Amazon has launched its first wellness tracker, The Amazon Halo, which is focused on helping its users live a healthier life. Taking a different approach to most of its competitors, the Amazon Halo comes with a membership package for users who want to access some of the tracker’s key features.
The Halo band measures all the metrics you’d expect a wellness tracker to focus on – heart rate, sleep and motion time. Unlike other trackers, however, the Halo app will provide suggestions on how the wearer can improve their day-to-day health – things like drinking less in the evenings to improve the quality of sleep. Wearers who regularly track their activities using Halo will be given an ‘activity score’, designed to get users to 150 points, based on the recommended 150 exercise minutes per week. Users also get rewarded for things like sitting less and will get more points for more rigorous activities.
Amazon says the lack of a screen is for ‘fewer distractions’, meaning users will have to use the connected app on their phones to download their data. On the Halo app, there are two main features to help users reach their fitness goals – Body and Tone. ‘Body’ requires users to take a 3D scan of their bodies and will then calculate their body fat, a better measure of health than BMI. The app allows users to virtually see on a sliding scale what they’d look like with a lower body fat percentage.
The second part of the app is ‘Tone’, which uses the microphones on the Halo sensor to listen to the wearer’s voice throughout the day, noting the pitch, intensity and tempo. Amazon says this is designed to ‘help maintain relationship health with tone of voice analysis’ and puts the recordings into different categories, such as elated, hesitant or bored. The app will then give the wearer hints and tips on how they can improve their relationships.
The Halo costs $99.99 (~ £75), but for a limited time, users can request early access and get the wellness tracker for a reduced price of $64.99 (~ £49). As of yet, Amazon has not announced a wider release date. Subscription packages, which allow you to download workout content and get full access to all of the app’s features, is $3.99 (~ £3) per month.
source: amazon.com
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