Oppo Find X9s review: Nearly flagship with impressive all-round performance

This year, Oppo added a new smartphone to its flagship Find X series with the Oppo Find X9s model, which offers premium features without the hefty flagship price. Alongside this model, the series includes Find X9 and Find X9 Pro, both launched in the high-end smartphone market. 

Priced at Rs 79,999, the Oppo Find X9s offers a Hasselblad-tuned triple rear camera setup, MediaTek Dimensity 9500s processor, a crisp 1.5K AMOLED display, and a massive battery. However, similar to its flagship sibling, the Find X9s remains a camera-focused smartphone, making it the perfect choice for users who prefer a flagship-grade camera but at an affordable price. But is it worth buying?

We have been testing the Oppo Find X9s for a couple of weeks to test its camera, day-to-day performance, user experience, and more to see if it's worth spending around Rs 80,000 or if the smartphone offers enough value. Here’s a deep dive into Oppo Find X9s.

Oppo Find X9s: Design and display

In terms of design, the Oppo Find X9s is the exact replica of the standard Find X9 model in terms of size, weight, camera module design, and other aspects. The smartphone offers a flat design and impressive durability features such as IP66, IP68, and IP69 ratings for water and dust resistance, Gorilla Glass 7i protection, and an aerospace-grade aluminium frame.

The smartphone also has a promising in-hand feel with its balanced weight distribution and premium build quality. The Find X9S weighs 202 grams and measures 7.99mm in thickness, which is decent. The brand also offers impressive colour variants: Midnight Grey, Lavender Sky, and Sunset Orange. Overall, the Oppo Find X9s design is clean and subtle, and looks very premium.

On the front, the Oppo Find X9s features a 6.59-inch Full-HD+ LTPS AMOLED display that offers a 120Hz refresh rate, and up to 1800nits HBM. The smartphone size strikes the perfect balance between usability and entertainment, offering enough space for content consumption while remaining easy to handle.

In terms of viewing experience, the smartphone offered an excellent experience with crisp visuals, punchy colours, and detailed clarity. It supports HDR content on Netflix, making every movie and series feel vibrant and lifelike. It also offers promising brightness for seamless outdoor visibility, ensuring content stays clear and easy to read.

The display also offers smooth responsiveness across UI and apps, thanks to the 120Hz adaptive refresh rate technology. Overall, the Oppo Find X9s is well-rounded when it comes to offering premium design and display experiences. 

Oppo Find X9s: Camera

The Oppo Find X9s features a triple camera setup that consists of a 50MP main camera with a Sony LYT-700 sensor, a 50MP telephoto lens with a Sony LYT-600 sensor, offering up to 3x optical zoom, and a 50MP ultrawide camera. In terms of camera performance, the smartphone delivers promising results without any major weaknesses.

In daylight conditions, the primary sensor captures stunning images with impressive details and a wide dynamic range. Colours also remained vibrant, but not in a way that images look saturated. Highlights and shadows are also well-balanced, as bright areas such as clouds or the sky don't become overly bright or washed out; at the same time, shadows don't lose detail.

The ultrawide camera also captures impressive images, maintaining the clarity, colours, and white balance. However, it's low light performance seemed average. Coming to its telephoto lens performance, it also delivers impressive image quality with sharp detail and consistent colour. Oppo's partnership with Hasselblad continues to have a noticeable impact in portrait photography, as it does a good job reproducing natural-looking skin tones.

Another impressive highlight is the 32MP selfie camera that produces impressive results, offering natural skin tones and bright results, making social media worthy. 

Oppo Find X9s: Performance and software

The Oppo Find X9s is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9500s processor paired with up to 12 GB LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB UFS 4.1 storage. While it may not be a flagship-grade chip, it sure delivers a reliable performance with day-to-day usage. The smartphone handles social media browsing, video streaming, web surfing, and multitasking effortlessly, without any stutter or lag.

Switching between multiple apps also remains smooth and responsive, and it handles casual gaming without any frame drops. We tested with gaming titles BGMI and Call of Duty: Mobile, and the experience was mostly enjoyable, but a longer duration caused slight heat as well as frame drops. But you can play games at lower to moderate graphics settings.

From the software front, the Find X9s supports ColorOS 16 based on Android 16, and the experience remained smooth and clutter-free. However, you’ll find several similar features from Samsung’s OneUI and Apple’s iOS, like the new Live Space feature, Live Updates, and the new iOS-like camera app. In addition, it also offers several AI-powered features, such as AI Mind Space, AI App Organisation, AI Eraser, Master Cut Video Editor, and more. 

Oppo Find X9s: Battery

The Oppo Find X9s is backed by a massive 7,025mAh battery that supports an 80W SuperVOOC wired fast charging. In terms of day-to-day usage, the smartphone easily lasts a full day on a single charge with heavy usage that includes casual gaming, multitasking, browsing, media consumption, social media scrolling, music running in the background, and others. The charging time is impressively fast, it takes about 45 minutes to fully charge the device from 1 to 100%, making it an ideal option who often charge devices at the last moment.

Oppo Find X9s: Verdict

Oppo Find X9s fits in the sweet spot when it comes to offering an ideal screen size, impressive display, dependable battery life, performance that satisfies between day-to-day usage, and more. The Hasselblad-tuned cameras remain the biggest highlight of the package, its primary, telephoto, and portrait performance is quite impressive, making it a compelling option for photography enthusiasts. 

The MediaTek Dimensity 9500s processor is more than capable of handling everyday tasks and casual gaming, although heavy gamers may notice occasional heating and frame drops during extended sessions. 

At Rs 79,999, the Oppo Find X9s is positioned on the higher end in terms of pricing. It majorly focuses on offering a balanced experience with cameras at its core. Therefore, if you priorities include photography, design, and smooth day-to-day performance without crossing the Rs 1 lakh mark, the Oppo Find X9s is easy to recommend. However, users seeking top-tier gaming performance may find better alternatives in this price bracket.