Amazon Halo — Heaven Sent or Not Even Close…Yet
By: Am Cashman
Tags: Amazon, Amazon Halo

Like many others these days, I am one of those individuals who really enjoy getting technology feedback on how my body is doing. I like knowing how technology rates my sleep. I value having the ability to visibly see how active I am being in a given day, week or month. If I am using a good device, the information is empowering. It is a digital cheerleader that helps me in my health feedback loop.

Since 2008, Fitbit has been the most mainstream fitness tracker on the market with other less-known competitors straggling comfortably behind. The fact that it took 10 years for larger technology companies, such as Google or Amazon, to look to compete in the market is surprising. Especially since Fitbit has been plagued with setbacks since its inception. In this writer's view, those setbacks have been due to poor management choices rather than poor product concepts (eg. bringing defective products to market). Having owned more than four different Fitbit models…I know the product. Which is the reason why I dumped customer loyalty when Amazon decided to give Fitbit the competition it sorely needed. It wasn’t hard to leave Fitbit since every device I purchased always came with issues and stopped working within a year of purchasing without cause. Leaving me deviceless as soon as the warranty ran out.

So in walks the Amazon Halo — you would think that it was heaven-sent. Amazon overall is recognized for its dependable technology products and previously better than average customer service. I have been an avid Amazon technology supporter for over 12 years….3 kindles, 2 Fire TV devices, 2 Alexa Dots, 2 Alexa Show’s, 8 Alexa Smart Plugs, Prime membership…needless to say I am an Amazon fan. Amazon deciding to jump into the fitness tracker arena came with a big YAY from me. I immediately signed up for early release and prayed to the fitness gods “let me be one of the chosen ones!”

And I was one of the chosen ones. I as thrilled. I honestly believed that Amazon was going to have me put Fitbit way behind me and happily move on. When Fitbit, on my last failed Charge 3, was so kind as to offer me a 35% discount on my next Fitbit purchase….I laughed and responded “No thank you. I am going to say “Halo” to my new little friend.”

Truth be told…the joke has been on me. For all the faith that I have put into all my previous Amazon technology purchases, this purchase has been one of the biggest disappointments I have had with Amazon products…all products. Here is the story.

From my acceptance to early release and purchase it took approximately 2 weeks for the Halo to arrive — just in case anyone thought this was a 2 day delivery item. This may have changed since Amazon has since completed its invitation phase. The packaging was really nicely done. The charger is very awkward and sometimes awkward to make sure it is sitting correctly to charge. In my opinion, the charger design is a big fail (after talking to tech support, I was told that the Halo fob charges better when you disconnect the band and just put the fob in the charger).

After about 4 hours of charging the Halo was not showing a charge past 58%. I decided to go out and try to do some research to see if I could resolve what the issue might be refusing to think the item was defective. Seemed that I was not alone in having charging problems and to the same percentage so I begrudgingly reached out to Amazon feeling all the excitement drain out of me that after waiting 2 weeks I was going to have to potentially wait another 2 weeks for a replacement if defective. I chatted with one of the customer service reps and he was straight into a return while I was still trying to determine whether maybe the first charge was goofy. But the rep told me I was wrong, put in for a replacement and issued me a return — which also wasn’t fun because they wanted me to have to bring it now to a post office which I didn’t want to deal with because of COVID.

During the period of wait for the replacement, I decided to hold off on returning and try and see if even with the incomplete charge whether I actually liked it. Turned out that the next charge the fob went up to 99% and to 99% every time afterward. I had thoughts that maybe I should just keep it but reminded myself that if the first charge was goofy that perhaps it was indicative of future issues that could bomb the device the minute it was out of warranty (Fitbit pattern).

Two weeks later the replacement showed up at my door. When I received it, I was surprised because rather than a complete new Halo, I instead received just the Halo fob. No band, no charger, no box. I thought it was odd but took the old fob off the original band and put it in the charger. I deregistered the original fob and attached the replacement fob to the Halo App. I was happily thrilled that all my data transferred over and my new fob charged to 100%. I dismissed that I went through a couple of weeks of unhappiness and was ready to move forward on my fitness/Halo journey. I was also grateful that I didn’t send back the original Halo since I didn’t receive a whole package — although I was really surprised that the customer service rep didn’t tell me to only send back the Halo fob.

The next morning I collected the envelope and plastic sleeve the replacement fob had come in and read what was printed on the sleeve that I had missed the night before “Refurbished”. Refurbished? Could not be. How could Amazon send me a Refurbished Halo when I had purchased a brand new one? The Halo that I was excited about and worked as it should was “refurbished”? Had I signed on to a product that was released to early? That Amazon was having problems with and not possibly pulling from production? I contacted Amazon via chat and it took over an hour and four different customer service reps to get to the point of the conversation that they stated they had shipped me a refurbished Halo in error and would send me a new replacement. So another 7 days were added to the clock. The whole time I am thinking, I am sad that I can’t keep this refurbished one for a lesser cost and the warranty of a new one.

Today the “new” replacement showed up. While it did charge above 58% its only charging to 99%. Signaling to me that this Halo may be a problem as well. Once again, I deregistered the refurbished Halo and registered the new replacement Halo but this time my data showed “NOTHING”. Since the data transferred the first time, I knew the data could transfer and once again I was begrudgingly contacting Amazon again.

My ambivalence with contacting Amazon again is because the quality of Amazon customer service has been steadily declining over the last couple of years. Thankfully returning items is usually automated but anything else is far from fun and after already spending 2 hours trying to resolve these issues, I didn’t anticipate that this would go any better. And I wasn’t wrong. Once again I was bounced through 3 customer service reps for no reason which meant I got to start explaining the problem all over again 3 times. The only good news was that the third rep seemed to be getting it done and it looked like I would wind things up in 40 minutes. While I was waiting for the rep's final response I was suddenly, without cause, bounced to someone else who, let’s just say fell way below previous experiences with Amazon. The chat ended without any resolve other than to have me fully steamed after wasting an hour.

The day after wasting another hour on Amazon chat, I decide to change strategy and reach out by phone and found my experience substantially improved. Lesson learned: On technology issues, use the phone — not chat. It matters. It definitely matters with getting things straight with an Amazon Halo.

Besides resolving my issues I learned from the telephone tech support — 1. Currently Halo support via chat is minimum. Getting a Halo technician can be obtained more easily by phone. The fact that Amazon Halo isn’t widely supported through chat is not identified on Amazon. 2. New Halo and refurbished Halo’s have the same warranty period. 3. There have been wide spread issues with fob’s charging — see recommendation above for interim charging option.

So what is the final on Halo…I would not say it’s heaven sent…yet. If the experiences above are things that you can get past, the features are OK but there is a lot of room for improvement and I believe it is possible Amazon will look towards doing so in the future.

The Tone feature works so-so. It is unclear how the fob is determining ‘tone’ but perhaps with more time the feature will be more valuable but for the time being it would not be enough for me to pay the subscription fee.

The Body Scan feature is what I will describe, at best, interesting. Users have to add their weight manually and can only add weight when completing a scan. Make sure to choose a room where you can stand at least 10 feet from your phone or the scan will not complete. Make sure to wear form fitting minimal clothing to get the best quality. I would strongly suggest wearing clothing and not scanning nude — for safety reasons. Users are able to see tracking of fat percentage and weight over the past 25 scans. A nice little feature is that it takes replication of your scan illustration and allows you to adjust your fat percentage to see the impact of lowering your fat percentage.

Sleep Tracking feature looks identical to Fitbit but the reporting of the information is not as well organized.

Activity feature measures in zones so there is no specific activity tracking if that interests you (eg. you are a swimmer and runner and want to track each activity — Halo doesn’t do this currently). Halo tracks overall activity by a points system and gives you target points to get at each week. I actually like this feature because I am more interested in my overall activity rather than the bits and pieces. However, if it wants to sell to individuals who live a more active lifestyle they might want to refine this area more broadly and allow more customization.

There is no clock, messages, GPS or music controls. If the tone feature is on the battery only lasts 2 days. If you are interested in these features you are going to have to go in another direction. There are a number of labs…this may or may not interest some.

In addition, there is a fee for the Halo service after six months. I’m not really sure what someone is getting for the subscription except for the scans and tone tracking. Will it be worth it? We’ll have to wait and see.

Overall, I feel this band is currently designed for those individuals who are less active looking to be more active. Halo doesn’t currently seem to meet the needs for moderately active to athletic individuals.