Is it just me, or are smartphone brands getting really confusing when it comes to the naming strategy of their flagships? Case in point, the X300 is Vivo’s standard flagship offering for 2026, but the recently launched X300 FE is priced around Rs 3,000 higher. Which begs the question: where exactly does the ‘FE’ model fit in the lineup? Similarly, Oppo has also taken a similar path with the official launch of its latest high-end smartphone in the X9 series, the Oppo Find X9s.
By the way, this is the first time Oppo has brought an ‘s’ branded Find X-series smartphone to the Indian market. Going by the name, you may think that this phone should sit below the standard Oppo Find X9 (review), in terms of pricing and also as a slightly toned-down version in terms of what you are getting here. But the moment you look at the pricing, things become a little harder to understand.
Oppo has priced the Find X9s at Rs 79,999 in India, making it more expensive than the standard Find X9 itself. Like I mentioned, what Vivo also did with the X300 FE (review).
This situation raises a few unanswered questions. Is Oppo planning to slowly phase out the regular Find X9 from the market? Will the standard model become more expensive later? Or does Oppo simply believe the Find X9s offers a more polished overall experience despite carrying a slightly less powerful chipset on paper? Right now, the company has not made its strategy very clear.
But what is very clear is the fact that I have been rigorously testing this phone in the Digit Test Labs for a good while. And the question you should actually ask is, can Oppo justify the Find X9s price tag? Let’s find out.
When I took the Oppo Find X9s out of the box, the first thing I noticed was how closely it resembles the Find X9. The overall size and design language feel very similar, but that is not a bad thing at all. Oppo has gone for a clean and minimal look here, and I think the company has done a good job with the overall design.
I received the Midnight Grey colour option for review, and personally, I liked how premium and classy it looks. It does not have a flashy pattern or a shiny finish, which gives the phone a more elegant appearance. Oppo is also offering the device in Sunset Orange and Lavender Sky colour options for users who prefer brighter shades.
The Find X9s comes with flat edges and softly curved corners, making it comfortable to hold even during long usage sessions. Whether I was watching videos, scrolling through social media or gaming, the phone felt easy to grip. At just 7.99mm thick, the device also feels slimmer than many other flagship smartphones in the market.
On the rear panel, the squarish camera module sits in the top-left corner without looking too bulky or distracting. I also liked the matte finish on the back because it doesn’t attract fingerprints.
Another thing worth mentioning is the weight distribution. The phone feels balanced in the hand and does not feel top-heavy despite featuring a large camera setup. Oppo has also added IP66, IP68 and IP69 ratings, which means the Find X9s offers strong protection against dust and water exposure.
So, the Oppo Find X9s focuses more on comfort, practicality and a premium in-hand feel rather than trying too hard with flashy design elements, and I think many users will appreciate that.
The Oppo Find X9s features a 6.59-inch LTPS AMOLED display with a 1.5K resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, 3,600 nits of claimed peak brightness, and a pixel density of 460 PPI. On paper, these are solid specifications, but what stands out most is the size of the display. In a market where flagship phones are getting increasingly larger, the Find X9s hits a sweet spot. The screen feels big enough for watching videos, gaming or scrolling through social media, while still being compact enough to comfortably use with one hand.
The AMOLED panel itself delivers a good viewing experience. Colours look vibrant without appearing overly saturated, blacks are deep, and content looks sharp. For protection, Oppo has added Corning Gorilla Glass 7i, which should offer some peace of mind against minor scratches and accidental drops in daily use.
Oppo claims the display can reach up to 3,600 nits of peak brightness. But since we all know how the ‘peak brightness’ marketing claim works, what really matters, though, is the real-world performance. In our lux meter test, the panel reached around 1,850 nits with auto brightness enabled. While that number is far from the marketed figure, it is still bright enough for comfortable outdoor use. Even under harsh sunlight, the screen remains perfectly readable without much struggle, which matters more in day-to-day usage than peak numbers on paper.
So, the Oppo Find X9s gets the basics right with its display. It is sharp, smooth and bright enough for outdoor visibility, and the size feels practical without compromising on the viewing experience.
The Oppo Find X9s is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 9500s chipset, which is built on a 3nm process. The smartphone comes with up to 12GB RAM and 512GB storage. For this review, I received the base 12GB RAM and 256GB storage variant.
In everyday use, the Find X9s delivers the kind of smooth experience most people expect from a premium flagship smartphone. Whether I was endlessly scrolling through Instagram, jumping between multiple apps, replying to messages or quickly opening the camera to click photos on the go, the phone felt fast and responsive throughout. Animations are smooth, apps load quickly, and overall, the device rarely gave me a reason to complain during regular usage. The phone also handles multitasking comfortably. I could keep several apps running in the background without noticing aggressive app reloads.
However, things become slightly less impressive when you look at the benchmark scores. The Oppo Find X9s scored 23,84,561 on Antutu. In Geekbench 6, the device managed 2,215 in the single-core test and 7,282 in the multi-core test. For comparison, the recently launched Vivo X300 FE, powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, delivered higher benchmark numbers, scoring 28,21,622 on Antutu along with 2,767 in Geekbench single-core and 8,750 in multi-core tests.
Interestingly, the Oppo Find X9, which is available at a slightly lower price, actually offers better raw performance. During our testing, the Find X9 achieved an Antutu score of around 3.44 million. In Geekbench 6, it scored 3,142 in the single-core test and 9,721 in the multi-core test, clearly outperforming the Find X9s as well as the Vivo X300 FE.
So while the Oppo Find X9s handles real-world usage smoothly, benchmark enthusiasts might find better value in some competing devices or even within Oppo’s own lineup.
Now, I know the Oppo Find X9s is more of a camera-centric flagship phone, but many users, including me, also expect good gaming performance at this price. So, I spent a good amount of time playing BGMI on the device to see how well it handles gaming.
With HDR graphics and Extreme frame rate settings enabled, the phone delivered a stable 60fps experience. Switching to the Better Frame Rate setting allowed the device to push a stable 90fps gameplay, which definitely felt smoother during fast-paced matches. However, considering the high price tag of the phone, I was honestly expecting support for 120fps gameplay.
That said, I also understand that Oppo is clearly prioritising cameras and overall balance here rather than trying to create a gaming flagship. During longer gaming sessions of around 20 minutes or more, the phone did warm up slightly, but thankfully not to the point where it became uncomfortable to hold or affected gameplay in any major way.
On the software side, the Find X9s runs on ColorOS 16 based on Android 16, and the experience feels polished and fluid in day-to-day use. Animations are smooth, multitasking works well, and the UI feels clean, though there are still a few pre-installed apps out of the box. Oppo has also added several AI-powered features like AI Bill Manager and AI Recorder, which can actually feel useful instead of gimmicky during usage. The company is also promising four years of major Android OS updates along with six years of security updates for the Find X9s, which definitely adds long-term value to the device.
The Oppo Find X series is known for offering strong camera performance, so naturally, I had high expectations from the Find X9s as well. The smartphone features a triple rear camera setup consisting of a 50MP Sony LYT-700 primary sensor with OIS, a 50MP ultra-wide camera, and a 50MP Sony LYT-600 periscope telephoto lens with 3x optical zoom and OIS. On the front, you get a 32MP camera for selfies and video calls.
The primary camera performs really well in most conditions. During the day, photos come out sharp with good details and balanced colours. I liked that the phone does not overdo saturation like some other flagship phones. Colours look lively without appearing unrealistic, and skin tones are handled nicely.
Portrait shots are also quite good. The phone manages background separation nicely, and most portraits look clean enough for social media uploads. That said, edge detection is not always perfect and can occasionally struggle in tougher scenes, though the overall results are still quite usable.
Low-light photography is another area where the Find X9s impressed me. Night shots retain a good amount of detail without making images look artificially bright. The phone does a nice job of controlling noise while still keeping textures intact.
The telephoto camera is useful too. At up to 3x zoom, images remain detailed and quite usable. However, once you move beyond the optical zoom range and rely more on digital zoom, image quality starts dropping, and details become softer.
The ultra-wide camera is the weakest part of the setup. While it is perfectly usable for landscape shots or group photos, there is a visible difference in quality compared to the primary camera.
As for selfies, the 32MP front camera captures decent photos with natural skin tones and enough detail for Instagram or video calls.
The Oppo Find X9s packs a huge 7,025mAh battery with 80W wired fast charging support. During my time with the device, battery anxiety was rarely a concern. Whether I was doom-scrolling Instagram late at night, watching YouTube videos, using navigation, or clicking plenty of photos throughout the day, the phone comfortably kept going without constantly making me look for a charger.
With light to moderate usage, the Find X9s can easily last close to one and a half days on a single charge. Even on days when I used the camera heavily, streamed content for long hours, and played games, the device still managed to survive an entire day without much struggle.
I also noticed that battery drain during regular tasks remained under control. Streaming videos for around 30 minutes consumed roughly 4 per cent of the battery, while an hour of power-hungry Google Maps navigation drained only around 5 per cent.
However, the PCMark battery benchmark results were slightly underwhelming, given the massive battery capacity. The device lasted around 20.5 hours in the test, which is good, but honestly, I expected better numbers from a 7,025mAh battery. But this is again a synthetic benchmark test we are talking about, and what really matters is the real-world experience where the Oppo Find X9s delivers.
Also, using the bundled 80W charger, the Oppo Find X9s takes about 1 hour and 30 minutes to fully charge from 0 to 100 per cent. While there are faster charging phones available, the charging speed here still feels reasonable once you consider the large battery capacity.
The Oppo Find X9s is a smartphone that gets a lot of things right. It offers a premium and compact design, a vibrant display, good cameras, excellent battery life and a smooth overall experience. The phone feels comfortable to hold, easy to use for long hours and reliable enough to handle almost everything you throw at it without much trouble.
However, what makes the Find X9s slightly difficult to judge is its positioning within Oppo’s own lineup. Apart from the processor, the Find X9s offers almost identical specifications to the standard Oppo Find X9. The display, cameras, battery capacity, charging speeds and overall experience remain largely similar. That naturally makes the pricing harder to justify, especially when the regular Find X9 is available at a lower price while also delivering noticeably better real-world and benchmark performance.
And this creates a situation where it becomes slightly difficult to recommend the Find X9s over the standard Find X9 unless you specifically prefer its colour options or simply want the latest addition in the lineup.
Again, don’t get me wrong, for what it’s worth, the Oppo Find X9s is still a very capable compact flagship smartphone. It focuses more on balance, comfort, battery life and overall usability rather than chasing raw performance numbers. But at its current pricing, the regular Find X9 feels like the more sensible choice. Unless Oppo decides to discontinue the standard model, then we’ll have a different debate. That’s a story for another time.