Honor Band 9 debuts as affordable fitness tracker with 14 days battery life

Honor has launched the Band 9 in China. It stands as the successor to the Band 7 and comes with a good number of improvements. For starters, the newer fitness tracker has a larger AMOLED screen, coming in at 1.57-inch instead of 1.47-inch found in the predecessor. There’s also a jump in the screen resolution, which is 256 x 402 pixels instead of 194 x 368 pixels. These two upgrades mean that you will get more information at a glance and sharper visuals on the display.

The design of the Honor Band 9 is similar to its predecessor. But the new fitness tracker comes in different color options. The build seems to be different, with the new one being 1.7 grams lighter than the Band 7. However, it still retains the 5 ATM water-resistance rating with no official IP rating.

Moving on, the Honor Band 9 has seen an upgrade on the inside too. The new tracker packs Bluetooth 5.3 Low Energy, while the predecessor came with Bluetooth 5.0 with support for LE. This upgrade in connectivity should result in more reliable wireless connections.

Regarding health monitoring, the fitness tracker can take continuous heart rate and SpO2 readings. It can also help monitor sleep, menstrual periods, and other health metrics.

As for fitness, the new tracker brings an upgraded running mode that offers a “personal training experience.” Additionally, the Band 9 has 96 sports modes to help reach fitness goals. The companion app provides additional features to monitor fitness and health.

Another highlight of the Honor Band 9 is that it is rated for up to 14 days of runtime with “typical usage.” While this battery life rating is the same as the predecessor, a two-week max runtime is still good for a fitness tracker. Other features include music playback control, app notifications, call alerts, alarms, and weather.

Regarding pricing, Honor has launched Band 9 in China at CNY 249 (around $35) for the standard and CNY 299 (around $42) for the NFC variant. Global availability hasn’t been announced yet, but the predecessor did make a global debut. A good alternative that’s currently available in the international markets would be the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 (available on Amazon).