Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Active review: Too many corners cut
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: One-minute review
When writing this Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Active review, I didn’t fully expect it to be on our list. The best fitness trackers On the Market – It’s surprisingly affordable and designed for people who just need the basics of health tracking. However I didn’t expect it to miss the mark so much.
Released as a more affordable alternative to an already affordable product Xiaomi Mi Band 9The Active model reduces costs and achieves several advantages over its predecessor. However, it cuts so many corners that, like a really bad gemologist, it leaves nothing to appreciate.
Testing a budget fitness tracker like this, you have to expect some compromises, but the Band 9 Active goes too far. Many different health tracking metrics can easily be proven wrong, with GPS readings being poor and heart rate information wildly inaccurate compared to data from our smartphones. Calorie burn predictions are also questionable, unless I’m actually burning double-digit calories during an hour-long weight training session.
One surprising exception is sleep tracking, which seems unreliable to me – at least compared to distance or heart rate. If you just want a cheap sleep tracker with sparse features, this could be a good value option.
Still, given the inconsistent test results, the Mi Smart Band 9 Active does struggle to prove itself as a useful health tracker. Its “smartwatch” lifestyle features are slightly better, as it can send notifications quickly and let you control your music.
It’s normal for fitness trackers to choose to offer a range of features, and the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 9 Active attempts to track a host of metrics and health considerations. However, it seems that Xiaomi’s approach of favoring breadth over depth has resulted in a wearable device that’s hard to recommend. If you want a fitness tracker with all the benefits of the Band 9 Active and few of the problems, choose the standard model or the larger and pricier Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 9 Pro.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Specifications
| Element | value |
| price | US$44.99/£19.99/AU$42.99 |
| aspect | 45.9×26.9×9.99 (mm) |
| exhibit | 1.47-inch display |
| GPS? | No |
| battery life | 18 days |
Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Active: price and availability
- Cost $44.99 / £19.99 / AU$42.99
- Cheaper alternative to Band 9
- Released in October 2024
Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Active was launched in China along with Band 9 Pro in October 2024 and was slowly rolled out globally in the following months. It is now available in most countries around the world, including the US, UK and Australia.
You can buy the Band 9 Active for $44.99 / £19.99 / AU$42.99, so it’s a pretty cheap fitness tracker – although you don’t need to know currency conversions to know that some are cheaper than others. I noticed some significant price movements Amazondepending on the color choice, Australian buyers are getting a few dollars difference in prices at the retailer, while UK buyers are seeing prices that are effectively double what they are on Xiaomi’s own website! So, shop around to find the best deal.
That’s roughly $15/£15/AU$20 off the price compared to the Mi Band 9, which is a reasonable discount and means the budget band is likely to cost less than its original price even if the product in the middle is discounted. The price is also roughly the same as last year’s Xiaomi Mi Band 8 Active.
There aren’t many budget fitness trackers worth mentioning in this price range, so the Active’s competitors are (relatively) expensive alternatives like other Smart Band 9 models and from Samsung and Fitbit If you can find them reduced. More on the competition later.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Design
- The display doesn’t look good
- Cuboid+strap
- Has pretty good anti-collision and waterproof protection
The design of Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active is very practical. It measures 4.6 x 2.7 x 1 cm, weighs 16.5 grams, so it’s quite small, and has a 1.47-inch display with a 172 x 320 resolution.
The strap is made of TPU, which feels like rubbery plastic and can be adjusted to fit a variety of wrist sizes. You can choose the Active in black, beige or light pink, and your choice will be reflected in the body and strap of the watch.
The watch is 5ATM water resistant and can withstand submersion up to 50 meters, but there’s no swim tracking mode on the strap, so you don’t need to test that feature.
I gave the Band 9 Active a number of bumps during my testing, and it didn’t leave any marks – making it a good option for clumsy wearers. It’s also small enough that you can sleep with it on without it being too noticeable and annoying.
Frankly, the display doesn’t look great, but that’s what you get for the low price of admission. You can also use photos of yourself as watch faces, which is a nice touch, even if the faces end up looking a bit like old-school RuneScape characters.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Performance
- Many indicators appear inaccurate
- Not good at extracting GPS data from smartphones
- 50 sports tracking modes in total
The Mi Smart Band 9 offers about 50 different fitness tracking modes, which is about a third as many as its two siblings, but covers all the bases (and then some). Before you talk about specific numbers, keep in mind that not all fitness tracking modes are the same.
Basically all fitness modes track time and heart rate, and some also add GPS on top – the reason you choose between different tracking modes is so it shows up as a different entry in your fitness log, and because you can Different activities set different exercise goals.
For testing purposes, I used outdoor running, outdoor cycling, and strength training, but the populated list includes everything from badminton and baseball to billiards and “backs” (i.e., back exercises).
Unfortunately, they’re not very good: most of the Mi Smart Band 9 Active’s fitness tracking features don’t work properly.
For example: One day I went to the gym for a run, which is usually 1.6 kilometers, but the “outdoor running” mode only recorded 1.4 kilometers. Then at the gym, I turned on Power mode for a workout and it told me my heart rate was low – despite the fact that I wasn’t out of breath after the run and could feel my heart rate rising.
The GPS issue was the most obvious; multiple times during testing, the watch failed to report the full distance of a run or bike ride (or, on one occasion, didn’t report any distance at all, instead of the 4 kilometers I rode). Based on my testing, I seem to lose an average of 20% of the actual distance traveled. This seems to be an issue with how the watch connects to the phone, as the Active only has connected GPS (it utilizes the phone’s GPS, not the built-in one). If I hadn’t tested the Band 9 Pro before the Active, I would have thought it was an issue with my phone.
The heart rate issue is also a shame – it’s one of the most important metrics for people using a fitness tracker, so the fact that it’s so blatantly inaccurate is a real shame.
Now for the surprise: the sleep tracking works really well, which is surprising considering the rest of the performance. As far as timing goes, it’s accurate even when I’m reading a book in bed before going to bed or staying on my stomach for a while after waking up. It also provides a basic but useful breakdown of sleep type (REM sleep, deep sleep, etc.), as well as wake time and resting heart rate (however accurate…). If all you want in a fitness tracker is sleep tracking, this budget option might be fine.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Features
- Xiaomi fitness app to use on your phone
- Music playback, notification processing, etc.
- 14 days of battery life
Aside from the iffy fitness tracking options, the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 9 Active more or less does everything you’d expect from a budget fitness tracker.
Through your phone’s Bluetooth, it can tell you the weather, control your music (well, skip, rewind tracks, and play/pause) and send you notifications. I recommend customizing the notifications sent to your smart devices so you don’t expect to receive the latest weather report every few minutes.
The Band 9 Active connects to your phone via Bluetooth 5.3, and during my testing, the connection was flawless—except for the odd GPS issue, of course. You connect to the Xiaomi Fitness app, which gives you some extra ways to use the band.
The main point (for me) is that it allows you to examine your past workouts more deeply with rough GPS maps and other metrics. You can also view results for various metrics tracked through the watch, such as training load, stress, energy and vitality scores.
You can also customize your watch to a limited extent using the app – like I said, you can set a background photo or choose from a variety of other displays. You can also adjust some settings for your fitness tracking metrics and set a password for the tracker.
Xiaomi says the Band 9 Active has a battery life of 18 days, or about two and a half weeks. Based on my testing, I’d say you can reliably get two weeks of use out of the band before needing a charge, but those extra four days can be a lot if you’re not frugal with use.
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Scorecard
| category | Comment | Fraction |
| value | You won’t find a cheaper fitness tracker than this one! | 4.5/5 |
| design | Sophisticated design plus pixel display. | 3/5 |
| Performance | Fitness metrics are not accurate. | 2/5 |
| feature | Some useful lifestyle features like notification handling and music control. | 3.5/5 |
Xiaomi Mi Band 9 Active: Should I buy it?
Buy it if…
Don’t buy it if…
also consider
| Element | Xiaomi Mi Band 9 | Xiaomi Mi Band 9 | Fitbit Inspire 3 |
| price | US$44.99/£19.99/AU$42.99 | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | $99.95 / £84.99 / AU$177. |
| aspect | US$44.99/£19.99/AU$42.99 | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | 39.32 lux 18.6 x 11.75 (mm) |
| exhibit | 1.47-inch display | US$60/£34.99/AU$79.99 | 0.7-inch AMOLED touch screen |
| GPS? | No | No | No |
| battery life | 18 days | 21 days | 10 days |
First review: January 2025
