Amazon Unveils Amazon Halo Smart Band in the US

The e-Commerce giant Amazon plunged into the fitness space today, launches a fitness band called Amazon Halo. The band leverages the prowess of Amazon with artificial intelligence technology, a voice assistant (of sorts) and physical sensors, which detect various aspects of a person’s health. “We are using Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer customers a new way to discover, adopt and maintain personalized wellness habits,” says Dr. Maulik Majumdar, Principal Medical Officer, Amazon Halo.

Unlike most fitness bands and smartwatches, the Amazon Halo doesn’t have a screen. That sets the company apart from the likes of Fitbit, Garmina and even Apple, who have gone after the fitness enthusiasts. Instead, the Halo is being promoted as a wellness product, meaning it will focus on overall health. It also doesn’t have GPS, WiFi or SIM support. Instead, the Halo has a tiny LED indicator light, a button that turns-off the two in-built microphones so you can speak to Alexa, an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, and a heart rate monitor.

You won’t be speaking to Alexa through the microphones on this device. Amazon has added a ‘tone’ feature, which, the company claims, can be used to determine ‘social and emotional well-being’. The Halo also measures how you sleep, your body fat percentage and activity. For activity, the Halo awards points to users. So you will earn more for running than you will for walking.

The Halo measures your ‘social and emotional well-being’, how you sleep, your body fat percentage and activity

“Medical guidelines advise that a sedentary lifestyle can negatively impact health, so Amazon Halo deducts one activity point for every hour over eight hours of sedentary time in a day, outside of sleep,” the company says in a blog post. The Halo sets a baseline of 150 activity points every week.

To help customers determine what improves their life, Amazon has Amazon Halo Labs service where customers can choose from labs created by Amazon Halo experts, as well as brands and personalities they already know. Further, Amazon also said that health data from customers is encrypted in transit and in the cloud. It will also let customers download and delete their data whenever they want from the Halo app.

Images of body scans will be automatically deleted from the cloud after they’re processed. The tone feature will analyze speech samples locally on the customer’s phone and they will be deleted after processing too. “Nobody, not even the customer, ever hears them,” says Amazon. The Halo isn’t just a band! Amazon is selling it through a subscription-based service. In the U.S., which is where the band is available right now, the Halo is available for early access right now at an introductory price of $64.99 for the band and six months membership to the subscription service. This will otherwise cost $99.99 and renew automatically for $3.99 per month after the first six months.

Not subscribing to the membership program will limit the band’s features to steps, sleep time and heart rate only. Amazon hasn’t yet said whether it plans to sell the band in India, but with a growing market for affordable fitness bands, it’s possible that an India launch will happen eventually.