Now, to criticize one thing that I have noticed is that the transition between the lenses doesn't seem to be as smooth as the X9 Pro, the Find X9 Pro. And this is probably just down to optimization. Hopefully, Oppo can tweak this, as you can see. But, the stability here, very very good. At times, it looks like I'm almost using a tripod. I just do wish that they could improve upon this when you switch over the cameras. Not that I personally do this myself a lot, but I know that others do. Very quick sample now of 8K footage. This is 8K 30 frames per second. So, we have it with the two 200 megapixel cameras. So, that is our main camera and the three times ultra-wide and 10 times optical not supported. So, here I'll go over to the three times now.
6:52 Still 8K. So, you can crop it a bit more. And if you do scale this down to 4K, you'll find you have a little bit more in terms of detail that I've noticed. So, great option. This is the first time that Oppo has given us 8K video. You can also shoot 8K log as well. There is 4K 120 frames per second. So, with this clip here, what I did is filmed it and then slowed it right now down to 30 frames per second. And you can see the results are very good. I think the sharpness is good, better than some other brands. So, if you're anything like me, there's never enough footage, right? So, I have stitched together video of just raw 4K stuff that I shot. All right? So,
7:37 there's no edits. I just simply dropped these clips into the timeline. It's around about 7 minutes long and it'll give you an idea of what is possible in terms of stability, different lighting conditions, and video performance in general of what to expect. So, make sure you do check that out. It is in the channel now live. Don't worry, I've not forgotten about photo samples. So, portraits look very good, great stitching. I like the skin tones and I'm loving these results I'm seeing. Now, we had so many models on the trip and I got some absolutely stunning photos. Everyone did, like this one right here. So, that's 70 mm. Again, 70 mm, so three times zoom, 200 megapixels. Taking it up to then 10 times optical, amazing results. You
8:23 don't even need to use the portrait mode. And I love what Hasselblad is doing, well Oppo and Hasselblad, they're not overdoing the processing. They're trying to keep things natural, skin tones natural, retain detail. So, all of the shots I'm showing you, I didn't use any beautifying at all. And I love this focus. I feel like other brands like Vivo are sometimes overdoing the processing, maybe a little bit of skin smoothing, but Oppo this time around, they're not doing it. Now, I love personally taking a lot of street portraits, street photography style portraits of people, and I'm so pleased with the results that I've got that I'm just really blown away. It's hard to believe some of these photos were taken on a phone. In good lighting conditions, the zoom is phenomenal. So, this is the ultra wide.
9:09 I take it over to the main camera, 23 mm, and then Still so much detail is retained and the colors looking quite good. This is the original preset. So, amazing daytime shots, but yes, it struggles a little bit in lower light conditions as expected, susceptible to any amount of shake or movement. Or if you have a subject like this little chipmunk here that moved around a lot, would often be blurred. So, fast-moving children or animals might be difficult with the 10 times optical zoom camera. But, all up, I am just loving the flexibility of the camera systems here we have with the Find X9 Ultra, and I love the zoom cameras, especially the three times optical. I've taken a lot of
9:54 shots with that. Love the depth of field you do get. And overall, the results, the details, and that lovely-looking bokeh, the background blur. Those zoom cameras, especially the three times optical zoom, are also great for macro shots, as you can see from these examples. The colors are also on point. Master mode is another of the modes that a lot of people probably won't use, but I love the way it handles the shadows, different processing, different mood and feel to it, and it looks more to me like that of, say, a mirrorless camera. So, this is it off. And this is it on now. You can see clearly a difference, and again, this is the master mode off to just the standard original, which looks a bit oversaturated, and then the master mode
10:39 on. See the way the processing is handled, the colors, the contrast. To me, it looks better. And of course, this phone's more than just cameras, but finally, just three more photos after this. Low-light performance very good with what I'm seeing. The weakness is, as I said before, the 10 times optical and maybe a little bit the three, but you can still get some amazing results. If you want to see more camera samples, check out my camera comparisons. There should be two in the channel now with this phone. Oppo doesn't go overboard with the bloatware, either, which is good. So, Color OS global version of this does not have too many apps, and it's quite easy to go into system settings, uninstall, find the bloatware, which is the apps that you just don't want preinstalled,
11:25 uninstall them. Quite straightforward. Now, battery life, you're looking around about a screen-on time of 10 11 hours depending on what you're doing and the settings you're using. So, if you don't use the quad HD plus resolution, drop it down to full HD plus, there's a bit of gain there in the battery. And if you don't use 144 hertz refresh rate, if you want, you can keep it in the adaptive setting and the result will probably be even better than this. But overall, I've been pleased with the battery life in my time testing it out that for some people it will be about 2 days before you need to charge the phone. Now, the AnTuTu score very good. If you like synthetic benchmarks, over 4 million points, excellent result there. And what about throttling? It does throttle. I've seen this before. So, our
12:12 Find X9 Pro that had throttling of around about 50% stability. What Oppo likes to do is lower the throttling point, so it will chop down the turbos, the speed of the processor, so it doesn't get as hot as say some other phones. Other brands like Xiaomi will really push those temperatures and you'll see a higher stability score. So, not amazing, but all of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5s are like this. They're normally all throttling down to 50 to 60% stability there. Uh they are very powerful chips, but also quite hot. It did get up to 48° C and the frame is a little bit uh hot to the touch. It's not unbearable. It's not super uncomfortable, but it gets a
12:57 little bit warm there. Uh you definitely notice it when gaming, which I'll test out later on. Internal storage speeds are really good. Over 4,000 sequential reads and writes. Random access is excellent. Uh zero complaints. Apart from that, we don't have a terabyte version, it seems, of this particular model for the global market. I think in China they will have the terabyte version. I think global's limited to 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. I would love to see a 16-terabyte, 1-terabyte option. So, a synthetic test here of our battery life shows a really good result, 15 hours, which is phenomenal phenomenal. Phenomenal. Then battery life, we have 15 hours and
13:43 2 minutes. Wow, really good. But this is a synthetic looping test down to 20% battery. I configure all the phones to the same brightness in my reviews, so you can compare them and this result is right up there, right up the top. And that's because it does have, well, an efficient chipset and it does have, of course, that Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Battery life, very good. We're looking at 15 hours with a PC Mark synthetic battery life test. So, it's just looping video and other kind of light tasks and this is how we got such a good result. So, you can, in my other reviews, take a look at them and see the similar kind of results. This is chart-topping because it does have a 7,050 mA hour battery. So, it's reasonably large silicon carbon
14:30 battery and it charges in around about 49 to 51 minutes in my testing, depending, of course, when you start to charge. But from about about 10%, you're looking around 52 minutes from here, from 18, 49. And that's 100 W charging with the SuperVOOC charger, which is not included. Uh well, at least not with the box that I got, as I showed you. On to audio now, which the loudspeakers are very good. I'd rate them as a 7.5 out of 10. They're not the best I have heard, they're not the most powerful, but the volume's good, it's up there. Good at bass, mids, treble, good. Uh they are speakers that I would say are possibly, well, I think they're better than the X9 Pro uh from the
15:18 previous model we had, the Pro version. Now, with the Ultra, they seem to have just tweaked them a little bit and the haptics, well, you get short little bursts. So, it's nothing amazing. I found that in the haptics, well, sorry, when in the keyboard here, when typing, you can feel those little short pulses. They could be stronger. I definitely felt a lot better. So, I would rate the haptics as pretty average to be honest, about a six out of 10. They could improve upon that. I guess, you know, they're focusing more on the cameras and other aspects of hardware. It's fine. I think most people will be pretty happy with the haptics. Now, let's get on to a speaker sample. Oh, just before I do, voice calls, they sound absolutely fine like any flagship. There's noise cancellation too there. Here's a sample now at 100% volume and
16:04 you hear that the speakers don't distort. Loudness is good and overall, not bad. Well, this might be a camera-centric phone. It can of course game with that Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 performs really well and this is Wuthering Waves on the absolute top settings here and you will occasionally notice some little frame dips. It's not 100% perfect. You notice it maybe after about 40 minutes and I'm talking very, very minor. In general, really good performance, very smooth, but it won't be the fastest out there for gaming. You can get one of those gaming phones that
16:51 have fans in them to cool them and you get way less thermal throttling and they have a stability score with 3D Mark of about 70%. However, they have absolutely terrible cameras. But here, I think it's a good balance. You get amazing cameras, build quality and generally very good gaming performance. It'll play every game out there with a really good frame rate. So, Oppo's put together here a solid package. The build quality, the features, 10 times periscopic camera with the engineering behind that is one hell of a feat to be able to do that with a 50 megapixel sensor. I know guys in the comments, "Oh, it's not the first 10 times optical zoom flagship." It isn't. But, it is with the sensor size. Now, we have that three times optical zoom camera with 200 megapixels. The
17:37 main while it's 23 mm, I do prefer that for video. For portraits, yes, 35 mm like other flagships is really good. And yes, it's not a 1-in type sensor, but it's a very capable sensor and apparently brighter and more flexible for pretty much everything including video versus the 1-in type sensor that at least I've been told by from Oppo. Ultra wide seems really good. The battery performance seems great. It is looking very good, great screen. I've noticed that it's not perfect. No phone is perfect, especially upon release. Firmware niggles, some little tiny things I've noticed. So, animation as I pointed out can sometimes have a bit of jankiness to it. It's not always as smooth as it should be, especially at 144 frames per second. So, updates
18:22 required. Camera, I've noticed there are some flickering in video in low light, that the focus of 10 times can sometimes have a little bit of an issue or some motion blur to it because it just is very susceptible to any kind of movements and shakes. So, I hope they can improve upon that. And things like exposure being a little bit too much in general I've seen this. But, they're minor things and they're all software. So, with a bit of tweaking, some updates, and some time on their hands, Oppo, I believe their software engineers and their camera engineers can make this thing even better than what I'm showing you right now. But, I am thoroughly impressed with the performance, the features that Oppo's packed into this. They really are excelling and ahead of the competition. Now, if you want to see more on the Find X9 Ultra, check out my
19:09 camera comparison. There's an unboxing video as well. And there's going to be a lot more, so do have a look at those videos. Thank you so much for watching this review of the Oppo Find X9 Ultra.
