iQoo Z9x Review: The latest iQoo offering brings a sleek design and very strong basics to the budget phone table. It is not a spec monster, but then, phones at that price seldom are. This is the classic everyday phone for those on a tight budget. 


iQoo Z9x Review: Quick Pointers


What we love:



  • Sleek design 

  • Stereo speakers 

  • Surprisingly bright display

  • Excellent battery life 

  • IP64 dust and water resistance


What we don’t: 



  • LCD screen (AMOLED is getting common at this price too)

  • Cluttered interface with bloatware

  • Nominal secondary rear camera



Quite A Budget Beauty



It may come with a budget-friendly price tag, but the iQoo Z9x does not look like a budget, lower mid-segment phone. We got the Storm Grey variant which has a smooth shiny back with a matte finish, straight sides and a flat display. 


The back and the frame are plastic, but are very well crafted and do not look cheap (the back can easily be mistaken for glass with its smooth sheen). A large square camera unit on the back houses a dual camera setup. 


The right of those straight sides houses a fingerprint scanner on the power/display on/off button and on the base of the phone, you will spot an old audio friend - the trusty 3.5mm audio jack.  


At 165.7 mm, iQoo Z9x is a tall phone but is a mere 7.99mm thin and at 199 grams, light for its size. The phone has a very solid and yet elegant feel to it. It is one of those devices that can be easily mistaken for something twice as expensive. 


It also comes with IP64 dust and water resistance which is rare at this price point - it can survive a drizzle or a fall in the water.


Old-Is-Gold Specs



Beneath that sleek, shiny exterior lies a veteran processor. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 chip might have been released in 2022, but it remains a very good performer even today - in fact, Vivo used it in its recently released Vivo V30e, which starts at Rs 27,999. 


The display on the phone is a large 6.72-inch LCD one but has a full-HD+ resolution, a refresh rate of 120 Hz (which can switch between seven levels depending on the content) and a surprisingly high brightness of 1000 nits - very impressive for its price, although some might miss an AMOLED display (now available at these price points). 


The phone has two cameras on the back - a 50-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel depth camera - and a single 8-megapixel selfie camera in front. The main camera does not have OIS (still a rarity in the segment)  but does come with 4K video support. 


The storage is a very good 128GB across all variants, although there are three RAM options - 4GB, 6GB and 8GB. You also get expandable memory up to 1TB using a microSD card. Allied to that audio jack on the back are also stereo speakers. 


Round that off with Android 14 with FunTouch OS on top, and a massive 6,000mAh battery (a surprise considering how thin the phone is) with support for 44W charging (quick-ish for this segment), this is a spec sheet that may not be the latest, but is still one of the greatest at this price,


Rock-Solid Daily Driver



That hardware and software does not make the iQoo Z9x a benchmark buster, but it enables to do something that is actually every bit as (if not more) important - sailing through routine tasks with minimum fuss. That large, bright display is great for viewing content and the very good stereo speakers make videos, films and series more immersive. 


The Snapdragon 6 Gen 1 can even handle casual games with ease (Alto's Odyssey and Monument Valley were well handled) and even let you play some high-end titles, provided you really bring down the graphics - Call of Duty is just about playable, and Asphalt can be played too but be ready for the odd lag and stutter.  Web browsing, social media and messaging and mail are handled very smoothly with hardly any glitches. 


As we said, this is a phone for the everyday game of life rather than gaming every day. 


Photography on the iQoo Z9x is mainly about the 50-megapixel main camera - the 2-megapixel bokeh sensor seems to exist just to make up numbers and the 8-megapixel selfie camera is best used for Snapchat selfies and video calls. 


The main camera, however, is a very good one and delivers reasonably good detail and colours (slightly over saturated, as is common in this segment) not only in good light conditions but turns in a surprisingly decent performance even when the lights dim. Video quality is very decent too, for the price point, although 4K video at 30 fps is supported only on the 8 GB RAM variant of the phone.


FunTouch OS on Android 14 runs smoothly and is feature-rich (especially in the photography department), although some might be a little annoyed by the third-party apps that come preloaded on the device. 


We love the fingerprint sensor on the power/display button. It might not be as stylish to some eyes as an in-display fingerprint scanner but works significantly faster, which is what we think really matters at the end of the day. 


Battery That Lasts More Than A Day



A star performer of the iQoo Z9x is the massive 6,000mAh battery inside it. We actually got through close to two days of normal usage on it, and with a bit of care, could go to almost two days and a half, which is extremely impressive. 


Equally impressive is its support for 44W charging and the 44W charger in the box. The size of the battery means that it takes more than an hour to get charged, but we generally found that about half an hour of charging got us close to 40-50 per cent of charge, which, given the size of the battery, was good enough to get us through close to a day of use. 


This is not a phone you need to charge to full capacity often.


iQoo Z9x Review: Final Verdict



The iQoo Z9x is priced at Rs 12,999 for its 4GB + 128GB RAM and storage variant, the 6GB + 128GB variant is available for Rs 14,999 and the top-end 8GB + 128GB option comes with a price tag of Rs 15,999. 


For those prices, we think it offers very good value for not too much money. Some might frown at its LCD rather than AMOLED display, its old but gold (compared to the others at this price) processor, bright display, sleek design, good speakers, and massive battery with a good charging speed and classic features like a 3.5mm audio jack and expandable memory more than compensate for not leading you down the OLED path. 


The Samsung Galaxy M15 brings a (smaller) 6.5-inch AMOLED display and a 6.000mAh battery as well at Rs 12,999, but its MediaTek Dimensity 6100+ processor is less powerful and the battery charges only at 25W. Even the Motorola G64 which comes with a slightly better  Dimensity 7025 processor and a better 50-megapixel main sensor with OIS and also has a 6,000mAh battery, loses out by having a smaller 6.5-inch full HD display, charges relatively slowly at 33W and only has an IP52 water repellent rating. 


This is why we think that at its price, the iQoo Z9x is one of the best phones for someone who is on a tight budget but is still looking for a stylish-looking phone that just works. 


The iQoo Z9x is for those who want to get through the everyday game that is life, rather than game every day of their lives.