Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro review: One big upgrade that comes at a price
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: One-minute review
Chinese tech company Xiaomi has maintained this position almost single-handedly cheap fitness tracker The market is active, and the new Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro is the new choice for those who want to monitor their health at a cheap price and at the same time want a nice big screen.
This health gadget is Xiaomi Mi Band 9released in mid-2024, is for all intents and purposes a very similar fitness tracker — too similar, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment. It has the same software, measures your health accurately for the most part, and connects to your phone in the exact same way.
Its main selling point is that, unlike the non-Pro version, the Mi Band 9 has a large display. This appeals to me more than I thought it would – it doesn’t put as much weight on the wrist, and it’s much easier to press when you’re sprinting down a park path or balancing on a parked bike. I also think it’s more convenient from an accessibility perspective, so if cumbersome fitness tracker screens turn you off, this is the smartband to buy.
However, that great screen comes with a hefty price tag, and the SmartBand 9 Pro costs significantly more than its predecessor—it’s not quite there yet. JiamingThe cheapest option or used Fitbit device, but if you’re in the market for something truly affordable, its price might give you reason to stop.
Regardless of the size and cost upgrades, Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro ostensibly has some improvements in sleep, blood oxygen, and heart rate monitoring – it doesn’t feel any different to me. But I’m disappointed that many of the issues I had with the previous band were not resolved, namely regarding the flawed software.
My experience with the SmartBand 9 Pro is that notifications would wake me up in the wee hours of the morning, alarms would be hidden by other alarms, and when I raised the watch, the watch would maintain a very lazy wake-up pattern. These are all issues I reported in my review of the first band, and they return here.
As a tech geek, I’m not interested in how similar the SmartBand 9 Pro is to the Band 9, but the benefit of its limited upgrades is that it functions just as well as a top-notch fitness tracker. Its activity tracking mode isn’t in-depth, but it’s handy for exercise enthusiasts, and I found the watch to be very accurate and useful for tracking running distance and heart rate.
When the Band 9 Pro is working properly, it’s also a useful lifestyle companion, with music control, timers, and notification handling, all of which came in handy during testing.
So, the Mi Smart Band 9 Pro is definitely an upgrade from the Mi Band 9, and if the price doesn’t put you off, you should consider it, but you should really ask yourself if you need a bigger display.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Specifications
| Element | value |
| price | £62.99/AU$99.99 (approximately US$75) |
| aspect | 43.27×32.49×10.8 (mm) |
| exhibit | 1.74-inch AMOLED display |
| GPS? | No |
| battery life | 21 days |
Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro: price and availability
- Unveiling in October 2024
- Price £62.99 / AU$99.99 (approximately US$75)
- Match smart bracelet 8 Pro
Xiaomi released the SmartBand 9 Pro and Active models in late October 2024, initially for the Chinese market but slowly released globally in the following months.
You can buy the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 9 Pro for £62.99 / AU$99.99 (approximately $75 USD). That’s a considerable price increase compared to the $60 USD / £24.99 / AU$79.99 “standard” Band 9, at least in the UK, although it’s on par with its predecessor Smart Band 8 Pro.
Price cements the Band 9 Pro as the top-end member of the trio, with the Band 9 Active priced at £19.99 / AU$44.99 (approximately US$25). The price of the tracker is equal to or higher than some The cheapest fitness tracker As far as cost goes, I don’t quite see the feature set increasing as the price goes up.
Xiaomi sells extra straps for the Band 9 Pro in some regions, and sent one to TechRadar for testing next to a fitness track. However, at the time of writing, these products are not yet available in the UK.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Design
- The body is bigger than the competition, but not by much.
- 1.74-inch AMOLED large screen
- screen real estate really helps
It’s suffixed with “Pro”, but it’s most likely “Gro” since the Mi Band 9 Pro is actually a larger version of the non-Pro model in terms of design. That is, it’s a standard fitness tracker but taken a notch higher.
The strap in the box is made of TPU, which I found cumbersome to buckle, but comfortable to wear. It supports considerable variation in wrist size, something not all fitness trackers can do. It has an easy release mechanism so to remove or replace the band you just press a small button on the body of the smart band, which I found to be very easy to do.
You can choose from three strap colors: black, silver (with a white strap) and rose gold (with a pink strap). As you can see in the image, I used the latter.
The body dimensions are 43.3 x 32.5 x 10.8 mm (without strap) and the weight is 24.5 grams. This makes it thicker and heavier than many slim fitness trackers on the market, but its weight isn’t noticeable on the wrist. In fact, I found it to be as comfortable as any other tracker I’ve used.
Next, we come to the screen, which is the biggest change compared to the “standard” Band 9 (literally). Its diagonal length is 1.74 inches, and like the body, it’s wider and shorter than its peers. It has a resolution of 336 x 480 and a maximum brightness of 1200 nits, but unlike the Band 9, I found that the auto-brightness wasn’t always that fast. Sometimes, when outdoors, I had trouble seeing what I was seeing on the band until it took a few seconds to adjust the brightness.
This extra screen real estate would be great for anyone who’s not used to the teen iconography of most fitness trackers and smartwatches, and it’s especially useful when running so I can easily press buttons without Too much precision is required.
In terms of protection, Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro is 5ATM waterproof: it can survive at a depth of up to 50 meters for 10 minutes. However, Xiaomi recommends that you don’t put it in hot water, such as in a sauna or shower.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Performance
- Uses your phone’s GPS but has heart rate and other trackers
- Over 150 fitness tracking modes
- 21 days of battery life
In the “Specs” section above, I quoted Xiaomi’s estimate of 21 days of battery life for the SmartBand 9 Pro. In my testing, however, I found the band far exceeded that—it lost a third of its charge over eight days, which included multiple runs (including a three-hour one), multiple Weight training and most days sleep tracking. night. This will give you nearly 24 days of battery life, although your mileage will vary.
14 days of battery life is pretty standard for a fitness tracker, but 24 days is outstanding, so I don’t think this band will disappoint you. Charging is done via a dedicated charger that plugs into any USB port.
The range of exercises is the same as the standard band, so there are over 150 fitness tracking modes. Most of them are pretty simple: They monitor time, heart rate, and a rough count of calories burned, so whichever one you choose from the watch largely just determines how it displays in your app workout log. middle.
However, some of them provide more information, and some of them like to use GPS for running and biking. This isn’t a standard GPS, but a connected GPS, which means the band uses the GPS of a paired smartphone – you can’t do your workout if your phone isn’t with you.
So it’s about as accurate as a smartphone, but that’s nothing to sneeze at – I ran a distance measured as 5K and the watch told me I’d run 5.05km, with a margin of error of 1%.
Sleep tracking is there, but it’s not as in-depth as on fancy smartwatches: You can see how long you sleep, how sleep breaks down into deep sleep, light sleep and wake, and what your average heart rate is. According to Xiaomi, the Band 9 Pro has upgraded sleep tracking.
Other metrics tracked (with questionable levels of reliability) include your stress, energy levels, and “vitality score,” or cumulative exercise volume over the past week. The watch can also track blood oxygen rate and heart rate, which Xiaomi says are also improvements over the original strap.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Features
- Xiaomi fitness app to use on your phone
- Music playback, notification processing, etc.
- Some bugs with app and watch
I found a lot of issues with the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro, which I’m not too surprised about given the other fitness trackers I’ve tested from the manufacturer, but the issues here are more glaring as some examples bothered me experience.
Two of my most prominent examples both come from Band’s effective notification handling. Sometimes notifications would appear at the same time as, and therefore overwrite, more important information; the Pro got very confused when the interval popup was immediately replaced by a message notification, meaning I couldn’t see how many kilometers I’d just run. Even more annoyingly, notifications would buzz on my wrist in the middle of the night, even with Do Not Disturb enabled—I was woken multiple times by notifications appearing on my wrist, once at 1am.
The latter issue is something I encountered when using the Band 9, along with a smaller issue: the wake function is unreliable, and you sometimes see a black screen when you raise your wrist.
I shouldn’t compare these two fitness trackers too much, though, because the overall experience of using the Band 9 Pro is very good thanks to the larger display. Use its various widgets to display more information at once: you can see the weather for the next few days on a graph, your heart rate, and a music player that lets you pause or skip songs. The overall buttons are naturally much larger, which is a great accessibility win.
Excellently, most Buttons are great, but the exception is the app drawer, which you open by swiping up from the bottom. It’s a grid of 26 buttons for different functions, and none of the buttons are labeled, so you have to guess which button does what. Many of them are the same: two are runner icons in different colors, making it a real trial-and-error experience. Fortunately, most of the features I find myself using can be accessed another way, namely through the sliding home widget.
More features come from the accompanying Mi Fitness app, which you can download on your phone. It lets you view your fitness and health details in greater detail, change your watch face with multiple options including custom photos, view historical data and set various features.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Scorecard
| category | Comment | Fraction |
| value | Although it’s not quite as competitive as its siblings, this is a good value for money fitness tracker. | 4/5 |
| design | The big screen is one of the wonders of using a fitness tracker. | 4/5 |
| Performance | It tracks a wide range of activities and metrics, but not enough depth. | 3.5/5 |
| feature | Although the tracker has many problems, there are some useful features. | 3.5/5 |
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro: Should you buy it?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
also consider
| Element | Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Pro | Xiaomi Mi Band 9 | Fitbit Inspire 3 |
| price | £62.99/AU$99.99 (approximately US$75) | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | $99.95 / £84.99 / AU$177. |
| aspect | 43.27×32.49×10.8 (mm) | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | 39.32 lux 18.6 x 11.75 (mm) |
| exhibit | 1.74-inch AMOLED display | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | 0.7-inch AMOLED touch screen |
| GPS? | No | No | No |
| battery life | 21 days | 21 days | 10 days |
