Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro Review – Affordable, Functional, and Non-Limited

Unboxing the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro

Starting off the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro review with the unboxing, the packaging is minimalistic, even by Xiaomi’s standards. It’s a white box with a picture of the smartwatch, the Mi logo stealthily placed on the top-right corner, and the model name listed on the bottom. Nothing much else to see here. Inside the box, we found the following items:

• Documentations
• Magnetic charger (USB-C)
• Strap
• The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro itself

The Xiaomi Leather Quick Release Strap is an add-on.

Specifications

Display	1.74″ 336 x 480 AMOLED, 1200 nits, 336PPI
Durability	2.5D reinforced glass TPU strap Aluminum alloy frame and high-strength fiber polymer 5ATM water resistance
CPU	Upgraded AFE chip
Memory	Unknown
Features	Optical heart rate and pulse oximeter, Accelerometer sensor, Gyroscope sensor, Ambient light sensor, Electronic compass sensor, Supports GNSS, Bluetooth 5.4
OS	Xiaomi HyperOS
Battery	350mAh
Dimensions	43.27 x 32.49 x 10.8 mm, 24.5g
Color	Obsidian Black, Rose Gold, Moonlight Silver

The Good

There are a number of good reasons to consider getting the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro. For starters, it’s designed pretty well, especially when you consider how affordable it is. It’s pretty durable with 5ATM water resistance, aluminum alloy frame with high-strength fiber polymer, has 2.5D reinforced glass and it looks sleek while we’re at it. Just by looking at it, it does look like it’s punching above its price point.

While many may be worried as it’s not sticking to a more traditional operating system like Wear OS, the Xiaomi HyperOS here works pretty well. You get a decent array of watch faces to choose from, the UI is simple and user-friendly, and it’s very responsive. Moving from one section of the UI to another feels so effortless and smooth, it’s everything you’d need in a smartwatch.

The display on the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro isn’t of poor quality either with a 336 PPI, giving you sharp visuals on its screen. Adding to that, the display itself is more than adequately bright with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits. This means that you should be able to see clearly no matter where you are, even under the bright sun.

In case you’re worried that this might be a barebones wearable, it does have a good array of health and fitness tracking features. Apart from the standard step tracking and heart rate monitoring, it can measure your blood oxygen levels, measure stress levels, get a sleep quality reading, track your stats across a whole slew of indoor and outdoor activities, and all of these can by synced and saved on the Mi Fitness app for easier viewing. This thing can easily do at least 95% of smartwatches that are three to four times its price.

One major attraction point of this Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro is the fact that it works on both Android and iOS. In fact, you don’t even need a Xiaomi smartphone to make full use of it. For as long as you have the Mi Fitness app installed, signed in, and synced, you will have no limitations whatsoever.

Best of all, the battery life is insanely long, and this is likely the ultimate benefit of not going for Wear OS. The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro can last up to 21 days but if you’re a particularly heavy user, you can expect it to last at least 8 days. Do keep in mind that the battery life does get affected heavily if you have Always-On Display enabled, like it can go down to 10 days even without heavy use but as it is, that’s still pretty long. Most new smartwatches out there can barely last a week, and that’s with minimal use.

Lastly, and this shouldn’t be a surprise, is that the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro is very affordable. It’s currently retailing for RM339 but at the time of this writing, Xiaomi Malaysia seemingly slashed the price down even further to RM269. It looks and functions like a full-fledged smartwatch at such a low price, and I’m sure most consumers out there can easily stomach it.

Looking for a value-for-money smartphone to pair this with? Check out our Xiaomi 14T Pro review by clicking right here.

The Bad

Of course, it has its share of drawbacks. For starters, it’s lacking a number of things you’d find in most modern smartwatches out there. The first notable one is the lack of a home button, so you’ll need a bit more patience to go back to the watch face. There is a lack of speaker and microphone, so interacting with this will be limited. To me, this is understandable as Xiaomi needs to keep costs low, and for what it has, it does its job well enough.

Next up, and this further emphasizes using this as a more convenient screen for reference, is that you can get notifications on it but you will need to use your smartphone to respond. If you need a wearable that can help you reply to messages or answer comments for example, you will need to look elsewhere. This is likely what makes it easy to work with different mobile operating systems.

While the battery life insanely long, the charger isn’t exactly the best. It uses a magnetic 2-pin charger instead of a charging pad, so you have to align it in a specific way to charge it. Trying to do so the other way around will simply not work as the magnets will repel it away. It’s not a huge problem, and I wouldn’t class it a design flaw either. It’s just a minor inconvenience if anything but luckily, you will be charging it far less than most smartwatches out there today so this issue becomes even less of an inconvenience.

Lastly, the data / readings you get from this wearable may be questionable in accuracy but like every smartwatch out in the market now, always take the info as a frame of reference rather than a professional diagnosis. I say this because it’s designed for convenience rather than accuracy so if you want absolute precision, you should seek help from experts or use professional-grade tools instead of a smartwatch.

Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro Verdict

If you’re in the market for a wearable that can track your health, show you notifications, and tell the time without breaking the bank, the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro easily fits this bill. It’s far from being luxurious but it hits all the essentials with ease, and it works across a variety of smartphones. Despite how low its being priced, I’m surprised it looks this good and is built quite durably.

At the end of our Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro review, I award this wearable with our coveted Gold Pokdeward.

Big thanks to Xiaomi Malaysia for sending us this wearable for the purpose of this review.