Xiaomi Sensible Band 9 evaluate: the most cost effective health tracker you need to think about shopping for
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: One-minute evaluate
Not many tech manufacturers are as prolific in making low-cost health trackers as Chinese language big Xiaomi; the model reduce its tooth on making cheap options to top-end smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches, and it’s the identical with devices like the brand new Xiaomi Sensible Band 9.
The second of its funds health devices launched within the West in 2024 after the Sensible Band 8 Professional, the Sensible Band 9 doesn’t compete with the giants of the wearable world by way of specs or options. The Xiaomi received’t go head-to-head along with your Apple Watches, Garmins, or Fitbits by way of well being monitoring.
As an alternative, the Xiaomi Sensible Band 9 gives a helpful core of options at an impressively low value. It’s the most cost effective health tracker that I may discover offered on-line from a model I’d ever heard of, and it dramatically undercuts some big-name rivals reminiscent of Fitbit.
These core options embody sleep monitoring, step counting, coronary heart price monitoring, and calorie counting; activate sure sports activities modes and also you get much more. The outcomes are fairly correct too, though it’s not pinpoint precision, and there’s no GPS supplied.
You may also use the Xiaomi Sensible Band 9 as a smartwatch-lite, with notification dealing with, music management, and climate stories. A couple of tough edges on this space mirror the worth: notifications could possibly be buggy, preliminary pairing was tough, and raise-to-wake didn’t at all times work as meant. However my annoyance would put on off after I remembered the worth, and more often than not it labored positive.
As reasonably priced health trackers go, this is likely one of the finest in the marketplace proper now, but it surely’d be finest loved by individuals who haven’t examined others. It’s an important entry-level choice for people who find themselves new to the well being monitoring sport and need to check out a gadget to take action, with out breaking the financial institution.
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Specs
| Part | Worth |
| Worth | $60 / £34.99 / AU$79.99 |
| Dimensions | 46.5 x 21.6 x 10.9 (mm) |
| Show | 1.62-in AMOLED show |
| GPS? | No |
| Battery life | 21 days |
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Worth and availability
- On sale now
- Goes for $60 / £34.99 / AU$79.99
- Undercuts most rivals however not the post-discount Band 8 Professional
The Xiaomi Sensible Band 9 was launched in late September 2024 alongside a number of different devices from the corporate, which included a redesigned Xiaomi Watch 2 and the Xiaomi Buds 5.
You may decide up the tracker for $60 / £34.99 / AU$79.99, so this falls decidedly into the catchment space for our listing of the perfect low-cost health trackers. The associated fee represents a slight value hike of $10 within the US, although within the UK and US, it hasn’t modified in value.
At that value the Sensible Band 9 simply undercuts our best-in-class Fitbit Encourage 3 in addition to different rivals just like the Huawei Band 9, Samsung Galaxy Match 3, Honor Band 9, and Amazfit Bip 3 Professional. If you happen to’re in search of an reasonably priced wearable from a revered tech firm, this is likely one of the most cost-effective you’ll discover earlier than you enterprise onto the darkish facet of Amazon.
The one factor it doesn’t undercut is its predecessor, the Xiaomi Sensible Band 8 Professional. That launched earlier in 2024 for $99 / £60 / AU$95 however solely six months on from its launch, I’ve discovered it from a number of retailers at half its launch value. This chunky health tracker is the Band 9’s largest rival, and I’ll look extra at this competitor proper on the backside of this evaluate.
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Design
- By-the-numbers health tracker
- Shiny 1.62-inch AMOLED display screen
- Band is TPU however different choices on sale
Skilled health tracker clients will discover no surprises within the Xiaomi Sensible Band 9.
The display screen is a 1.62-inch AMOLED panel with a 192 x 490 decision, 60Hz refresh price, and 1200 nits max brightness. This latter is a giant improve over previous fashions and it makes it simpler to see the display screen in direct daylight. Computerized brightness has additionally seen an improve and I by no means discovered any points with its efficiency, which is the perfect testomony to its efficacy.
I’ve beforehand had points with Xiaomi bands (and different health trackers) struggling to choose up contact, particularly if my fingers have been moist, however that wasn’t the case for the Ninth-gen mannequin. I discovered the display screen splendidly handy.
Some might discover the shortage of any bodily buttons slightly complicated, but it surely’s simple to get used to a solely gesture-based navigation system.
The band’s physique measures 46.53 x 21.63 x 10.95 mm and weighs 15.8g, and it’s product of aluminum, in contrast to some previous fashions. This makes it really feel good and durable, and its 5ATM water resistance ensures it received’t get broken from submersion in water. It’s additionally one of many smaller health trackers I’ve examined, which can be excellent news for individuals who don’t like cumbersome wearables.
A couple of totally different coloration choices for the Sensible Band 9 are happening sale relying on the area – black, silver, mild blue, rose and grey choices are all accessible with straps that match.
The band Xiaomi despatched me had its default TPU strap which you’ll see within the photos, in addition to a magnetic loop one. The previous was slightly fiddly to make use of after I was placing the watch on, however I discovered the latter would slowly slip throughout use, leaving me with a barely looser band. Because of this, I ended up utilizing the default band most – Xiaomi launched the Sensible Band 9 with a number of totally different straps you should buy on-line, however I solely examined these two.
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Efficiency
- 21-day battery life
- No GPS however coronary heart price and different trackers
- 155 health modes, various in usefulness
In line with Xiaomi, the battery lifetime of the Sensible Band 9 is 21 days – in my expertise that’s nearly correct, as I reached 20, however with an above-average quantity of exercise monitoring throughout that point in an effort to check the watch (together with an 8-hour future at one level, which barely dented the battery bar).
That’s a aggressive battery life, with most rivals tapping out at two weeks or 14 days, so in case you get battery nervousness that is the health tracker to get.
Trying on the health efficiency, as you possibly can think about for the worth you’re not getting probably the most strong or razor-accurate monitoring of all time, however I didn’t discover it was ever manner out.
GPS monitoring is finished utilizing linked GPS to your smartphone, so you possibly can’t ditch your cell when going for a run or stroll, and accuracy received’t essentially be fairly as excessive as with a GPS watch. Nevertheless, it’s not wildly inaccurate both – after a complete marathon I used to be solely a number of hundred meters off my companions’ extra correct units.
That theme of ‘in the appropriate ballpark’ is mirrored within the watch’s different monitoring components too. Coronary heart price, step depend, and transferring minutes all felt fairly right when in comparison with different units. That wasn’t as true for sleep monitoring, which typically errantly thought I used to be asleep after I was studying in mattress. Nevertheless its breakdown of sleep levels was helpful, and it’s not one thing you possibly can count on in all funds health trackers.
There are 155 health monitoring modes by my depend, which vary in usefulness. Some, like operating, indoor rowing, and swimming, present helpful data particular to the exercise, however most purely measure time, energy burned, and coronary heart price. I received’t knock that although as I discovered the primary and final helpful throughout fitness center periods to house my units out.
Digging deep into the menus you will discover some fairly odd exercise modes like auto racing, chess, and mass gymnastics, however once more these all simply measure coronary heart price and time.
I’d advocate the watch most of all for runners, not solely as a result of it supplies you with fairly in-depth details about your exercise, however due to varied ‘operating programs’ that are principally interval coaching periods. The watch will advise you when to run and at what speeds, which may be helpful for individuals attempting to construct up their cardio.
Xiaomi additionally charts a ‘Vitality rating’ which is a weekly factors system to chart whether or not you’re doing sufficient train per week. It solely appears to watch logged actions although, so in case you stroll for 20,000 steps however have not set it up as an exercise to measure, that’s nil factors for you!
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Options
- Mi Health app used on cellphone
- Music playback, notification dealing with and extra
- Some bugs with app and watch
You utilize the Xiaomi Mi Sensible Band 9 alongside the corporate’s smartphone app, known as Mi Health. Pairing the band and the cellphone was fairly fiddly, a reality I assumed could possibly be right down to my very own ineptitude till I spotted that our Xiaomi Sensible Band 8 Professional reviewer had the identical points with that machine, which you’ll examine right here.
Not solely is pairing a ache, however some elements of the Mi Health app weren’t in English, as you possibly can see from the photographs hooked up to this evaluate. In any other case, it’s a helpful place to gather all of your health information, together with greater than you will discover on the watch itself.
You may also use it to vary watch faces, and Xiaomi’s achieved an important job at creating some handsome faces that collate all of your information into one display screen. I used to be taken with the one you possibly can see me utilizing within the evaluate photos – it’s simple to rapidly scan for data.
Utilizing your cellphone, you possibly can arrange some non-fitness options of the cellphone that are fairly helpful. You may management music playback out of your wrist (properly, skip and pause tracks in addition to change the quantity, however you possibly can’t hunt by means of Spotify for the proper operating monitor). You may activate an alert in your cellphone in case you’ve misplaced it, activate Do Not Disturb out of your wrist, and examine the climate.
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A function that must be helpful is notification alerts, so your wrist will buzz in case your cellphone will get a notification. It’s useful in case you get an essential e mail or textual content however the band wasn’t at all times unbelievable at dealing with them. Generally it’d repeatedly give me alerts for persistent notifications (ie notifications concerning the climate, or WhatsApp telling me it was checking for brand new messages) or ship me particular person notifications for brand new texts in busy group messages, as an alternative of bundling them collectively as another health trackers do.
My most annoying incident with notifications was at 6 am one morning. The health tracker had apparently determined I used to be awake, and so was capable of take incoming alerts – I wasn’t, however its fixed buzzing with new notifications modified that quickly sufficient! Maybe that is extra a problem with the sleep monitoring than the notification system, but it surely matches in right here.
One other concern I discovered is that the watch’s raise-to-wake (which activates the show while you flip it to face you) solely labored about half the time. I usually needed to faucet the show to see the time.
These gripes might sound annoying, however I’ve been testing low-cost health trackers for years, and general the expertise of utilizing the Sensible Band 9 was quite a bit smoother than I’m used to – it’s simply not good.
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Scorecard
| Class | Remark | Rating |
| Worth | An excellent-low-cost health tracker that undercuts most rivals. | 4.5/5 |
| Design | A by-the-numbers health tracker with a nice-looking show | 4/5 |
| Efficiency | A blended bag of health modes with no GPS however different metrics tracked. | 3.5/5 |
| Options | Aside from a number of bugs, the watch and Mi Health supply helpful options. | 3.5/5 |
Xiaomi Sensible Band 9: Ought to I purchase?
Purchase it if…
Do not buy it if…
Additionally think about
| Part | Xiaomi Sensible Band 9 | Xiaomi Sensible Band 8 Professional | Fitbit Encourage 3 |
| Worth | $60 / £34.99 / AU$79.99 | $79.99 / £59.99 / AU$95 | $99.95 / £84.99 / AU$177. |
| Dimensions | 46.5 x 21.6 x 10.9 (mm) | 48 x 22.5 x 10.99 (mm) | 39.32 l x 18.6 x 11.75 (mm) |
| Show | 1.62-in AMOLED show | 1.74-in AMOLED show | 0.7 in AMOLED touchscreen |
| GPS? | No | Sure | No |
| Battery life | 21 days | 14 days | 10 days |
