Honor Band 9 Review: Big Screen Boost

The Honor Band 9 is the follow-up to the Band 7, with Honor skipping a Band 8 for the latest instalment of its budget fitness tracker.

The headline news is that Honor has beefed up the size of the display, introduced new colour options and is bolstering its fitness insights by telling you your fitness age.

It’s still a tracker that will track your heart rate and workouts and promises to do that for up to two weeks before you need to think about charging it again. 

At £49.99, it’s going up against budget trackers with bigger screens like the Huawei Band 9, Amazfit Band 7 and both the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 and Band 8 Pro. There certainly isn’t a shortage of affordable options already, so does Honor really shake things up at the budget end of the fitness band market?

Honor’s latest band is aiming to break into our best fitness tracker chart

Design & Build

• Three new colours
• Ditches a physical button
• Waterproof up to 50 metres

The design language of the Band 9 hasn’t drastically changed from the Band 7 with the one key difference here being that the screen you’ll be swiping your fingers across has got wider and is now higher resolution.

You’re still getting a 43mm-sized band that matches up a polymer case with a TPU band. That band now comes in Cloudy Blue, Phantom Purple or Black colours and you can remove the straps to swap in a new or different one.

The Band 9 is now slimmer than the Band 7 and that’s definitely a positive move, though the tracker remains a little drab-looking and doesn’t really shake that budget price tag in spite of some slightly nicer materials being in play.

An odd move here is that there’s now no physical buttons

An odd move here is that there’s now no physical buttons, which certainly helps to keep the Band 9 more streamlined, but from a navigation and interaction point of view you’re reliant on tapping on the screen or using the raise to wake to interact with the Band 9.

There’s a reason buttons are good to have on trackers and it would’ve been nice to at least have the one included on the Band 7 to make it a more intuitive tracker to use.

Nothing has changed on the durability front here so Honor is sticking to a 5ATM waterproof rating, which means it can be used for swimming and keeping on when you’re in the shower.

It’s pretty comfortable to wear day and night, doesn’t weigh heavy at all at any time and does at least tick that all-day wear box very comfortably. It’s just 16.3g without the strap.

Screen & Audio 

• 1.57-inch AMOLED display
• Responsive raise to wake
• No microphone or speaker

Honor has moved from a 1.47-inch AMOLED touchscreen to a 1.57-inch panel, with an improved 256 x 402 pixel resolution. It’s a screen that goes pretty bright and does offer the ability to adjust that and also supports using it in an always-on mode. Thankfully, it does also have a pretty responsive raise to wake support if you don’t want to opt for having the screen on 24/7.

The screen, as mentioned, is wider than its predecessor and does put it much closer in look to trackers like the Huawei Band 9 (1.47-inch display) and trackers like the Oppo Watch Free (1.64-inch display).

The screen offers good colours, though there is some slight fuzziness there, while colours are a touch saturated for my liking. It’s a good enough quality screen for viewing your stats on, but it’s not breaking new ground for screen quality at this price.

If you want to make calls here, then it’s not hugely surprising to discover Honor doesn’t include a microphone or speaker, like the Band 7. So while you might be able to see when calls are incoming on your phone from your wrist, you’re not going to be able to answer them.

Software & Features 

• Runs on proprietary OS
• Works with Android and iOS devices
• Includes Find my Phone and music controls

The Honor Band 9 runs on pretty similar software to the one that was running on the Band 7. That’s an operating system that still looks a lot like Huawei’s Lite OS, so if you’ve used one of Huawei’s trackers before, then the look and feel of this will feel familiar.

There’s the main watch screen, where you can swipe up and down or left and right to see data widgets, notifications and get into the main menu screen. That menu screen can be arranged as icons in two columns or in a single stream of menu icons thanks to the wider display.

You still use the Honor Health companion smartphone app to set things up and again looks a lot like Huawei’s Health app. The software on the band certainly feels a lot nicer to interact and spend time with and doesn’t take long to get to grips with where things live or what it can do.

Notifications have a little more space to spread out on and the widgets are a lot nicer to glance at as well

When you’re not concerned about tracking your steps or heart rate there are smartwatch features like viewing notifications, accessing music controls, viewing the weather and there’s also a useful find my phone mode. Having that extra screen real estate does help make some of those features a little more usable. Notifications have a little more space to spread out on and the widgets are a lot nicer to glance at as well.

Ultimately though the features haven’t changed from its predecessor. You’re getting a Bluetooth upgrade jumping from 5.0 to 5.3, but in the grand scheme of things, the experience of using the Band 9 feels a lot like using the Band 7.

Fitness & Tracking 

• 96 workout modes
• Tracks heart rate and blood oxygen 
• Doesn’t offer built-in GPS

The primary goal of the Band 9 is to do all of the things you’d expect a fitness tracker to do well. So that counts your steps and motivates you to move more. It’s also going to make a strong sleep-tracking companion and be useful for continuously monitoring metrics like heart rate.

In terms of delivering that, I’d say the Band 9 does a fairly solid job of it. I found step counts were about 500 steps within the step tracking from two other fitness trackers. There’s a nice activity tracking widget on the band to keep a track of progress, though it’s pretty light on extra features that nudge you to stay active throughout the day.

For sleep tracking, I found sleep duration captured was generally in line with sleep tracking from Oura and Garmin. You’ll get sleep scores and an analysis of your sleep stages, though it’s the score that will likely be the most useful as far as understanding if you’ve had a good night’s sleep.

Turning to it for metrics like heart rate, stress and blood oxygen and it’s a bit of a similar story to our time spent with the Band 7. Heart rate tracking has its good and bad moments. Resting heart rate data can be in-line with other trackers I tested it against, but ranges and real-time readings can also be noticeably high – at times 5-10bpm higher.

That puts a question mark over other heart rate-fuelled features like the stress tracking and it doesn’t feel like much progress has been made on this front.

Honor once again offers your pick of 96 workouts, with 11 of those modes offering more activity-specific metrics. There’s no built-in GPS, like the Band 7, but you can lean on your phone’s GPS sensor to boost tracking accuracy for outdoor workouts.

it’s still best for casual running and rides

Among those 96 workouts you’ll find support for indoor exercises like rowing, using the Elliptical, outdoor and indoor cycling and running. Honor also includes Running courses to introduce newer runners to more structured running workouts to add to their routine.

There doesn’t seem to be a huge difference in the performance of the sports tracking, however. Without built-in GPS, the tracking accuracy unsurprisingly isn’t fantastic. Put the connected GPS (via your phone) to work and things do get better, though it’s still best for casual running and rides and I found the GPS or distance tracking wasn’t impeccable.

Honor has added some additional training insights to make it a more useful training partner, telling you your fitness age, which looks at your cardiovascular endurance to tell you if your fitness age is lower than your actual age. It’s not a new insight to trackers or sports watches and given the unreliability of the heart rate sensor, which is tied to assessing that cardiovascular endurance, it’s hard to trust it.

Battery Life & Charging

• Up to 14 days battery
• Up to 10 days with regular use
• No quick charge mode

The battery life promised on the Band 9 hasn’t changed from the Band 7 and, in fact, Honor hasn’t budged from the numbers it promised on the Band 6. You can expect to get a maximum of 14 days battery life, but that can drop to 10 days when you’re making regular use of key features like continuously monitoring heart rate and tracking workouts.

The daily drop-off in battery has been the same 10% average as the Band 7, despite there now being a bigger and higher resolution display to power. I used the Band 9 with notifications enabled, continuous heart rate tracking, monitoring sleep and using features like music controls and checking the weather.

When you do hit 0%, you’ll need to grab its proprietary charging cable to power it up and it takes roughly an hour to go from flat to 100%. So it doesn’t at least keep you hanging around to hang it back on your wrist.

So the battery numbers haven’t changed, but you’re going to get over a week on average from the Band 9, which should satisfy most.

Price & Availability

The Honor Band 9 was officially announced in March 2024 and is currently available from the Honor website for £44.99. It isn’t currently available to buy in the US.

The Band 7 remains on sale and costs £39.99, and most notably misses out on that bigger display and some new band colours.

That sub-£50 price puts it up against the Huawei Band 9, Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro and the Amazfit Band 7. All trackers that adopt this new wider display trend to make them look like a cross between a fitness tracker and a smartwatch. The closest Fitbit in price is the Ace 3 which is aimed at kids.

Check out more options in our best fitness tracker chart.

Should you buy the Honor Band 9?

The Honor Band 9 essentially takes the Band 7 and puts a bigger screen on it. There doesn’t seem to be any real discernible differences in terms of what you’re getting on the software front and as a result, the performance feels nearly identical.

Having that bigger display does make some features, particularly on the smartwatch front, feel nicer to use than previously. As far as pushing things forward in terms of what a budget fitness tracker can deliver, that’s simply not the case here.

It’s another very solid but not very groundbreaking device so you can go back to your workout if you’re already using a Band 7.

When you’ve got similar trackers like the Xiaomi Smart Band 8 Pro, which offers an even bigger screen, features like built-in GPS and generally more robust fitness and health monitoring, it’s tough to say go for the Band 9 instead when it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table.

Specs

• 1.57-inch, AMOLED display
• 5ATM water resistance rating 
• Connected GPS
• Up to 14 days battery life
• Heart rate sensor
• Blood oxygen sensor
• Sleep tracking
• Stress monitoring
• 16.3g without strap