Watch out, Apple. Amazon Halo is here, and it is does everything and much more than the Apple Watch. The e-tailer, which is already a leader in tablets, eReaders, smartphones and smart home products, is now forging its way into the $12.44 billion fitness wearable industry.
What is Amazon Halo?
The Amazon Halo is the e-commerce major’s first ever fitness wearable band and subscription wellness service. It is a lightweight fitness band that collects your health data to analyze and track patterns.
Amazon Halo’s Labs feature will you better understand the connection between what you do and how it makes you feel.
Halo’s features include an accelerometer, a heart rate monitor, a temperature sensor, two microphones and an LED indicator light. Technowize does not know if the Halo fitness band comes with Alexa integration, however the two microphones would be used for a feature that tracks a user’s mood through the tone of their voice.
Halo Voice Tone Analysis
Amazon Halo’s tone scanning is rather intriguing. The “Tone” feature analyzes your voice to predict how other people might perceive of your tone. Amazon will collect your voice samples to train the fitness tracker to analyze your voice and store them locally. It will collect infrequent, involuntary and intermittent samples of your voice to detect your tone on parameters such as intensity, pitch, rhythm, tempo, positivity and energy.
Halo’s voice tone and emotion analysis will also chide you if you’re sounding too ‘negative.’ Wait…Does it mean that Amazon will listen to everything you say? According to Amazon, the collected voice data will be deleted once they’ve been analyzed, so there will be no record of words. No data will be uploaded to Amazon Halo services, and all the processing will be done via your smartphone i.e., the Halo app.
Given Amazon’s not-so-squeaky-clean track record, we doubt if the ecommerce giant will keep up to its promise. We do not blame anyone if they want to proceed with caution before allowing Halo’s voice tone feature to process their voice samples.
Halo Labs
There’s another feature that caught our eye. ‘Labs’ on Halo are a couple of experiments created by experts and scientists. These experiments will range from discovering what triggers for snacking you have to seeing if walking further helps you feel less stressed.
Body Fat Analysis
The accompany Halo app will include a body fat measurement feature which you can subscribe to using the Halo fitness service. This unique fitness feature can measure your body composition and body fat percentage, and with the Halo app it can even create a 3D modelling of your body. Again, Amazon promises to delete your body image samples and data immediately from its servers.
The app will offer warnings if your body fat percentage is dangerously low and could leave long-term effects in your body. There’s one thing we like about the body fat measurement feature which is that it only allows individuals above 18 years of age of use the service. In a world where young boys and girls are constantly subjected to impossible beauty standards, we feel it’s a step taken in the right direction by Amazon.
Halo Display and Features
Amazon Halo band comes with no display – you’ll need to interact with it via a smartphone or tablet app. The wristband comes with sensors and LED lights onboard paired with the aforementioned Halo app.
It is made of a fabric band available in three sizes – small medium and large and; three colors – black, silvery light blue and pink.
The Halo fitness band is water-resistant up to 50 meters and is swim-proof.
Amazon Halo Price Information
Amazon Halo is priced at $99.99, while the companion subscription service will cost you $3.99 per month. As a part of an early access program, you can pay $64.99 for the device and avail six months of the subscription service.
