After a few teasers and numerous leaks, Xiaomi officially announced the Smart Band 9 as part of CEO Lei Jun’s annual speech.
As is the case with the company’s fitness tracker lineup, updates are minimal. Last year, Xiaomi tweaked the band’s mechanism and introduced “Pebble Mode” for advanced running tracking, but this time around, the updates are slightly less innovative.
Battery life is the main difference between this latest edition – which will initially go on sale in China starting at CNY249 (around £25/$35) – with Xiaomi claiming a jump from 16 days in “typical usage” to 21 days.
Sensor accuracy also appears to have been improved. On stage, Xiaomi announced that heart rate monitoring performance will be improved by 16%, while sleep tracking and phase analysis have also been improved by 7.9%.
Given that data accuracy is one of our main issues when testing the Smart Band 8, we’re glad to see that Xiaomi is addressing it. However, the upgrades don’t go much further. Other wishes we had for the Smart Band 9, like GPS, are still reserved for the more expensive Smart Band Pro range.
The design mechanics, meanwhile, seem relatively unchanged, which is perhaps to be expected given the overhaul present in last year’s edition.
The only major change is the new colors of the metal case. Instead of a single glossy black finish, Xiaomi announced that buyers can now choose between pink, blue, silver, and black.
There’s also a special ceramic edition – pictured above and available for CNY349 – while Xiaomi is also introducing a new range of metal and leather straps, as well as new necklace designs for Pebble mode.
As always, there’s no word on when the global edition of the Smart Band 9 will be announced, but we’ll keep an ear out for it – we’re expecting a similar launch and pricing to when it arrived in October last year.