Amazon's weirdly judgy fitness tracking bracelet is now on sale
You can buy it from Amazon and Best Buy for $100.
After coming out earlier this year on an invite-only basis, Amazon’s Halo Band activity tracker is now available to anyone in the US who wants to buy one. You can purchase the wearable for $100 on Amazon and Best Buy. It’s available in three colors: black, blush and silver. You’ll need to pay for the company’s Halo subscription fitness program to get the most out of it. The monthly membership will set you back $4 after a complimentary six-month trial period expires.
The Halo Band doesn’t feature a display like your traditional Fitbit tracker or Apple Watch. What it does have are a couple of capabilities that have so far appeared in no other wearable. It includes two built-in microphones that will measure the tone of your voice. Each day, it will provide you with a tonal breakdown and suggestions on how to sound warmer. The accompanying Halo app also includes a feature that allows you to take a full-body selfie of yourself, which Amazon then uses to estimate your body fat percentage.
Early impressions of the Halo haven’t been positive. Over at The New York Times, writer Brian X. Chen spent the last couple of weeks testing Halo’s body fat measurement tool. They found the app consistently said they had more body fat than other methods. “Unless you were a couch potato and ate a very poor diet, I have my doubts about the Halo’s diagnosis,” a professor at the Johns Hopkins Weight Management Center told the author when they sent over the measurements they had gathered with Amazon’s new app.
