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Oppo’s Find X9 Ultra has been made in partnership with iconic camera-maker Hasselblad, so it is no shock that the Ultra is geared nearly completely towards passionate photographers. With a set of rear lenses, giant picture sensors, vast apertures and devoted digicam buttons, the X9 Ultra is basically a full digicam bag of drugs, all squashed down right into a telephone physique.
I gave the Find X9 Pro a coveted CNET Editors’ Choice award, and the Ultra takes that successful system and sprinkles in some extra images goodies. I’ve been testing the telephone for a couple of weeks, and there is a lot I like about it. But there are additionally some attention-grabbing choices the corporate has made which are price conserving in thoughts.
I’ll come onto that in a second, however let’s speak pricing first. The telephone is priced at £1,449, making it aggressive with its predominant rival, the Leica Xiaomi Leitzphone — among the best digicam telephones I’ve ever used. The Find X9 Ultra will go on sale in Europe and the UK in May, however it will not be offered within the US. (For reference, that value converts to round $1,955.)
Let’s begin in an apparent place, then: the digicam.
Oppo Find X9 Ultra: Camera efficiency
There’s a complete casserole of cameras on the again of this factor, together with a 200 megapixel predominant digicam, a 50 megapixel ultrawide, a 200-megapixel telephoto digicam with 3x optical zoom after which a further 50 megapixel telephoto digicam with 10x optical zoom. It’s a powerful array of numbers and in my assessments up to now I’ve been happy with the outcomes.
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Taken with the primary digicam, this picture has lovely, pure tones and spot on publicity.
I’m thrilled to have caught these fisherman on this picture. I shot utilizing the Master mode to regulate the white stability for a hotter tone and giving extra scope to barely brighten it in put up.
The customary photograph mode does not at all times come out to my liking. This shot is cold-looking, with a magenta colour solid. The publicity and particulars look good although.
The coolness stays after I change to the ultrawide lens. I’d wish to heat this scene up, as a photographer, and I’m glad that the telephone gives such a complete suite of instruments, so I can alter as a lot as required.
This inside shot of Santu espresso roastery in Edinburgh appears rather more pure utilizing the usual digicam mode. The publicity stability is nice as nicely.
But I additionally favored getting a bit extra artistic, taking handbook management with a purpose to lean into the hotter yellow tones and underexposing the scene to stress the beams of sunshine coming in from the overhead home windows.
There are quite a lot of presets that purpose to present your photos one thing of a filmic vibe, however I discover them overpowering. I want there was an choice to tone down the quantity of the impact that is being utilized.
Taken with default settings on the primary digicam. This shot is okay, so I needed to see how it will fare utilizing one of many presets.
Again, I do not love the end result. It appears too unnatural to my eye — extra like a fast filter you’d apply on Instagram than one thing you’d count on from a pro-level digicam. My recommendation? Shoot in uncooked and add your individual colour firming in Lightroom.
I’ve discovered although that there may be an quantity of “bloom” round areas of excessive distinction in some photos.
This shot of croissants appears crisp at first.
But there is a particular haziness round some particulars once you search for shut. This has nothing to do with focus, or the mist impact that may be utilized. It’s not the one instance I’ve discovered.
Zooming in on the small print of this lighthouse, there is a faint haze noticeable on the left edge. It’s pretty minor, particularly once you have a look at the entire picture, however it’s one thing I wish to look into additional.
At first I assumed the bloom was resulting from a haze impact that may be turned on, however I checked and it is not. I additionally discovered the identical ends in the conventional digicam mode and within the Master mode, which does not apply any further processing results, so I’m undecided whether or not that is one thing to do with the lens high quality or just a software program factor. I’m going to be spending much more time with the telephone over the approaching weeks to actually see the way it fares.
At 6x zoom, this picture appears pin sharp.
And the small print on these roosting pigeons look nice, even when I’ve gone as much as 10x zoom.
Like all digicam telephones, it will probably deal with all of the settings for you, however I usually switched to Master mode for full handbook management over shutter pace, ISO and white stability to present me full management over colours and create the hotter tones I favor. It additionally allowed me to shoot in in DNG uncooked, giving me rather more flexibility relating to picture modifying. Oppo additionally says that Master mode makes use of completely no generative AI — whether or not as a part of noise discount or sharpening — so professional photographers can relaxation assured that the pictures they’re taking are genuinely what was captured in entrance of them.
There’s additionally quite a lot of filmic presets, which I do not particularly love as they give the impression of being a bit heavy-handed for my tastes. It’s a disgrace you are not capable of flip down the impact of every one to go well with preferences. I largely used the black and white mode which labored nice for some high-contrast photographs of my cat.
Giving my cat the “film noir” therapy.
Its predominant rival is the Leitzphone, made in partnership with Leica and Xiaomi. On paper, the Leitzphone has a couple of key victories over the Oppo. For one, it makes use of a bigger predominant picture sensor that employs fancy new LOFIC know-how which guarantees higher dynamic vary from a single picture. Oppo claims that its sensor will obtain related outcomes, however I do assume Oppo may have pushed the boat out a bit extra right here.
The Leitzphone additionally gives the primary steady zoom, utilizing precise transferring parts to attain a lossless zoom throughout a spread, reasonably than merely leaping between mounted focal lengths. Again, it looks like Xiaomi is making a much bigger splash with its new know-how than Oppo is managing. The Leitzphone has confirmed itself to be an astonishingly succesful digicam telephone and I’ve been blown away by the shots I’ve been able to take with it.
However, I’ll reserve full judgement on the differences in camera quality for the full review, when I’ll be able to take a lot of images side by side. There will also be a camera grip, with additional battery and external camera controls, along with an attachable telephoto zoom lens — similar to the one I used with the X9 Pro, only even longer zoom — but this wasn’t available at the time of writing.
Oppo Find X9 Ultra: Design and display
I like the look of the phone. With its stark metal and leatherette design, it’s clearly trying to emulate the aesthetics of Hasselblad’s X2D cameras and I think it achieves it well. There’s certainly a family resemblance — especially with the orange camera button on the side, which closely mimics the vibrant orange Hasselblad uses on its camera shutter buttons.
The display is large, vibrant and bright enough for easy outdoor use.
It feels good in your hand and its IP69 rating means you won’t need to be afraid to take more photos during the rain. The camera grip should help as it’ll give the phone ergonomics more akin to a compact camera, much like I found with the camera grip on Xiaomi’s 15 Ultra. I’m looking forward to trying it out and using the phone like any other camera.
The 6.82 inch display is bright and vibrant. It has a variable 1 to 144Hz refresh rate and its 10-bit color depth means you’ll see exceptionally accurate colors. I found it great for gaming and watching youTube videos, as well as for editing photos in Adobe Lightroom.
Oppo Find X9 Ultra: Processor, software and battery
Powering the phone is the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, along with 12GB of RAM on my review model (although a 16GB variant will be available in “some markets”). It feels extremely potent, with no delays while navigating the interface and games like Genshin Impact being handled perfectly well at max settings. On benchmark tests, it delivered high scores on par with other top-end flagships with the same chip.
There’s a lot of nonsense preinstalled on the phone.
It runs Android 16 at its core with Oppo’s Color OS over the top, which I like as it doesn’t really change much of the core Android experience. Whether you’re an Android veteran or if it’s your first time using an Android phone you won’t struggle to get to grips with it. It’ll receive five major software updates in its lifetime and will receive six total years of security updates. That’s a year behind Samsung or Google but it’s a fair amount and still means this phone will be safe to use at least until 2032.
What bugs me is the variety of pre-installed apps like Amazon, Amazon Music, AliExpress, LinkedIn, Netflix, Temu, something called Joybuy and various others. Then there’s the wide variety of Oppo’s own apps like Game Assistant, Zen Space and its own app market and theme store. It makes the phone feel cluttered before you’ve installed a single thing of your own and it cheapens the experience.
I see this a lot on Android phones, but often it’s worse at a budget level, where companies are clearly making a bit of extra money from these companies by installing their apps as standard. I don’t mind it so much on budget phones as it feels like it’s almost ad-supported and you’re getting the phone for less as a result (whether or not that’s actually the case). But on a premium phone with a price tag to match seeing all this stuff installed the first time you turn it on irks me. Sure, you can just uninstall whatever you don’t want, but the point is you shouldn’t have to.
The orange camera shutter button echoes the orange shutter button seen on Hasselblad’s real cameras.
The phone runs on a 7,050-mAh silicon carbon battery which put in some great scores on our battery benchmark tests. After one hour of YouTube streaming at max resolution and screen brightness, it had only dropped from full to 99% and was down to just 91% after the third hour. That’s up there with the best we’ve tested including the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the OnePlus 15.
With everyday use you absolutely won’t struggle to get a full day from it. On days when I was out using the camera constantly with the screen at full brightness I did notice it dropped faster, but even so I wasn’t worried about running out of juice before getting home. I’ll be doing more testing here as part of the full review. It supports 100W wired charging with a compatible SuperVOOC charger and 50W wireless charging.
Oppo Find X9 Ultra: Should you buy it?
The design of this phone both looks and feels premium. Both its processor and battery life delivered superb scores in our tests. So far, so good. But it’s the camera that’s the real story here. Its multiple lenses are capable of taking great-looking images in a variety of conditions, with enough manual control for pro or enthusiast photographers to really sink their teeth into.
I have early reservations about the camera — the lens softness requires a deeper look — and I’m a bit disappointed that Oppo hasn’t pushed its tech further to compete with the Leitzphone’s larger image sensor, LOFIC technology or continuous zoom. Nor does it have the Leitzphone’s quirky control ring on the front.
It’s a meaty camera setup.
On paper it feels like Xiaomi and Leica are working that bit harder to woo truly passionate photographers but I’ll leave the final verdict between these imaging Goliaths until I’ve been able to take enough side-by-side comparisons.
For now though, I’m impressed enough by what I’ve seen to say this phone is certainly worth a look. The big question will come down to price. If it can undercut the wildly expensive Leitzphone by enough, that’ll be a big tick in its favor.
This page was created programmatically, to read the article in its original location you can go to the link bellow:
https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/as-a-pro-photographer-ive-loved-using-oppos-find-x9-ultra/
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