Amazon has launched a new fitness wearable – the Halo View.
While Amazon Halo used a fabric band without a screen (a la Whoop) to go quietly about collecting activity data, the Halo View puts an AMOLED display, to take a more pro-active approach to your fitness.
It’s certainly not a looker on first impressions. The bands come in a range of colored straps, but has a slightly old school wearable look with a boxy, tall case with the AMOLED display ensconced in a large black bezel.
Halo View does all the stuff you’d expect from a fitness tracker – activity data, sleep scores, blood oxygen monitoring, as well as live workout tracking and notifications. But now users can check in with that data from the wrist.
And there’s some advanced sensors on board, too. In addition to heart rate and SpO2 tracking, the Halo View will keep tabs on skin temperature. It’s not clear how the data will be implemented in the Halo app, but this can be a superb insight into wellness.
The Halo View launches in line with a big update to the Halo ecosystem: Halo Fitness, which will be available to users of the Halo ecosystem that costs $3.99 per month.
In line with Apple Fitness+ and Fitbit Premium, Halo Fitness offers hundreds of interactive cardio, strength, yoga, outdoor, and mobility classes, so you can do home workouts tracked by your Halo View or Halo Band.
Like Apple Fitness+ you’ll see live fitness metrics on screen when paired with a Halo wearable band. And like Fitbit Premium, Amazon has gone out and partnered with some big-name content providers for the videos, such as Orangetheory and Halle Berry’s Respin.
That's in addition to the standard Halo features of things like body composition and monitoring tone and weight.
The Halo View offers seven days of battery life and charges in 90 minutes.
It costs $79.99, which included a full year of the Halo Fitness subscription – so it’s aggressively priced to take on Fitbit’s trackers. It will be available ‘before the Holidays’.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.