A week with the Amazon Halo Band
UPDATE December 14th, 2020: I can no longer recommend this device. It’s December 14th, 2020 and after 87 days with the device I just can’t recommend it. A few weeks ago the device stopped charging, and after a a support request via the website where I was told to “try another charging cable, like from your phone” (it has a proprietary clamp-connector…) Amazon sent me a refurbished unit (correct, they sent me a refurbished unit on an invite-only device) several days later. The refurbished replacement was placed into a plastic zip bag and dropped into a plastic mailing envelope with zero protection whatsoever. I then had trouble trying to get it to pair with the app, my backups wouldn’t actually restore so I lost all of my previous data, and the refurb was regularly failing to detect large portions of my sleep claiming it must have come loose or I was sleeping on it. Don’t do it.
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Original review September 25th, 2020:
The Amazon Halo Band is a new fitness tracker Amazon has brought out. Basically it’s a movement tracker, has a heart rate monitor, and… a microphone to analyze your conversations…
I’ve had mine for a week now and overall I’m fairly satisfied with it. My previous experience with activity tracking is fairly limited, I had a Striiv that clipped to my waistband and then a Gen1 Apple Watch but I have no knowledge of other current-gen products. Here’s my Black + Onyx Amazon Halo Band (don’t worry, that’s a salt lamp out of focus):
My only real complaint is the band took a few days to get used to, the material… is a bit abrasive. The material exists in a world between industrial carpet and that carpet-like material used on automotive speaker enclosures that let you thump that 808 drum in your trunk at stoplights.
I’m getting about 30 hours of battery life until I drop to the 20% range, obviously over the course of a year this is probably going to start to drop off some but honestly the recharging is fast. I’ll take it off in the evening when I sit down to read for 45 minutes or so and it charges fully in less than that, you also get a notification on your phone letting you know that it is charged. As of writing this it has been 11 hours since a full charge and I’m at 85%, mind you nearly 7 of that I was sleeping.
Here are some examples of the activity tracking
What I found interesting is how many points the cycling registered, my guess here is because it is more of a steady-state/constant pedaling thing that my heart rate was consistently elevated in a moderate range whereas with my lifting as a strength athlete I've got a lot of heavy stuff in a brief window then my rest period where I'm making my heart rate go back down as quickly as possible through breathing and general lack of movement but then the elliptical (a Precor EFX 835) which is much more high intensity (just shy of all out, high resistance), thus a far higher heart rate, than the cycling barely registered any points in comparison.
Sleep tracking, the band itself isn’t annoying or abnormally noticeable in bed. As for the tracking, the results I’m receiving are wholly believable so I don’t doubt them. Here are my “best” and “worst” (this night I definitely tossed and turned a lot, oh the stress of attempting to buy a home) nights so far
As far as recording you throughout the day for the “tone” I personally have no use for it but I have enabled it and have it set to the most frequent setting. I could absolutely see where this could be a useful tool for various people that have issues with public speaking, dealing with a co-worker/manager/direct report, are fighting with a sibling/parent/spouse etc to help them become more aware of how they are personally participating in conversations but I mean… I really don’t as I’m working from home for almost 6 months now due to Covid and if i’m being honest my wife and I don’t have a whole lot of heated conversations so a lot of this is me just thinking out loud at work-related things, at a podcast I’m listening to with my earbuds, or muttering to myself as I read a Reddit thread. What is captured here in the example below is the frustration of this home buying process and the varying levels of incompetency we are experiencing with every single party involved. The notable moment captured in the screenshot here is actually me talking to myself, completely alone, about the general state of my Minecraft village on a survival server I play on, the 11:50 AM is again me completely alone talking out loud as I was having VPN password sync issues with work and was unable to do anything, the 5:10 pm was me telling my wife goodbye as she left to go back to work to work concessions at a middle school sportsball event and the 6:30 pm was, again, me talking to myself as a friend and I were messing around in a contest on the Minecraft server. Man, I talk to myself a lot.
As far as the body fat/composition feature… it is clunky at best. You have to prop your phone up nearly completely upright then walk back and forth under ideal lighting until it is happy and then make 1/4 turns at which point it generates an image that basically looks like someone ran you through an app filter with decade-old image processing. And, at least on me, it rounded off some of my muscle… it shaved maybe 1/3 off of my traps and deleted part of my right calf. Another curious thing, I have a quite long beard and it didn’t’ seem to know what to do with it and gave me a weird chin that looks more like an odd adam’s apple.
As far as the labs… they’re all crap, some of which is even based on questionable science like “Listen to Isochronic tones to reduce stress” and “Improve sleep with binaural beats”. Some other random ones:
Block out negative noise at night for smoother sleep
Reduce bedtime stress with a bedtime story
Wake up refreshed with a 10-minute meditation
4 Weeks to a Leander, Stronger You
150-minute fix
30 Day Lengthen and Tone
Intermediate Barre
No Props, No Problem
Meditate to bring more gratitude into your world
Uhhh… yeah, no thanks Labs tab.
Find the product page for the Amazon Halo Band here
