The Z9's AF is a lot faster and more important, more reliable. It finds my black cat's eye in backlight in a split second, with AF-C, 3D tracking area mode and the Auto AF subject detection.
This also applies to all the subjects moving into the image area. It tracks down what you want to have.
Here an image of the black cat, In reality (visual light) her eyes were hardly visible.
Z9 Nikkor AF-S 28/1.4 E