Amazon Halo Band - Medium – Measure how you move, sleep, and sound – Designed with privacy in mind - Winter + Silver

I have been using Halo for a couple of months now and there is so much to like but it feels a bit rough around the edges when compared to other more refined products from Fitbit or Samsung. I have had a number of smart watches and fitness bands over the years. I have been using a high end smart watch for the last year. The problem with that is that I cannot wear my good analog watches without looking like an idiot. Even the Fitbit fitness bands have a large digital display which looks somewhat stupid when you have a big dive watch on the other wrist. So, I wanted something small and really understated. Amazon had invited me to try Halo (paid for it but at a discount) and it looked like it might fit the bill. For the most part it does. Here are the highlights:-Hardware: Not having a screen is strange at first but I have learned to really like it. With all of our devices, it is one less thing to distract me. The device itself is lightweight aluminum that fits the wrist nicely. It has one button for resetting the device if ever needed. A double tap will resync the app and the band if you have had both connected for a bit without using. There are the typical sensors on the bottom to measure your heart rate. I got one with the silver mesh strap. I really like it but opted to buy a silicone strap as the Halo is waterproof and I like to shower without removing it. The mesh strap stayed wet too long for my liking. Amazon has some work to do on the silicone strap designs. They are all pretty ugly but they work. All and all this is a very comfortable device that you won't mind wearing all day everyday.-Software: As one would expect from a company like Amazon, the software experience is where things shine for me. It is still incomplete in some ways but you can see where they are heading and the future is bright. As it sits, it is still pretty great. There are four tabs at the bottom of the app; Data, Lab, Live, and Settings. Data is where your various stats are displayed. Those include Activity, Sleep, Tone, and Body. Let's dig into these.-Activity: Amazon is taking a total activity approach to healthy living. Less about steps though they are there if you want to see them. The idea is that your activity levels throughout the day accumulate for points. For instance, I got 50 points for a 50 minute elliptical session this morning. It automatically picks up your activities but doesn't necessarily always know what you are doing. After my workouts I just go back in and edit them if they are not properly identified. The Halo starts you out at 150 points a week as a target and moves you up as you achieve your target points. All and all it works great and keeps me motivated.-Sleep tracking: The sleep tracking is thorough and robust. Though if you are like me and sometimes fall asleep on the sofa for an hour and then go to bed, the Halo band will almost always fail to register the first hour. Seems like a simple update at some point. I like the point system Amazon employs here. It drives me to go to bed earlier and leave my TV off.-Tone: This one is a weird one. Basically, the Halo band listens to you and analyzes your tone of voice to try and measure stress and anxiety. It does actually work but I didn't really get much out of it honestly. Further, it significantly reduces your battery life. Maybe by as much as 60%. For me, I would rather have the battery life but I think this will be a highly individual experience. Some will really appreciate this new approach.-Body: Unless you are in really really good shape, this one will probably haunt you a bit but man is it effective so I really recommend utilizing this feature. Basically you set your phone down a solid ten or so feet away from you at waist height with just your underwear on. The app scans your body, captures the image, and calculates your body fat. It is fairly accurate. Maybe a little heavy handed. I am a fifty year old man that works out regularly. Let's just say, after seeing the image and the body fat percentage, I have a lot of work to do. I am extremely motivated to improve both the fat percentage and the image I am looking at in the app. I think the easiest thing to do in life is lie to yourself about how you look. This feature makes that impossible. It hurts but I really like this feature. I will absolutely get healthier because of it. I would add a word of caution here. If you are someone that has struggled with body issues in the past, you might not be right for this device. It definitely makes you more conscious of your body and appearance.The next tab at the bottom is lab. This is where I think Amazon's future in fitness has the most potential. They have partnered with dozens of companies to provide workouts, stretching, yoga, meditations, diet info, and more. I did an Orangetheory workout this morning. It was brutal. I also have been doing a two week bedtime guided meditation. It has been amazing. This is all built into your monthly subscription ($3.99) after your free trial. It really is great and provides an absolute ton of added content value. The best part is Amazon is just getting started here. With Amazon's market power, I have to imagine that Lab is going to become unbelievably valuable in the coming years. If you have been with Prime for a number of years, I can imagine a growth curve similar to that where Amazon just continues to add more value, more content, and probably more cost. I look forward to seeing this.The next tab is the Live tab. Live is simple but great and it is something I wish my Samsung Active 2 offered. You can hit the tab button and see your heart rate or your tone (mood) in real time. When I get on a treadmill, I fire up my jams, go to the Halo app, and hit the Live tab. It shows me an accurate measurement of my heart rate that updates continuously throughout my run. Its something like having a chest strap monitor on without having it on. It has helped me a great deal.Lastly, you have settings. All the typical things you might want to tweak are in there. Solid.All and all, the software experience here is very good and it is likely to get much better. Amazon gave Halo a big update not long ago, presumably in anticipation of it going on sale to the public. It received a lot of upgrades. If Amazon continues to develop and support Halo band, as I anticipate they will, this will just get better.-Battery Life / Charging: With tone turned off, I get in excess of ten days on a charge. With it on, its closer to five or six. Charging from zero-ish percent takes around two hours via a proprietary charger. It is big and I don't love it but it works. So, A for me on battery life and more like a C- on the charger itself.I will update this review as I go with more information but, for now, call me impressed. It isn't perfect. The device is a little clunky and unrefined. Tone is cool but weird. The body scan might bruise your ego a bit. I would love to see the addition of a calorie counting section on the app and a more robust tracking of actual exercise history. After all of that though, what Amazon is really focused on here are three really important aspects of your life: How active are you, how are you sleeping, and how fat you are. If we all just stayed focused on those things, the world would be a much healthier place. So, I am recommending giving Halo a shot, especially if you are sick of the connectivity a smart watch gives you. Today, it just works and motivates me. I cannot wait to see what the future holds with the Amazon Halo Band.***Update***One thing I forgot to add but is important relates to why the Amazon approach to activity is important. Most fitness bands / watches track steps. It is a solid metric. What makes Halo better is, while it tracks steps, it does so in conjunction with the effort you are putting in. So let me show you what I mean. Today, I got credit for just over 4,000 steps on my 50 minute elliptical workout. I got 51 points for it. After going about my day, showering, working, getting ready for tomorrow, etc. I have finished my day at just over 15,000 steps. However, I have only earned an additional 20 points to finish at 71 points for the day. The point is, that the Halo Band is able to weigh steps during a workout as being more valuable than steps taken running around the office or my home. You get credit for those steps but the weight is scored heavier when your heart rate is higher. Steps are good but it is the kind of steps you are taking that make the difference to your health and weight. There are other bands that do this kind of thing but I think that Amazon has executed it particularly well here. One other thing I should have added from my first go is that Halo is partnered with Weight Watchers. My wife uses Weight Watchers and she finds Halo to be incredibly valuable to her efforts. It automatically syncs your activities in your WW account so she doesn't need to track that manually any longer. Great addition for all you Weight Watchers fans. It is available through Labs.03/05/21 Update: Amazon recently released a substantial update to the band which does a number of useful things. First and foremost, it now has voice integration with Alexa that is useful. You can just ask for updates like "Hey Alexa, how many steps do I have today?" It is a nice integration. It is optional in the app. I will include a picture of the toggle above. Additionally, they have enhanced sleep tracking. It is more robust and allows you to tap your finger on your sleep grid at any point to see the time much like Fitbit does. They have also enhanced 'Discover' which allows you to more easily find new content such as workouts and meditations you might want to try. Lastly, they added a calendar sync for Tone which I do not use due to the afformentioned battery drain. However, this looks pretty neat. So, say you have "lunch with Mom" on your calendar. Halo will track your tone during that time and let you know how your tone and mood seemed during the lunch. I won't use it but it seems like a useful enhancement to a feature that is unique to the Halo band. This update is a great example of the potential this band has if Amazon continues to grow it and support it.

All-in-all, very satisfied. Most results have been accurate right from the get-go in my case. I didn't have any issues during setup and I haven't had any connection or charging issues later on either. I especially like the non-intrusive nature of the Halo Band. You just wear it around your wrist and there's nothing else you need to think about. Everything is tracked automatically and I can live my life as usual - but still with the reminder of staying healthy and well through simply wearing the band.The killer feature of Halo, from my perspective, is the focus on personalized health and well-being. Every body and mind is unique and therefore - our health tools, tips, and recommendations should be unique too. At a greater scale, this is only doable through the use of machine learning and personalization through the lessons learned from your personal data. Here, I think Amazon has nailed the balance between privacy and personalization. I love that you can keep everything backed up in the cloud, but you can also choose not to. I love that you can export all of your data with the tap of a button. I love that you can erase everything if you want to. I would probably never do that, but having the option makes all the difference. It increases trust in Amazon and the Halo platform.In terms of personalization, I would like to see Halo going a step further in the future. This is probably already on the roadmap, but perhaps an insights tab, with all of your data through time boiled down to some personalized tips and recommendations for you specifically. Right now, they do give you insights on the Home tab when it recognizes a pattern in your recent habits - which is great! However, I'd also love to have graphs of all of my data - and I mean all. If I'm going to use the Halo platform for perhaps the next 10 years (maybe more), then I also want all 10 years' data available in the app, shown on graphs, etc. Also, the export file should include everything - which they also do. So, that's great!Down the line, it would be great to see some sort of integration with Alexa. This could be, having your data and insights show up on your Echo Show or your Fire TV. It could be, being able to access some of the Labs content through Alexa and being able to cast the Labs videos to Fire TV or Chromecast. Providing an open API is also a key feature to be able to integrate with other tools and platforms. Though, here, I'm mostly thinking for export purposes. I'd like to keep my data clean within the Halo platform.Below, I'll briefly go through each feature of the Halo platform and share some feedback. It has mostly been positive.ActivityThe auto-tracked activity has been mostly accurate in my case. I haven't really had any issues here. I love the points system based on intensity and heart rate. It makes good sense to me. The same goes for the sedentary time tracking by the minute. I love that. I love to think of it as a game, like Sonic or Mario, where you have to move around the world to collect points. At the same time, the system follows the general guidelines from health authorities. So, the 150 points, then 300 points, etc. makes great sense. The heart rate and resting heart rate tracking have been accurate and consistent here too. Compared to my Garmin Forerunner 645 Music that I've used in the past, the resting heart rate is around the same. Start and end times of auto-tracked activities have been mostly accurate too. Though, it would be nice if it could track more than walking, running, and cycling automatically. But I do also know that it can be hard to figure out what activity people are doing through a sensor. All longer periods of elevated heart rate and movement does however get automatically tracked and added to your activity stream, but then you manually have to select which kind of workout activity you were doing, e.g., yoga or rowing.SleepMy sleeping sessions have been mostly accurate too. Start and end times have been mostly correct. Though, I have had times when I've stayed in bed a bit longer and it has tracked that extra time as still asleep. I can't completely say whether I may have dozed off a few times during that time though. So, it may actually have been accurate still. I've generally experienced that the tracking has improved significantly as I've used the band. Here, I like the score too, and again it seems mostly accurate in my case. I feel refreshed the days the score is high, whereas, I know some things have been off the days the score has been a bit lower. I like the temperature tracking and the fact that it's based on your personal baseline. That makes sense. I like the tracking of sleeping phases, but I'm used to that from other trackers too. Again, it seems mostly accurate.ToneI like the idea of moving into tracking the psychological aspects of life too through features like this. I love when things can be tracked automatically - so, tone tracking is a really great idea. Though, it may also have its limitations, for instance the days that you do not talk as much, or the days where you're mostly by yourself. I like to use Tone for tracking my mood, positivity/negativity, energy levels, and stress levels. How I sound to others is also a great insight. Here, I'd also like a long-term graph, similar to Activity and Sleep. And again, as mentioned earlier, I want to be able to see data as far back as it has been tracked.BodySo far, I've done two body scans. I've followed the recommendations in the app and done a body scan 14 days apart. Both scans I've done so far have seemed accurate in my case. The first scan showed a body fat percentage of 9.5% and the second scan 14 days later showed a percentage of 9.6%. The voice and visual guidance as you're doing the shoots is very helpful and it makes the process a great experience. I love the focus on body composition rather than BMI. I have always been told by other apps that I'm underweight. Which from a BMI perspective, I am. Though, personally, I've more or less always felt great. My doctor has mostly been confirming of this too, as he says "every body is different" - the BMI is only based on your height and weight. It's very narrow-sighted to think that you would be able to fit every single human-being into those two metrics. So, again, I'm satisfied with Halo. It shows me that I'm in the healthy / green zone, though in the lower part, but that's not necessarily bad. I have the fat I need, though, I could build some more muscle mass. However, building muscle mass is more a nice to have than need to have. I have what I need to live a happy, healthy, and active life.LabsI still haven't spent much time in this section yet. Though, I do also already have many of the suggestions implemented in my life. Such as listening to ASMR to relax, sleeping around 8 hours a night, etc. Though, I will dig deeper into this section in the future. Something that I would probably like to see is more long-term tracking features. I'd like them to be as automatic as possible to track. Though, something like hydration tracking or nutrition, for instance. But then again, I've used other apps to track these things, I often tend to stick to it for a few weeks, maybe a month, and then I've tend to sort of forget about the tracking again. It takes a lot of time and effort to plot it in manually every day. Though, one tool that I've loved for hydration and nutrition tracking is Cronometer. There you can go very deep into every single vitamin, mineral, types of fat, Omega-3 vs. Omega-6 vs. Omega-9 balance, fiber, alcohol, caffeine, etc. I love seeing those bars fill up as you get all the healthy stuff in.Sensor and BandI got the fabric white/winter version. Additionally, I got a sports band too. Though, I still haven't tried the sports band yet. All in all, the band is very comfortable to wear in my experience. I have a few times felt the bump on the sensor feeling a bit sensitive on my skin. Though, usually that only lasts for a few seconds right after I've taken it on. Usually, I don't really feel that I'm wearing the band throughout the day and night. It's just there and it works.Battery LifeI've had Tone activated the whole time and in the 2-days battery life mode. I do get around the two days as suggested. So, I'm satisfied there. I tend to charge my band whenever I take a shower or bath - which is typically at least every second day. That fits quite fine. One thing that I may be concerned about in the future though is the durability of the charging cable and clip. Not really when used at home, but more if you're going to travel and move around with the charger going in and out of your bags and luggage. I would probably keep the Halo band charger in a separate bag or room to keep it away from clothes, other cables, pressure, etc. that might damage the charger over time.I think that is about it for my review as for now. I'll keep on using it daily and nightly and return with feedback whenever I have it. I really love the openness of Amazon in building and sharing these things through early access and through community efforts like the group on Facebook. I'm looking forward to getting to know even more people in there too and hopefully we can stick together and help each other live satisfying lives with health and wellness at the forefront.