At a glance
Expert’s Rating
Pros
- Attractive design
- Bright, vibrant display
- Built-in GPS
- Very affordable
Cons
- No physical buttons
- Some spotty fitness tracking accuracy
- Mi Fitness app still needs some work
Our Verdict
The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro is another solid budget fitness tracker with a big screen to help it handle smartwatch features better than Xiaomi’s slimmer Smart Band 9. Built-in GPS will be a big lure for some users.
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The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro is the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 with a bigger screen and built-in GPS to make it more of a smartwatch and sports watch mash-up than Xiaomi’s other cheaper fitness trackers.
Like the Band 9, the Band 9 Pro is a budget tracker that still comes in less than similar-looking hybrid trackers from the likes of Huawei, Honor and Oppo, offering big features for a low price.
We were fans of the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro and with its successor, it’s more good here to give Xiaomi another solid affordable option.
Design & Build
- Three case colour options
- Optional straps available
- No physical buttons
The Band 9 Pro now features a smaller 43mm, button-less aluminium alloy case that comes in your choice of three colours.
That’s obsidian black, rose gold and midnight silver (pictured) and that’s paired up with a TPU strap that doesn’t use my favourite type of pin clasp to keep it in place on your wrist.
While for most scenarios it was secure and comfortable to wear I did feel the clasp style wasn’t the best fit for swims and the strap did have a habit of slipping out in the water.
Mike Sawh
You can change the strap with a simple button mechanism letting you release the TPU one and swap in leather and magnetic strap options. The leather straps cost £17.99 while the magnetic one is pricer at £22.99.
It’s rare to see this sort of strap customisation on offer on a fitness tracker this cheap and does help to smarten up the look of an already likeable tracker design.
Around the back lies the optical sensor array and the two magnetic pins, which is your sign that it does use a proprietary charging cable to power it up. The supplied charging cable connects to those pins easily but doesn’t always feel like it’s securely locked in place.
Mike Sawh
As mentioned, this is a tracker that’s suitable for swimming and carries a 5 ATM rating to make it safe to be submerged in water up to 50 metres depth. During swims, the screen is locked to ensure it doesn’t fall foul of any accidental screen interactions.
It’s a very good-looking tracker overall that doesn’t feel budget, though I do think having at least one button would make it a much nicer tracker to use.
Screen & Audio
- Brighter 1.74-inch AMOLED touchscreen
- 2.5D shaped glass
- No microphone or speaker included
While the Band 9 Pro has the same-sized screen and resolution as the one featured on the Band 8 Pro, Xiaomi has sought to make it a brighter one.
Mike Sawh
It’s gone from offering a maximum brightness rating of 600 nits up to 1,200 nits, making sure this isn’t one you’re going to struggle to see, even in brighter outdoor light. There’s an automatic brightness adjustment mode included to ensure you’re getting the best viewing experience based on the lighting in your environment.
The 1.74-inch, 336 x 480 resolution AMOLED display unsurprisingly isn’t the best AMOLED panel you’ll find on a fitness tracker or smartwatch, with colours a touch oversaturated particularly at higher brightness settings. For the price, it’s more than acceptable display quality that’s a good match for Xiaomi’s software and is nicely responsive to touch and taps. It also supports an always-on mode if you need that display on 24/7 with the watch face visible at all times on a darkened screen.
If you’re hoping to make calls or listen to your music out loud, there’s no microphone or speaker included and you’ll need to spend more on one of Xiaomi’s smartwatches to get those added audio powers.
Software & Features
- Runs on Hyper OS
- Consistent experience across iOS and Android
- Basic but well-presented smartwatch features
Xiaomi relies on its own HyperOS operating system to deliver the software experience on the Band 9 Pro and that’s a software that works with both Android and iOS devices.
I’ve used it with both, and the experience paired with an Android phone and iPhone is very similar. You get access to the same features and require Xiaomi’s Mi Fitness app to get things set up.
Mike Sawh
The Mi Fitness app does still feel a bit clunky in places. The main health dashboard breaks down your key stats in a largely glanceable fashion. Next, it’s the workout screen where you’ll find workout history and training insights, and then it’s into the devices and profile setting sections, which feels a touch busy.
You do have the ability to share data with a small number of third-party apps, which include Strava, Suunto and Apple and Google’s health apps if you prefer to view your stats elsewhere.
The software on the Band is better in general thankfully. It’s a pretty customary gesture-centric setup where everything from your notification stream, data widgets and app drawer is a swipe away.
The interface is well optimised to the Pro’s AMOLED display making core smartwatch features like reading notifications, setting up timers or using music playback controls easy things to do.
Fitness & Tracking
- Over 150 sports modes
- Promised improved GPS performance
- Offers all-day heart rate, blood oxygen and stress tracking
Bigger screen aside, the other big difference separating the Band 9 Pro from the Smart Band 9 is the Pro’s built-in GPS.
It can communicate to the five key satellite systems and Xiaomi claims a 33% improved accuracy performance compared to the Band 8 Pro.
Mike Sawh
While it didn’t take long to lock onto a GPS signal, the Xiaomi often came up a little short on distance tracking compared to a dedicated and pricier sports watch. It was a bit off with some of the metrics associated with distance tracking like pacing.
It wasn’t a horror show and keeping in mind the price of the Band 9 Pro and that it was up against a supremely accurate sports watch with the latest positioning technology, the accuracy would be a good fit for runners who aren’t necessarily chasing down race PBs and just want something to keep them more accountable when exercising outside.
In terms of other exercise tracking support, there are modes aplenty here including improved swim tracking, which gives you a breakdown of splits, stroke rate and now generates SWOLF scores.
Additional modes are categorised to help you find supported ball, winter or team sports. Just be aware that some of those modes are only going to capture duration and heart rate data.
Mike Sawh
Heart rate tracking is an area that Xiaomi claims offers improvements on the Band 8 Pro too, with a new chip in place that helps to deliver both heart rate and supported blood oxygen tracking.
Xiaomi claims accuracy has been boosted by 15% over the older Band. I’d say for exercise, the heart rate tracking hasn’t been super reliable, even outside of more high-intensity workouts where most optical sensor setups falter.
Both average and maximum heart rate readings typically reported higher data and heart rate spikes during most workouts compared to a heart rate monitor. It was never wildly higher, but it was enough to question the reliability and whether insights fuelled by heart rate, like Vitality scores and VO2 Max estimates can be truly trusted.
Mike Sawh
I found that its ability to monitor your heart rate daily and during the night was far more reliable in comparison. The all-day blood oxygen and stress monitoring when enabled, does mean sacrificing more battery life for insights that I think some but not all users will be concerned with. Given the blood oxygen tracking isn’t clinical-grade monitoring, it’s more about offering prompts when there are changes in your data.
For daily activity tracking like monitoring steps, it’s absolutely up to the task. The activity tracking widget is a very simple one to glean your progress from. I found calorie burn estimates surprisingly low, though given the inconsistency of the heart rate monitoring, which that data is tied to, that wasn’t a huge surprise.
It’s a pretty competent sleep tracker, generating sleep scores, offering a breakdown of sleep stages and providing some insights and suggestions based on sleep data. I found sleep stats like scores, duration and time fallen asleep and time awoken similar to data from two other reliable sleep trackers – one a wrist-based tracker and the other a smart ring.
The insights and suggestions are far from groundbreaking ones telling you things like why it’s bad to go to bed late or explaining the importance of different sleep stages. If you’re trying to get to grips with those sleep stats, they are useful explainers if not the most nicely presented inside of the app.
Battery Life & Charging
- Bigger battery compared to Band 8 Pro
- Up to 21 days battery life
- Advanced health features drain battery
One of the most appealing aspects of strapping on a Xiaomi fitness tracker is the kind of battery life you’ll enjoy. It’s going to be weeks as opposed to days. Getting the best battery life entirely depends on whether you go all in with the monitoring features available.
There’s now a larger 350mAh capacity battery that promises up to 21 days in typical usage, 8 days in heavy usage and 10 days with the screen set to always-on. With all of those usage scenarios, getting to those numbers will depend on how regularly you’re using GPS or turning on all-day tracking for heart rate, stress and blood oxygen levels. You can also include the most advanced sleep tracking support here as something that will add additional drain on the battery.
If you’re going light on using those features and are willing to sacrifice some of the all-day tracking and keeping the screen on all day and night too, the battery life drop-off can be as small as 3-4%. As soon as you bring those features more into play, it’s getting closer to 10-15% and can get higher especially if the screen is in always-on mode and you’re turning the blood oxygen and stress tracking.
I’d say it’s a tracker that can still get you through a week’s worth of use, even in heavier usage. When you do need to recharge, it takes roughly just over an hour to get from 0-100%, so it doesn’t take long to give it a quick top-up to get you through a few more days if you don’t want to or have the time to charge it fully.
Price & Availability
The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro was announced and launched in China first in October 2024 before globally rolling out a month later.
The Band 9 Pro launch price was £62.99, making it more expensive than the Band 8 Pro at launch, which costs £59.99.
You can buy it from Xiaomi as well as Amazon. It’s not officially available in the US, though you can find other global models on Amazon.
It’s still very cheap and cheaper than rival trackers like the Huawei Band 9 and the Honor Band 9. It’s also significantly cheaper than Samsung and Fitbit’s cheapest available trackers, which sit much closer towards the £100 mark.
For context, the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 costs £34.99 and also includes an AMOLED screen, but does lack the built-in GPS you get on the Band 9 Pro.
Check our chart of the best fitness trackers to see more top options.
Should you buy the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro?
If you’re looking for a very cheap fitness tracker with some useful extra sports watch and smartwatch functionality, the Band 9 Pro is worth looking at.
Band 8 Pro owners might not see huge reasons to make the upgrade unless you want the boost in screen brightness, battery life and some promised accuracy improvements in GPS and heart rate performance that still wasn’t spotless for us.
When you look at the other big-screen fitness trackers that Xiaomi is competing with that cost more than the Band 9 Pro, it’s more than holding its own and also has that built-in GPS support you won’t find on those rival trackers.
It’s giving you all of the good stuff from the Smart Band 9 for a bit more money and while more expensive, is still a great budget fitness tracker buy.
Specs
- Hyper OS
- Works with Android and iOS
- Built-in GPS
- Heart rate, blood oxygen and stress tracking
- Waterproof up to 50 metres
- 1.74-inch AMOLED touchscreen
- View notifications and music controls
- Bluetooth 5.4
- Up to 21 days battery life
