I was surprised at the reviewers who wanted it both ways. They are analyzed and then dumped in a nod to privacy. You cannot go back and check what was actually said during the “notable” moment because Amazon doesn’t keep the recordings. A bit of Amazon’s efforts at transparency around the body scans. In the week I tried the tone feature it told me that I was in the negative area about 16% of the time. However, the moments that Amazon pulled aside and labeled as “notable” in the app were mostly times it thought I sounded disgusted, sad, or sarcastic. I spent most of my day smack in the middle, sounding confident, knowing, and opinionated. Tone is measured on an axis of high energy to low energy and from positive to negative. Mine arrived in September and I promptly put it on and started playing with Tone, the feature that records your voice to match the tone of your speech before dumping the recording. With this in mind, let’s talk about the Halo. It’s trying to avoid some of them with transparency and others it just rolls over assuming its size and the market will protect it. In the wake of the anti-trust backlash against big tech, concerns cover algorithmic bias, concerns over surveillance, and concerns over monopolistic practices, Amazon is a tank hitting landmines in multiple aspects of its business. It’s cutthroat and when something gets too big for it and yet serves an important niche Amazon wants to control, it buys it. Amazon has spent decades sucking up data about the users of any of its services and using that data to make recommendations, launch new products and determine where to invest. It’s all part of the relationship.Īmazon has been the victim of its own success and a sea change in how citizens judge the companies they want to do business with. I may change my mind on that as new information comes to light, but when it comes to the exchange of customer data for insights, this is the sort of trade-off consumers will have to make and continue assessing. It definitely pushed me to be more active overall, and I am willing to share my heart, steps, and sleep data with Fitbit, Garmin, Google, and a variety of other third-party companies that Fitbit works with, so I didn’t see a compelling reason to leave Amazon out of the mix. In the end, I asked myself if it made me more active, and if I was comfortable with the personal health data that was going to Amazon.
Amazon halo view vs fitbit how to#
In the month and a half I’ve been wearing it, I tried all of the features and struggled to decide how to review this device. The device received those scathing reviews on tech blogs and in mainstream news outlets because of the two truly unique features the band offers: a body fat scan and an analysis of the wearer’s tone.
But despite the scathing reviews in some media outlets, there’s a place for this product.
If you are a hardcore fitness fanatic, this also isn’t for you. I’d instead suggest a Fitbit or even a Wyze device. So should you get it? Unless you want to avail yourself of the body scans and feature that tracks your tone of voice, or you want access to a variety of short workouts and services aimed at making you more fit or helping you sleep, then this product is probably not worth it.
Amazon’s Halo fitness tracker is now available for anyone to buy for $99.99 (plus $4.99 a month).
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