Oppo Find X9 Ultra Review: Simply the Best Camera Phone Money Can Buy, If You Can Live With the Weight
The Oppo Find X9 Ultra's five-camera Hasselblad system covers roughly 14–460mm of equivalent reach — independent reviewers have repeatedly called it the best camera phone available, but at 235g it's genuinely large and heavy.
Independent review consensus on the Oppo Find X9 Ultra is about as strong as any phone gets on this site. TechRadar called it "simply the best camera phone ever made." Stuff described it as having "the best zoom setup of any phone out there right now." It's the first Find Ultra to launch properly globally, sitting above the Find X9 Pro and base Find X9 reviewed elsewhere on this site.
Design and Build
Available in Black, White, and Orange (branded Tundra Umber), the Find X9 Ultra takes visible inspiration from Hasselblad camera design — Android Police specifically praised the gunmetal grey chassis and leather-look panels for a genuinely distinctive, camera-like aesthetic rather than another flat-glass slab. The honest, repeated catch across nearly every independent review: at roughly 235g (236g in most colourways, 9.1mm thick) and with a camera module that Beebom Gadgets said makes the phone "quite top-heavy," this is a genuinely large, heavy phone. Trusted Reviews specifically measured it against the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (223g) and Vivo X300 Ultra (232g) and found it noticeably heavier than both — a real trade-off, not an isolated complaint, though most reviewers considered it a worthwhile one given what the phone delivers elsewhere. Durability is a genuine strength worth noting alongside the weight complaint: the phone carries a triple IP66, IP68, and IP69 rating, covering dust, standard submersion, and high-pressure, high-temperature water jets — a more complete durability spec than most rivals bother certifying for. An ultrasonic in-display fingerprint reader and built-in IR blaster round out a genuinely feature-complete hardware package, the latter a small but increasingly rare convenience most 2026 flagships have quietly dropped.
Display
A 6.78-inch LTPO OLED ProXDR panel runs at up to a marketed 3,600 nits peak brightness with 1–120Hz adaptive refresh. Tech Advisor noted the screen is slightly smaller than rivals like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max, but still called it "one of the best out there in terms of quality" — a strong, if not class-leading-on-size, panel. GSMArena's own lab measurements found real brightness a good way under that marketed peak, though still genuinely strong: 840 nits in manual mode, 1,156 nits in auto mode at a 75% pattern (rising to 1,932 nits inside the native Gallery app), and 1,216 to 3,367 nits at a 10% pattern depending on app. NotebookCheck's own review title flags this gap directly as "an overlooked weakness," finding brightness control "somewhat weak in everyday use" relative to the marketed figure — worth knowing even though the panel itself remains one of the better ones on the market. TechRadar also notes a real design trade-off versus the smaller Find X9 Pro: bezels here are "still slim, but nowhere near as impressive" as the Pro's. The 144Hz adaptive refresh rate in supported games is a genuinely rare spec at this tier — TechRadar flags it as an unusual inclusion, even while admitting most people won't consciously notice the difference over a standard 120Hz panel day to day.
Camera
This is where the Find X9 Ultra genuinely separates itself. Five rear cameras cover an unusually wide range: a 200MP main sensor, a 200MP 3x Hasselblad-tuned telephoto, a 50MP 10x periscope telephoto, a 50MP ultrawide, and a dedicated multispectral True Color sensor for accurate colour rendering — together spanning roughly 14–460mm of equivalent optical-quality reach. Digital Camera World called this "the closest phone yet to a real camera in your pocket," and the 50MP 10x telephoto specifically stood out to reviewers as the world's first camera of its kind at this focal length in a phone. TechRadar's testing found essentially no complaints across stills, calling the cameras "the best I've ever tested." Multiple reviews did flag one honest limitation: the main camera's sensor format actually shrank from the previous generation's 1.0-inch to 1/1.12-inch, a trade GSMArena's testing confirmed is offset by the new sensor's higher 200MP resolution and brighter f/1.5 lens, but worth knowing if raw sensor size specifically matters to you. Video is the one genuine, disclosed soft spot on an otherwise stills-dominant camera system — GSMArena's own verdict states footage comes out "soft-ish across the board," not quite matching the phone's still-photography ambitions. The 91mobiles side-by-side comparison against the Vivo X300 Ultra's closest rival telephoto system found the Find X9 Ultra's portraits came out "noticeably brighter" while edging ahead specifically in hair-edge detail — a genuine, measured win in one of the most demanding real-world test scenarios for any telephoto system. The 50MP front camera, upgraded from 32MP last generation, also gained autofocus for the first time, a real, disclosed selfie-quality improvement most competing Ultra-tier phones still lack. The Hasselblad partnership extends beyond hardware into processing philosophy too — 91mobiles describes the resulting colour science as leaning "contrasty and saturated," a deliberate contrast to Vivo's more neutral ZEISS-tuned rendering on the X300 Ultra, genuinely different processing personalities rather than one being objectively more accurate than the other.
Performance
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, paired with 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, delivers exactly the flagship-tier performance this price commands. 9to5Google's review specifically praised the phone as "a speedy experience through and through." Against its two closest direct rivals specifically, GSMArena's own competitive analysis found the launch price of €1,699 undercuts the Vivo X300 Ultra while still sitting above the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra — a middle-of-the-pack position among Ultra-tier flagships rather than either the cheapest or most expensive option in the category.
Raw benchmark numbers back up the everyday snappiness. Notebookcheck's own AnTuTu 11 run had the Find X9 Ultra clear 4 million points — Android Headlines specifically called it the first phone they'd tested to cross that milestone, ahead of even Qualcomm's own pre-launch performance claims for the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 — and GSMArena's own sustained-load CPU test found performance settling at roughly 65% of peak, doing so gradually and predictably rather than in the sudden drops some rivals show. The GPU side of that same stress-test picture is more mixed: GSMArena's own 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Stress Test run found stability falling to around 40%, a genuinely below-average result even by flagship standards, and Notebookcheck's own thermal measurements found real heat to go with it — surface temperatures reaching roughly 49-50°C under maximum sustained load, well above the 33-35°C average Notebookcheck records across the smartphone class generally. None of this is noticeable in typical day-to-day use, since it only surfaces under prolonged, deliberately punishing benchmark loops rather than normal gaming or camera sessions, but it's a real, disclosed trade-off worth knowing if you plan extended high-intensity gaming specifically — a genuine gap between this phone's raw peak power and how long it can hold that peak before backing off.
Software
ColorOS 16 has drawn some genuine, if generally fixable, criticism — Android Police's review noted the software has "some frustrating problems," while adding that these can realistically be addressed in a future update and that not every user will encounter them. Tech Advisor, coming from the similarly-styled Xiaomi 17 Ultra, felt immediately at home with ColorOS's Dynamic Island-inspired design. Oppo has committed to five years of major OS updates, matching the stronger end of current flagship policies, though 91mobiles' own pros-and-cons summary is candid that update policy sits alongside price as one of the phone's two key compromises relative to rivals promising seven years — a real, disclosed gap even though five years is still a genuine improvement on Oppo's own older update commitments. ColorOS 16 also brings a genuinely deep set of camera-adjacent AI tools, from subject removal to AI-assisted colour grading, that reviewers found go noticeably further than the equivalent features on rival Android skins, even if the wider system-level AI push feels less mature than Google or Samsung's equivalents.
Battery and Charging
A genuine 7,050mAh silicon-carbon battery with 100W wired and 50W wireless charging delivered consistently strong results across every review — GSMArena's own lab testing recorded an Active Use Score of 20:10h, with particularly strong video-streaming and web-browsing runtimes, genuinely excellent even though it trails the Find X9 Pro's larger 7,500mAh cell slightly. Real-world charging backs up the marketed figures too: Oppo's own new in-house PowerCore Battery Management Chip, designed specifically for silicon-carbon cells, gets a full charge done in roughly 35-40 minutes. One small, honest gap: Oppo uses its own 50W wireless standard rather than Qi2, meaning no support for magnetic accessories, a real if minor omission Stuff's review specifically flagged. Reverse wired and wireless charging both carry over too, letting the phone top up accessories or a second device in a pinch — a genuinely practical extra given the battery's sheer size. Stereo speakers round out the audio package — GSMArena's own lab measurement gave a "Very Good" -25.6 LUFS loudness score, with clean highs and vocals, though bass came out noticeably lighter than the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Galaxy S26 Ultra in the same test, a real if minor step behind those two specific rivals rather than a weak result outright. Haptics are the more genuine standout of the two: Smartprix's own testing singled out the X-axis vibration motor as some of the best tuning currently available on Android, tightly integrated throughout ColorOS 16 rather than feeling bolted on.
Verdict
GSMTechTok Verdict
The Oppo Find X9 Ultra has earned near-universal praise from independent reviewers as one of the best, if not the best, camera phones currently available — a genuinely unmatched zoom range, strong performance, and excellent battery life. The trade-offs are honest and consistently repeated across every review: this is a large, heavy, top-heavy, and expensive phone, real brightness falls short of the marketed peak in everyday use, video quality trails the excellent stills, and it remains unavailable through official channels in North America. If camera capability is your priority and you can live with the size, it's very difficult to find a better phone — even against its closest direct rival, the Vivo X300 Ultra, GSMArena's own testing gives the Find X9 Ultra a genuine edge specifically on telephoto portrait quality and battery endurance, while sitting at a launch price that undercuts the vivo despite matching or beating it on hardware ambition. For anyone weighing the two, the choice largely comes down to whether Oppo's contrastier Hasselblad colour science or Vivo's more neutral Zeiss tuning better matches your own taste — both represent the current ceiling of what a camera-first flagship can do.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Ultra adds a second, longer 50MP 10x periscope telephoto alongside the Pro's 200MP 3x telephoto, plus a dedicated multispectral True Color sensor for more accurate colour rendering — five rear cameras total versus the Pro's three, covering roughly 14–460mm of equivalent optical-quality zoom range.
No — it's officially available across the UK, Europe, and Asia, including India, but not sold through any official channel in North America. Any US unit is a grey import.
Yes, and every independent review agrees on this: at roughly 235g, it's noticeably heavier than the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (223g) and Vivo X300 Ultra (232g), and reviewers consistently describe it as top-heavy due to the camera module's weight. It's a genuine, repeated trade-off for the camera hardware, not a one-off complaint.
Price history · 90 days · GBP
Find X9 Ultra
Current
£1,449
90d Low
£1,370
20 Jul
90d High
£1,478
2 Oct
Launch price
£1,449
All-time low ↓
Price tracking from major UK retailers. Updated daily. Prices may vary.
How it compares: Find X9 Ultra vs Find X9 Pro
Oppo
Find X9 Ultra
From £1,449
Oppo
Find X9 Pro
From £899
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
Chip
Dimensity 9500
200MP + 200MP + 50MP
Main cam
200MP Hasselblad telephoto
7,050mAh · 100W
Battery
7,500mAh · 80W
From £1,449
Price
From £899
Related Reviews
87Samsung Galaxy S26+ Review: A Genuinely Good Phone With a Genuinely Awkward Job
From £999
91iPhone 17 Pro Max Review: The Best Battery Life on Any iPhone, Wrapped in a Design That Divides Opinion
From £1,040
84iQOO Neo 11 Review: Full Flagship Silicon at a Mid-Range Price, If You Can Live Without the Camera Bragging Rights
From £520
Comments
No comments yet — be the first to share your thoughts.