Amazon is joining the wearable fitness tracker market in a big way with a new product called Halo.
Halo is a health- and fitness-tracking wristband that works with a smartphone app and a subscription service. To set itself apart from the crowded world of fitness trackers, Halo will have a suite of artificial intelligence-powered health features, including the ability to measure body fat percentage, analyze your tone of voice, determine how specific conversations can impact stress, and more.
“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,” said Dr. Maulik Majmudar, principal medical officer for Amazon Halo, in Amazon’s announcement. “Health is much more than just the number of steps you take in a day or how many hours you sleep.”
The A.I. features are perhaps the most intriguing part of the Halo. You can measure and track your body composition using Halo’s technology, including creating a personalized 3D model of yourself within the app that can show your progress over time.
Halo’s Tone feature uses the wristband’s built-in microphone to analyze how positive or negative you sound in everyday conversations, which Amazon says will help strengthen your communication skills.
Like all other fitness trackers on the market, Halo tracks activity and sleep. However, unlike the rest of the pack, Amazon’s wearable also tracks the intensity and duration of your movement, in addition to how many steps you take per day.
Unlike other wearable devices, Amazon’s Halo does not have a screen and instead operates entirely through the accompanying Halo smartphone app. The wristband includes an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor, two microphones, an LED indicator light, and a button to turn the microphones on or off.
The wristband is a lot cheaper than its competitors at an early access price of $65, which includes six free months to Halo’s app subscription membership. After that, the subscription costs $3.99 per month plus tax. The regular price is $100 and includes the same six free months and same monthly cost. You can opt for the free version of the app, but non-subscribers won’t be able to access advanced features like body composition, tone, activity intensity, and others. Off the bat, there are three colors to choose from — Black, Blush, and Silver — and silicone accessories.
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We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
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