Xiaomi’s Good Band lineup (previously Mi Band) is now in its ninth era, and the Good Band 9 Energetic is essentially the most inexpensive out of the bunch. With its €25/£20 steered retail worth, this plastic nugget is among the most inexpensive smartbands in the marketplace.
Xiaomi Good Band 9 Energetic specs
- Show: 1.47” TFT LCD touchscreen, 172 x 320 px decision, 60Hz refresh price, 450 nits peak brightness
- Straps: Removable proprietary straps, 135-215mm adjustable size
- Options: 5ATM ranking, Actual-time coronary heart price monitor, 24/7 Blood Oxygen stage monitor, Sleep monitoring, Stress monitoring, Sports activities monitoring, Step Counter, Meditation, Notifications, Idle Alert, Telephone Finder, Climate Forecast, Music and Digicam Management, Alarm, Stopwatch, Compass, Barometer, Flashlight.
- Sports activities Modes: Out of doors Run, Indoor Run, Out of doors Stroll, Biking, Mountaineering, Trekking, Leap rope, Freestyle (50 extra in Mi Health app)
- Sensors: PPG optical coronary heart price sensor, SpO2 sensor, 3-axis accelerometer, barometer, rotor Vibration Motor
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, Suitable with Android 8.0 and iOS 12+
- Battery: 300 mAh
- Colours: Black, Beige White, Pink
- Dimensions:46 x 27 x 9.99mm
- Weight: 16.5 grams with out strap
Reaching that worth level needed to include some compromises, and they’re proven within the TFT LCD with its thick bezels, all-plastic construct, and fundamental design. You continue to get the standard well being and exercise monitoring options we’ve come to anticipate from Xiaomi’s wearables, however is the cut price worth sufficient to justify going for the Energetic over its siblings or competing gadgets?
This reviewer had the Band 9 Energetic strapped to his wrist 24/7 for over two weeks, and these are his findings.
Design
Xiaomi Good Band 9 Energetic is an inexpensive smartband made solely out of plastic. The system is formed like a nugget, with the one-piece TPU strap hugging it snugly. The one visible change from the Band 8 Energetic is the marginally raised lip across the show, which ought to provide higher safety, and it definitely helps in opposition to the occasional dink in opposition to doorknobs and desk corners.
The 1.47-inch TFT LCD gives a 172 x 320 px decision and 60Hz refresh price. It’s solely rated at 400 nits of brightness, which is okay, even when considered in direct daylight open air. Nonetheless, an OLED panel like those on the Good Band 9 or 9 Professional is miles higher by way of viewing angles, distinction and brightness.
We’re additionally lacking bodily buttons right here, which has been the norm for the Band 6 days, however we’re nonetheless not satisfied that the all-swipe gesture navigation mannequin is one of the best ways to go, particularly when your palms are moist.
Good Band 9 Energetic makes use of proprietary straps, that are bought by Xiaomi, and we’re already seeing listings from third-party makers on AliExpress. The retail bundle contains the Band 9 Energetic, a black TPU strap, Xiaomi’s proprietary two-pin magnetic charging cable, a fast begin information and a guaranty leaflet.
Our assessment unit arrived alongside Xiaomi’s official Luminous strap, which provides a touch of favor and performance for runners with the fluorescent components glowing at the hours of darkness for safer night runs.
Like its predecessor and seemingly each smartband in the previous couple of years, Band 9 Energetic is 5ATM waterproof, which means it will probably deal with dives in contemporary water as much as 50 meters. In layman’s phrases, you’ll be superb taking it to the pool and bathe.
Options
Good Band 9 Energetic includes a mild path sensor with an optimized well being and health monitoring algorithm. It might monitor your coronary heart price and blood oxygen saturation 24/7 whereas additionally providing sleep and stress monitoring. Xiaomi can also be bringing over 50 sports activities modes, overlaying all the fundamental choices you’d anticipate.
Circling again to the entry-level worth, Xiaomi omitted GNSS satellite tv for pc positioning on the Band 9 Energetic, so that you’ll should depend on your smartphone’s positioning information to trace your runs.
Like the remainder of Xiaomi’s sensible wearables, Band 9 Energetic comes with entry to a whole lot of watch faces through Xiaomi’s Mi Health companion app. The one draw back is that it doesn’t get computerized brightness management. Attributable to its TFT LCD nature, Band 9 Energetic doesn’t assist All the time on Show (AOD) both.
Band 9 Energetic pairs to your Android/iOS smartphone through Bluetooth 5.3, and you may sync incoming notifications to buzz your wrist. You’re restricted by the cramped horizontal area on its display screen, and there’s no solution to reply to incoming messages. There are not any audio system or microphones on the system itself, so Bluetooth calls are a no-go. You’ll be able to, nonetheless, management music playback out of your wrist and use the Band as a distant shutter on your cellphone’s digital camera.
Software program and efficiency
Like its predecessors within the Xiaomi Good Band collection, Band 9 Energetic boots a familiar-looking real-time working system (RTOS), which is solely operated through swipes. The UI contains of card-based widgets, although you possibly can’t customise or group completely different widgets right into a single card like you possibly can with the extra premium Good Band fashions. The app structure is list-based and options 16 built-in apps with out the choice so as to add any third-party ones.
Navigating the UI feels clean due to the 60Hz refresh price, and all the things works as anticipated. The display screen is a bit wider than the one on vanilla Good Band 9 however it’s nonetheless noticeably extra cramped than the 1.74-inch 336 x 480px panel on the Band 9 Professional.
The Mi Health smartphone companion app shops a month’s value of health-tracking
and exercise information and you may sync your information to Apple Well being or Google Match in addition to Strava and Suunto.
Mi Health app interface
We examined the Band 9 Energetic paired with an iPhone 15 Professional. Connectivity between the 2 was nice, with no interruption in information sync and a few minor delays in incoming notifications.
Well being and exercise monitoring
Coronary heart price monitoring on the Band 9 Energetic is configurable in 1, 10, or 30-minute intervals like its predecessors and you may have 24/7 monitoring for a greater general image of your HR fluctuations. Readings from the Band 9 Energetic are in line with these from the Xiaomi Band 8 and 9 collection and are additionally in keeping with those from the Huawei Watch Match 3.
The identical could be stated concerning the SpO2 readings, that are similar to what you’d get with the opposite smartbands on this worth vary, with all coming in or across the similar consequence with some minor deviations.
Sleep monitoring on the Band 9 Energetic options the usual set of metrics like complete sleep time with a breakdown of sunshine, fast eye motion (REM), and deep sleep levels. Throughout the course of our assessment, we discovered the Band 9 Energetic to be inaccurate in terms of go-to-sleep and wake-up instances in comparison with the Huawei Watch Match 3.
Sleep information from the Good Band 9 Energetic contained in the Mi Health app
Xiaomi’s newest band additionally confirmed persistently longer sleep instances than its competitor and it additionally failed at jotting down wake-up instances throughout the night time, which was not the case on the Huawei wearable. One other annoyance is that you simply don’t get the deep sleep time on the band itself, so you need to go into the Mi Health app every time.
For exercise monitoring, we examined the Good Band 9 Energetic alongside the Huawei Watch Match 3 on the health club the place each have been put to the check of a mean exercise with a mixture of treadmill operating and weightlifting.
Band 9 Energetic pattern exercise information
Band 9 Energetic underreported the steps and complete run distance. Each gadgets recorded comparable leads to coronary heart price readings throughout exercises. Nonetheless, we discovered that Band 9 Energetic exceeded most coronary heart price readings by round 10BPM, which appears to be a sample on Xiaomi wearables.
The absence of a devoted GNSS tracker contained in the Band 9 Energetic means you’ll should carry your cellphone if you wish to jot down out of doors runs.
Battery Life
Band 9 Energetic includes a 300 mAh battery, which Xiaomi claims can last as long as 18 days of use with moderation or 9 days with extra motion.
In our assessments, we discovered the Band 9 Energetic to final us 8 days with show brightness set to 60%, all the well being and exercise monitoring options activated alongside a exercise each different day, and notifications.
That’s ok endurance in our books, although we’d discover it exhausting to succeed in the marketed 18 days except you flip off many of the well being monitoring options and decrease the show brightness significantly.
What’s not so good is the gradual charging, which took over 90 minutes to go from 0 to 100%.
Verdict
Xiaomi Good Band 9 Energetic is essentially the most inexpensive health tracker from the corporate, and it delivers a good general bundle with its compact and durable construct, waterproof design and respectable battery endurance. You get the standard mixture of well being and exercise monitoring options and a wealthy companion app that sums up tendencies in your well being, sleep and exercise.
The TFT LCD isn’t the brightest round, and it’s a substantial step down from an OLED show like those on different Good Bands from Xiaomi and its opponents. Sleep monitoring leaves rather a lot to be desired and the construct high quality, whereas respectable, feels noticeably cheaper than the vanilla Good Band 9. Given the Energetic title, we anticipated a built-in GNSS satellite tv for pc receiver to trace out of doors runs and hikes, which is a missed alternative right here.
On the finish of the day, Xiaomi’s Good Band 9 Energetic is value contemplating solely for its entry-level asking worth, which is difficult to beat. If you’d like a extra premium smartband expertise, we’d advise you spring up for the vanilla Good Band 9 or its extra premium sibling – the Good Band 9 Professional.
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