Amazon Halo: A Sneak Peak at Amazon’s Foray Into Wearable Tech
By: Brian Chun
Tags: Wearables, Fitness, Recovery, Health, Amazon

Amazon Halo: A Sneak Peak at Amazon’s Foray Into Wearable Tech

And yes, this means that Amazon will have copious amounts of data on our bodies and overall health. Brace yourself — there are no seat belts in Big Tech. Brian Chun Dec 25, 2020·6 min read

A brand new Amazon Halo arrived in the mail for me this week and I’m incredibly stoked to use it. The plan is to do a 30 day review of the product in order to get used to the device and give it a fair assessment. That review will be a completely separate post, but in the mean time, I wanted to do a quick overview of the device to share my initial thoughts.

Here is a video of me unpacking the Halo and meeting it for the first time.

The Price Is Right

First of all, I want to acknowledge something huge here. WHOOP was one of the first major companies to come out with a fitness tracker that measures recovery. I was never interested in the FitBit because “getting my steps in” was never an issue for me. I didn’t have weight loss goals and I didn’t care to know how many steps I was getting in. However, recovery is a HUGE part of athletic performance and that was definitely worth my time and money. WHOOP delivers data on two important recovery metrics — Heart rate variability (HRV) and Sleep Quality. I was interested in trying it out, but…

It costs an exorbitant $30 per month to use the software. The band itself is only about $30 (now it’s free with a membership) or so, but what they charge for is a subscription to the app. $280 ($18 per month) for the entire year if you buy in a bundle, and I said, “No fucking way.” I’m an amateur, recreational athlete and I have no interest in committing to a hefty subscription to know my recovery stats. It was disappointing, because I really wanted to try out what I believed to be some quite advanced wearable technology.

Then came Amazon — of course they did. From hours spent on Amazon and the sheer volume of searches regarding fitness, biohacking, and other human optimization terms, Amazon had targeted me with an ad for their new tracker, the Amazon Halo. It didn’t take much to get me hooked — I saw the $64.99 price tag + free 6 month subscription and I said let’s fucking go, take my money. I am beyond excited to track my recovery and share my findings on this device. I believe that wearable tech will not only push the envelope of human performance but also save lives by delivering crucial insights about our health.

First Impressions

The Design (Hardware)

The band itself is sleek and minimal, which is expected, considering there is no monitor on these trackers.

The band comes in three colors — Onyx, Blush, and Silver. I got the Onyx and I’m really digging the simplicity of the band. I give it 5 stars for a simply using a Velcro band that doesn’t escape the loop, meaning you don’t have to loop in one end through another to secure the band.

Right off the bat, I can see a design improvement in the hardware. I think a slightly concave design, as opposed to flat, where the tracker meets the wrist, is more ergonomically appropriate for the human wrist.

Over my 30 day assessment, I’ll be rating its overall COMFORT. Mainly, I’ll report on the quality of the band, including the durability of the material, whether it causes rashes, how easy it was to take it on and off, and how it fared in water.

The Data and Insights

An overview of the “Data” section of the Amazon Halo mobile app.

Amazon’s Halo fitness band primarily tracks four facets of your health, which are ACTIVITY, SLEEP, TONE, BODY.

Activity insights are summarized using a points system. Points are given based on movement intensity and duration. Intensity is broken into three levels: intense, moderate, and light.

You’ll also be able to see your Heart Rate stats as well as total Movement, with insights regarding Total Steps and Total Calories.

Sleep insights are summarized using a Sleep Score on a scale of 1–100. The higher the score, the better the quality of your sleep. The Sleep feature tracks the different stages of sleep, including REM, Light, and Deep sleep.

You should also be really excited to know that the tracker also records other interesting sleep stats, such as time to fall asleep, time awake, disturbances, and sleep efficiency.

Body is a feature that literally tracks your body composition, including Weight, Fat Mass, and Lean Mass. If you’re wondering how accurate this is, Amazon claims (within the app) that “Body” is nearly twice as accurate as leading at-home smart scales. That’s assuring for us, bad news for sleep scale companies.

Tone is the feature that I didn’t know I needed. I’ve only had this band on for two days, so I won’t jump too far into conclusions, but it’s let me know that I need to lighten the hell up!

The feature literally takes a sample of your voice, then analyzes your tone during conversations throughout the day. At first, I thought it was a bit creepy, as you might be able to tell in the video. But hell, at this point, Big Tech is taking all my information anyways.

My prediction is that I’ll find sleep to be most useful. But to make sure that I do a thorough analysis of the band, I’ll be sure to do a deep dive into each of the data-insights that the band provides and share my opinion on which was most useful to me.

The Platform

Obviously Amazon didn’t just stop at providing data and insights. They’re Amazon, after all. They’ve created an entire platform that serves as a health ecosystem for all Halo users.

The “Lab” and “Settings” section of the Amazon Halo mobile app.

Data is where you get to see all your stats.

Lab is where the community lives. You’ll have access to workouts, tips, and interesting reads based off of how you filter the page (What’s New, Sleep, Tone, Mindfulness, etc.)

Settings is your typical control center where you get to modify how you use the band.

Last, there’s the Live section, where you can monitor your heart rate and do a pretty neat live Tone analysis. Here it is:

As I mentioned previously, I was most excited to use this to monitor my sleep, but Tone just might be the dark horse that wins me over. I’ll say that right off the bat, I’m not too stoked on my Tone analysis — I naturally have a bit of a nasally, unexcited, and contemplative tone. But something I can always get stoked about is an opportunity for improvement. Maybe I’ll just have to exaggerating my level of excitement to sound more alive?

I’m mostly self-sufficient when it comes to fitness, and having been a personal trainer, I’m not always inclined to use the classes, exercises, etc. section of the fitness apps. But, in order to provide the most thorough assessment, I’ll be doing a deep dive into the Lab section to let everyone know how useful it is to both beginners and those more experienced in their fitness journey.

What’s Next?

The Amazon Halo Review

Now that you’ve got a sneak peak into the new Amazon Halo, it’s time to… well, it’s time to wait 30 days for me to produce the full review of the product. Here’s a quick summary of the plan:

I’m starting with a 7 day trial of simply messing with the product without any strict guidelines. I’ve got to figure out which wrist to wear it on, whether I’ll keep it on in the water, and play around with the settings and features in the app. After the first 7 days, I’ll be ready to do a deep dive into usability. The main questions I’ll be looking to answer are:

How comfortable is the tracker?

What are the most useful stats?

What are the least useful stats and features?

What did they get right and what needs improvement?

How is the user experience of the mobile app?

How does it compare to other trackers?

I’ll post a completely separate review with a link to this sneak peak. The review should be fairly extensive — the goal is to give any level user enough information to decide whether they want to invest in one themselves.