Neffos, the smartphone subsidiary of TP-Link, just had an event called the Summer Launch Party 2018 – which showcases all of the latest smartphones. One of it is the Neffos X9 – it’s a smartphone that has quite a familiar look and with budget-oriented specs.
Exactly how does it perform? We’ll find out in our review here.
Unboxing
A simple box but rather thick compared to other smartphones in the market. At the front you do get a full front view of what the phone will look like.
At the back, there’s nothing much other than a quick rundown of the specs and what’s included in the box.
Opening the box reveals the accessories box first. Again, it’s a good move to prevent damages on the phone itself as this box can dampen the force.
Under the box reveals the Neffos X9 itself. At the bottom we can see the charger, micro USB cable, and also the earphones. The earphones oddly resembles the Apple Earpods as well.
Digging out everything that’s included in the box, you get the Neffos X9 itself, a clear TPU case, a film screen protector that you’ll need to apply yourself, a micro USB cable, charger, earphones, and some documentation. Pretty good in terms of the accessories included.
[nextpage title=”Design”]
During the launch event, there was only one word that was thrown around the event venue – it looks like the Huawei Nova 2i. Within first glance of the Neffos X9’s back, yes it does look like the Nova 2i but with a different antenna line, which is shiny and reflective.
It’s quite comfortable to hold despite its 5.99-inch screen.
The included TPU case is of okay quality and has the little dots to prevent direct contact between the phone and the case as well. Good job.
Since the Neffos X9 does have a pretty big camera protrusion, the TPU case compensates that by having a lip around the camera. Same goes for the screen.
The TPU case does provide adequate protection and accentuates the buttons on the right side as well. Makes pressing them a lot easier.
However, I worry about the openings on the case as it nearly covered the speaker and microphone grills at the bottom of the Neffos X9.
[nextpage title=”Connectivity & Ports”]
Being an entry-mid range smartphone, the Neffos X9 comes with the usual connectivity that you expect. It has a nano SIM 1 + hybrid card tray which is again, very common in smartphones these days.
The Neffos X9 comes 802.11n WiFi and has 5GHz support as well. Not spectacular but way better than some ASUS smartphones that only supports 2.4GHz network.
There’s no NFC or wireless charging here. Also, it doesn’t have gyroscope.
[nextpage title=”Display”]
Equipped with a 5.99-inch IPS LCD display, the Neffos X9 only has 1440×720 pixels in resolution. Not the best when it comes to display especially when compared to other smartphones in the market with around the same price like the ASUS ZenFone Max Pro (M1).
Despite having only 720p in resolution, the colors are yellowish and washed out on the Neffos X9. There is a night mode (which is blue-light filter mode) and that’s about it.
Being a similarly-designed smartphone as the Huawei Nova 2i, the Neffos X9 doesn’t have a notch as well.
[nextpage title=”Camera”]
The Neffos X9 comes with a dual rear-facing camera. Again, the protrusion of the cameras are quite huge – so I do recommend using the included TPU case.
As for the specs of the cameras, the Neffos X9 has:
- Dual rear-facing cameras (learn more here)
- 13MP main camera + 5MP depth sensor; PDAF
- Selfie camera
- 8MP
As per stated before, the specs of a smartphone’s camera isn’t going to tell the whole story. Let’s take a look at some of the picture samples instead.
You can have a look at the full gallery of pictures with the EXIF data at our Flickr album here.
Rear-facing cameras
Okay, first of all – the white balance is surprisingly good on the Neffos X9. Color saturation and vibrancy is also pleasant to the eyes – even better than the Honor Play that we reviewed here. But the speed it takes pictures isn’t that great.
However, when it comes to night shots, it’s abysmal. I held the phone to take this image and it took a good 5 seconds or so to first focus (or attempt to) and to actually capture the image. The end result is a blurry image with zero details.
Speaking of details, you won’t see any of them in night shots. It appears to be a blur when taking this picture.
Selfie camera
The selfie camera is just… noisy. This selfie was taken with beauty mode turned off. If beauty mode is turned on, the image won’t have any details.
Camera UI
The UI didn’t actually change from the Neffos N1 that we reviewed here. The only thing that has changed is the addition of the menu to manually adjust the hue, saturation, contrast, and brightness of the camera.
By the way, it can take 120FPS slow-motion videos in 3GP format with 640×480 pixels.
[nextpage title=”Software”]
Here’s a big upgrade. The new Neffos X9 is running on NFUI 8.0. What has changed isn’t immediately apparent since the home screen and all the icons look pretty much the same as before.
The first thing that’s different is the app drawer. It now has the stock Android design where you’ll have to pull up from the bottom and the list scrolls vertically.
Secondly is the addition of gestures – especially screen-off and fingerprint sensor gestures. They’re quite useful and the screen-off gestures’ actions can be customized as well.
And it also take scrolling screenshots, by the way.
[nextpage title=”Performance & Gaming”]
When it comes to the performance of the new Neffos X9, we need to take at the specs first. It comes in two variants by the way – the 3GB RAM with 32GB storage, and also 4GB RAM with 64GB storage. The one we have here in particular has these specs:
- 5.99-inch IPS LCD display with 1440×720 resolution
- MediaTek MTK MT6750 chipset manufactured with 28nm process technology
- 4x Cortex-A53 @ 1.5GHz + 4x Cortex-A53 @ 1.0GHz
- ARM Mali-T860 MP2 dual-core @ 520MHz
- 3GB RAM
- 32GB storage
- 3,060mAh battery
- Android 8.1.0 Oreo
As we can see here, the MTK6750 is quite an old chip. With the 28nm process technology, one shouldn’t expect much out of it in terms of performance and efficiency. Let’s take a look at the benchmarks.
Gaming?
Can you actually game on this phone? We all play games on our phones at least once in a while. And keep in mind the screen is only 720p in resolution.
First of all, we’ll try with Honkai Impact 3. This is where I realized that the Neffos X9 doesn’t have gyroscope. For those who play Honkai Impact 3, moving your phone around the main menu will have the ship move as well. Not for this phone.
Going into the settings menu on Honkai Impact 3, I saw the recommended graphic settings was at level 1. That didn’t run well. I then changed it to run at the lowest settings with everything else disabled. Even with such settings, it didn’t run smoothly. So, the Neffos X9 just couldn’t run Honkai Impact 3.
Onward to the next game – Asphalt 9. It’s running in “default” graphical setting which I have no idea what it is – runs smooth most of the time with occasional dips in frame rates. However, the loading time is really, really slow.
[nextpage title=”Battery and charger”]
Comes with a 3,060mAh battery and paired with the MediaTek MT6750, the Neffos X9 can burn through the battery in a jiffy. Take a look at it in our usual battery life test.
It can only last a little over 7 hours – and that’s not reflecting well in our table of overall tests with different phones.
Charger
The Neffos X9 comes with a rather… squarish charger. The size of the charger is rather unusual, and the shape of it might interfere with other devices nearby as well. It can output a total of 5V 2A and it’s pretty standard these days.
It takes around 32 minutes to reach 50% of charge and around 53 minutes to reach 75% of battery charge.
[nextpage title=”Wrapping up the Neffos X9 review”]
So what do we really think of the Neffos X9? To be brutally honest and straightforward. Its uninspired design copied is from another smartphone in the market, yet comes with sub-par hardware and a high price tag.
It comes in two variants – and the prices are low in today’s standard, but upon inspection on the specs, it’s a difficult recommendation.
- 3GB RAM + 32GB storage @ RM599 (we reviewed this one)
- 4GB RAM + 64GB storage @ RM799
The only one phone I can recommend for around that price right now is the ASUS ZenFone Max Pro (M1) that we reviewed and love here. Why? a few reasons – the Max Pro (M1) has a larger battery with better specs and also higher resolution screen.
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