Does Amazon Halo work with Apple Health? - Amazon Halo review

Minimalist screenless tracker with several unique features

EARLY VERDICT

Amazon Halo is a neat, minimalist, screenless fitness tracker. All the information goes directly to the phone app, which has its own unique and advanced features, such as monitoring your tone of voice and tracking your body fat percentage. It's not too expensive, but it requires a subscription service to use more than basic tracking, and while you get six months free with your purchase, it makes us think about the long-term value of the device.

FOR

One week battery

Body scanners are new and useful (if rude)

Interesting additions

VS

Without screen

Closed subscription features are frustrating

May irritate some wrists

At the end of 2020, Amazon quietly launched its portable fitness product, Amazon Halo, but only in the US. UU. No screen, this is a pure activity tracker, but the affiliate app has some cool features that you won't find on any other fitness device.

Surprisingly, these features don't include the integration you'd expect from an Amazon device: no Alexa help, no voice control, and no integration for your connected Amazon account.

Instead, Halo's featured features include monitoring your voice for signs of stress or tension while talking during the day and using a paired phone app to take a picture of your body and calculate your body fat percentage.

If you're already thinking about privacy issues right now, you'll be sure that both are optional (better yet, Amazon has explicitly set out what data is stored and what isn't stored on the device).

If you only need the basics, Halo can track your physical activity and sleep, and view statistics in a connected app. There is an optional subscription available through the app (you get six months free when you buy Halo and then it costs $ 4 a month) that provides training classes and labs, a collection of Health and nutrition mini course tiles aimed at improving your fitness. shape and sleep (two key indicators of Halo's health; more on that below).

Most worrisome is the amount of features you don't get without a subscription: a limited selection of labs and no body scan or tonicity features, but neither are any of the advanced fitness or sleep metrics, the latter of which seems simple enough to require no subscription. Halo isn't useless without a subscription, as it can still count steps, heart rate, calories, and sleep / wake time, according to this Amazon FAQ page. Six months free of charge with the purchase it is a pleasure to try the service ... unless you have bought or received a second-hand halo.

Halo is a screenless tracker: it's basically an elongated capsule on the wrist with a single physical button, an LED light and a microphone, with a fabric wristband wrapped around it. Given the lack of display, the button is only used to mute the microphone for privacy while using the optional tone function that periodically listens to the intensity of your voice and pushes you when it detects that you are in the mood.

Halo is priced at $ 99 (around £ 75 / AU AU 130) and is only available in the US. UU. Right now, though Amazon says it will be available in other regions at a later date. It comes in three color combinations, divided between the fabric ribbon and the twin touch capsule: Black / Onyx, Blush Pink / Rose Gold and Light Winter Grey / Silver.

The nimbus is comfortable enough to wear, although it is a little wide and may rub against the wrist and may require a little adjustment before it fits properly. After that, you will most likely forget that he is there, since you will not look at his screen for information-instead, you will have to take out your phone and switch to the Halo app for them.

Rather, it is not a defect, but the key to the attractiveness of a halo. Like other basic trackers, Halo has no vibration, so it cannot be used for reminders, notifications or alarms. It's kind of clean that way.

Halo: passive, not assertive

The Halo has the least active engagement loop we've seen since the jawbone days, and it certainly demands less attention than modern fitness trackers and smartwatches - which means it takes a little personal adjustment if you're one of those people who habitually peeks into the device on the wrist for peace of mind that it's a perfect fit.

That kind of passivity extends to tracked fitness, too: unlike most fitness trackers, Halo sets weekly, not daily, goals via a total score (set at 150 points by default, which equates to 150 minutes of serious exercise). 

This makes it easier for people to let themselves rest and take a day of training here and there, as Amazon's logic goes. The app won't push you unless you've been sitting for more than eight hours, and even then there's no vibrating motor in the Halo that bothers you in action-you'll only have docked points from your weekly score (one point per sedentary hour). 

Similarly, sleep tracking has a score of 100, aiming to reach 85 or better for quality rest. A daily graph shows the time spent moving through the sleep stages during the night, and you'll get recommendations to improve your sleep if your scores are lower. 

So, in theory, you could let the Halo do its thing on your wrist and check in here and there until it runs out of juice-the battery lasts about seven days. However, if you turn on the tone function that you constantly listen to, the battery life is reduced to two days.

While we haven't spent much time with either feature, we'll dig deeper into our full review, both Body and Tone are fascinating, though we'll have to wait and see if their usefulness justifies their inclusion.

Body asks the user to take four camera shots of themselves in tight clothing (front, back and both sides) using their phone's camera, and combines those photos with algorithmic analysis to calculate body fat percentage, according to Amazon research, body fat is a better health metric than body mass index (BMI). While Amazon processes this data in the cloud, the updated results are immediately sent to the device and deleted thereafter. 

Once calculated, the user is presented with a 3D image of their body in the app, with a slider at the bottom adjusted to their current body fat percentage, which can be swiped back and forth to see a visualization of how their body shape changes if the percentage increases or decreases. It's, from this reviewer's experience, a rude wake-up call, but it's a more accurate visualization of how the body can change from what's usually available outside the doctor's office (Amazon claims it's twice as accurate as smart scale measurements).

Almost all modern smartphones have cameras capable of taking body images, although Amazon is working through which much older phones have limited functionality (the LG K20 Plus, LG X Power 3 and LG Stylo 3, for example, show a percentage but no body fat estimation image). Interestingly, the Asus ROG II cameras also do not work, Amazon told us, but the Halo team plans to continue improving the body feature, suggesting that more compatibility will come.

Amazon encourages users to take new photos twice a month to track their progress; according to Amazon, weight fluctuates daily, but body fat takes weeks to shed. Joy.

Tone is a nastier feature for Amazon to include: which we know, "how it sounds to others" has never been included as a health metric in other trackers, let alone a factor we've paid attention to for physical well-being. So, Amazon pitches this as something to help your communication and relationships, and tracks your tone of voice throughout the day for vocal patterns that correspond to positivity, negativity, and energy.

You can use tone data tracking passively (compare it with your sleep and activity scores, and then draw conclusions) or actively (see how your prepared speech might sound). Both can be useful, and when we have more time to test the feature, we'll weigh in on how these results force us to account for or change our habits - although it may be a solution (Amazon's microphone and voice analysis experience) in search of a problem. which, in the end, burns more battery than it's worth.

Laboratories: you are the subject

Labs, as you said , are weird ducks, but as an attempt to change your habits, it's not a bad approach if you understand that training aside, they are sponsored by brands that make your participation anonymous (but not health) data.

Click on the Lab icon at the bottom of the app and you'll have several options. The first is a choice between programs and training; the second is self-explanatory, but the first is where the whole experimental game begins. For the problem you're trying to solve, there are a variety of options (such as activity, sleep, nutrition, and mindfulness), although you can click on "Filters" to display more based on areas of interest, brands, duration, and so on.

From what we can tell, most of them follow simple advice: "Try this during the day / at mealtimes / before bed and track any changes in sleep / activity score," which is fine considering how little Halo can track. Again, we reserve the right to judge how useful they are in terms of encouraging us to change our habits, and how useful these suggestions are.

Labs may be the most unique feature of Amazon Halo, but it's far from the most important - the device works well as a fitness tracker, and it's more than enough to play around and pay attention to in addition to things that require a subscription to. The Halo service. All of this may change, too - Amazon representatives tell us that this is really an early stage in the creation of this wearable and paired app.

For now, Amazon Halo seems like a more affordable fitness tracking solution for people who don't mind getting all their information from an app rather than a laptop screen, with some inconsequential but intriguing additions to sweeten the boat.