Mid-range positioning products, in terms of network volume, are far less fanatical than flagship products. However, in terms of the entire brand planning and market, mid-range products are the mainstay that can best support the sales of the entire brand. Because of the huge number of product shipments in this positioning, the brand's efforts in mid-range products often reflect the brand's attitude towards users and the popularization of new technologies.
The iQOO Z series has always been a flagship experience popularizer, and is active in the mass market with excellent cost performance and excellent quality. Now the iQOO Z9 series has finally been officially released, and the "Pro" model has been directly upgraded to the "Turbo" model. Will this new high-performance machine for the more mass market be the "strongest mid-range machine of the year in the new generation"?
Design: "Little iQOO 12"
In terms of exterior design, I believe you should be familiar with the iQOO Z9 Turbo, which directly follows the excellent design of iQOO 12. Pure straight screen, ultra-narrow bezels, right-angle bezels, and no plastic bracket are perfect for straight screen enthusiasts and mobile game enthusiasts.
At the same time, this high-quality OLED screen uses Huaxing C8 light-emitting material, 6.78 inches, 1.5K resolution, and supports a maximum 144Hz refresh rate. The point is that this screen supports 3840Hz UHF PWM dimming + full-process DC-like protection, which can be suitable for more users who are sensitive to strobe. This set of iQOO can be said to be the most eye-friendly OLED solution at present.
The rear camera DECO module continues the porthole design of the iQOO 12 series, and the continuous natural curve design increases the intimacy of the first look. The outer bezel of the lens is also made of metal, which greatly increases the durability of the lens part and the protection of the glass lens.
The new color "Mountain Green" is the main color of the iQOO Z9 series, and the color is very fresh and bright, with a matte texture, taking into account both the feel and the look.
Performance: "Snapdragon Tuning or Blue Factory"
The iQOO Z9 Turbo is the first to use the latest third-generation Snapdragon 8s chips, and the chips positioned in the 8 series flagship naturally do not have to worry about performance, especially after iQOO's tuning. For specific performance release, we still use conventional running score software for intuitive performance comparison.
Among them, the latest version of Antutu achieved a score of 1563571 points at room temperature, GeekBench 6 scored 5527 points for single-core and 5527 points for multi-core in the CPU-specific test, and 3DMark scored 3232 points for the GPU-specific test. It can be clearly seen that the iQOO Z9 Turbo has better scores in various benchmark tests under the same conditions as the new Snapdragon 8s, which is also the third-generation Snapdragon 8s.
Of course, how about the continuous performance release, it still depends on the specifics of long-term game testing. Here is the direct launch of "Genshin Impact", and the test route is still the extremely stressful Sumeru region to run maps and fight monsters. For the most part of the 30-minute test, I ran at 60 fps for the most part, with only a slight fluctuation in frame rate when a few characters took turns zooming in. Overall, the frame rate of the game is very stable and reliable, there is no frequency reduction, frame lock, brightness reduction in the whole process, and the average frame rate is also capped at 60 frames.
And classic MOBA games such as "Honor of Kings" can only be regarded as light load scenarios today. The whole game is a straight line, with an average frame rate of 119.8 frames.
According to our half-hour Genshin Impact high-intensity test thermal imaging image, the overall heat soaking effect of the machine is very good. After all, the VC liquid cooling area of the iQOO Z9 Turbo this time has reached an astonishing 6043mm², which not only completely covers the motherboard, but also the camera part. Powerful heat dissipation capabilities make high-performance and long-lasting output possible.
The main focus of this year's eye-catching performance is that iQOO integrates the performance iron triangle composed of "3rd generation Snapdragon 8s mobile platform + LPDDR5X + UFS4.0" to create the strongest performance product of the iQOO Z series to date.
And while its own performance is already powerful enough, iQOO has equipped the independent graphics chip Turbo on the iQOO Z9 Turbo, becoming the first performance pioneer of the Z series equipped with dual chips. While improving the image quality of the game screen, it effectively reduces the power consumption of the chip. Of course, the game and video platforms that have been adapted can also realize the super frame function, and you can enjoy the fun of the high-frame rate sensory world at a low cost.
For example, in the Genshin Impact game, we can turn on the game to interpolate to 90 frames. iQOO's polishing of the independent graphics chip is mature enough, and the stability and touch delay have been well experienced after turning on frame insertion.
I can only say one thing here, the tuning of Snapdragon also depends on the blue factory.
Endurance: The largest blue ocean battery in history
As the most important part of the user experience, iQOO equips the Z9 Turbo with the largest capacity blue ocean battery in the history of the blue factory, and the first graphite stack reconstruction technology, which contains a 6000 mAh ultra-large battery in a very limited volume, ensuring that users can use it independently for a long time without the trouble of charging needs.
The thin and light battery makes the whole device only 7.98mm thick and weighs only 194.9 grams, which is very suitable for the mass gamers who love mobile games.
It's worth noting that the iQOO Z9 Turbo also supports 80W wired fast charging, which can be charged to 1000 mAh in 5 minutes. Longevity, fast charging, and powerful performance are the experiences that almost every mobile phone user wants to have.
It can even achieve up to 7.5W wired reverse charging, so it's no problem to temporarily recharge a little power for family, friends or some small electronic devices.
In the actual use test, only 5% of the power consumption is used for one hour of 1080p video streaming, 8% for one hour of social network browsing, and 14% for half an hour of high-intensity Genshin Impact. It seems that the official propaganda iQOO Z9 Turbo can play more than 20 hours of video data when fully charged is quite real, these days of use, there is almost no anxiety about battery life, daily use for more than a day or even two days is not a big problem, and it is also very reassuring to go out to work.
System: Smooth and brisk, with the blessing of the blue heart small V model
OriginOS 4 once became the favorite Android system of many mobile enthusiasts in 2024 due to its exquisite UI design, extremely smooth animations, and rich functionality. On the iQOO Z9 Turbo, OriginOS 4 also has a very good smooth performance, the animations are quite handy, and the system response, fingerprint unlock speed, standby power saving optimization and other aspects have a good experience.
Coupled with the fact that the screen itself has a maximum refresh rate of 144Hz and the ability to freely control the application of high brushes, the system animation is even smoother. The iQOO Z9 series will be the first upgraded models equipped with OriginOS 4.1, and it is estimated that more new features will be available at that time.
The most competitive thing about OriginOS 4.0 is the built-in vivo self-developed blue heart small V Chinese large model. Personally, I often use the online Q&A and picture recognition capabilities of Blue Heart V, not only the search speed is fast, the answers are accurate, and the most important thing is that there are no ads, and I will not jump to fake medical websites inexplicably, and the efficiency is higher than many search engines.
And thanks to the advantages of the self-built Chinese language model, the in-machine search function of Lanxin Small V can go deep into the system level. For example, if you search for an item in an album, AI can understand your intent and help you pick out objects that match the name, including the text mentioned in it. Compared with traditional album content recognition, AI is indeed easier to use.
Image: Blue Factory Image Tuning Gene
Although the iQOO Z9 series is positioned as a mid-range performance model, the imaging aspect has always been the focus of the Blue Factory. The iQOO Z9 Turbo is still equipped with Sony's new LYT-600 sensor, 50 million pixels with OIS support, and an 8 million pixel ultra-wide-angle lens.
Although the area of the main camera sensor is not large, the specific imaging capabilities still surpass our impression of mid-range products. Obviously, the iQOO Z9 Turbo is deeply blessed by the blue factory image tuning genes, and after pressing the shutter, the system will perform a series of in-camera post-processing such as image quality optimization, processing light and dark exposure, and optimizing the color of the picture.
In the scene with a large light ratio, the iQOO Z9 Turbo has optimized and corrected the overexposed and underexposed parts, greatly improving the details in the dark (under the shadows), and the color performance is also quite eye-catching.
Plus 50 million pixels is large enough, and when shooting small objects or long shots, you can get good images with 2X zoom. The imaging details are basically sufficient, and the in-camera optimization after imaging also has a great effect on improving the picture, plus the focusing distance itself is close enough, and the effect is also very good for taking macro photos.
What is particularly surprising is the night scene imaging effect, and the computational photography skills of the blue factory have been fully exerted. The overall night sky is very clean, and noise is very well controlled, even better than many high-end models.
In low-light environments, with the support of algorithm optimization and OIS, you can still easily take bright night photos.
Especially in the case of shooting complex light sources, the iQOO Z9 Turbo can suppress all the overexposed lights, improve the details under the shadows, and the black places are pure and noise-free, and the algorithm level is quite high.
In terms of this imaging effect, it can be said that it is far more than the base level of this price point. But it's a pity that Shenzhen has been raining heavily for days, and there is really no way to take good-looking samples. However, iQOO was able to optimize the LYT-600 to this level, and the image adjustment ability of the blue factory is still overflowing.
In addition to Turbo, there are new products
In addition to the new performance iQOO Z9 Turbo, the iQOO Z9 released at the same time also performed remarkably, using the third-generation Snapdragon 7 SoC. The rest of the peripheral configurations, such as the screen, battery, exterior design, cooling VC and image sensor, are all the same configuration as the Turbo, which is sincere. I have to say that the white body of iQOO Z9 has the flavor of iQOO 12.
There's also an iQOO Magnetic Cooling Clip, a large TEC cooling flap, and a 7-blade fan with up to 5200rpm. In a 19.9mm body, the flagship cooling effect of -7°C is achieved in a small volume of 69 grams. In addition, the magnetic design is natively compatible with more mobile phones and tablets, allowing more mobile devices to perform at an extraordinary level. As a gaming aid, RGB ambient lighting is also not missing.
summary
After using it in the past few days, the iQOO Z9 Turbo is not only like the iQOO 12 in appearance, but also can be called the "little iQOO 12" in terms of specific performance, image, and user experience.
In particular, the performance performance is better than that of the third-generation Snapdragon 8s in the same class, and the Turbo independent graphics chip has a superior performance in games and entertainment audio. There is flagship-level strength in all aspects, and perhaps this year's "strongest mid-range machine" can be locked in advance now.