Pricey new Amazon Halo View health and fitness band adds display, BMI tracking

Despite waxing poetic about lack of distractions and better focusing on your goals about the OG Halo, Amazon has seemingly given up at the end and just introduced the Halo View, flaunting an OLED display.

With a proper OLED screen, you can now see vital health and fitness stats without reaching for your phone each time, and that’s the biggest value that Halo View brings, besides the suite of sensors and a week of battery life. There’s much more to the new Halo View health and fitness tracking features, according to Amazon:

• Body: Medical research shows that body fat percentage is a better measure of overall health than weight or body mass index alone, but tools that measure this can be expensive or difficult to access. Using computer vision (CV) and machine learning (ML), Amazon Halo enables customers to measure their body fat percentage from the comfort and privacy of their own home. Body is as accurate as methods a doctor would use, nearly twice as accurate as at-home smart scales, and has been clinically validated by Pennington Biomedical Research Center and Massachusetts General Hospital. Learn more about the Body feature.
• Activity: Informed by American Heart Association physical activity guidelines and the latest medical research, Amazon Halo awards points weekly, based on the intensity and duration of movement, not just the number of steps taken.
• Movement Health: Improving physical movement helps prepare the body to handle the demands of everyday life. Using just a smartphone camera and the Halo app, Movement Health uses CV and ML to assess mobility, stability, and posture, then recommends a custom program of corrective exercises.
• Sleep: The health benefits of consistently good sleep are well documented. Amazon Halo uses motion, heart rate, and temperature to measure time asleep and time awake; time spent in the various phases of sleep, including deep, light, and REM; and skin temperature while sleeping.
• Tone: The globally accepted definition of health includes physical, social, and emotional well-being. Tone uses ML to analyze energy and positivity in a customer’s voice so they can better understand how they may sound to others, which can help improve their communication and relationships. Learn more about the Tone feature.
• Discover: An ever-expanding catalog of workouts, sleep resources, nutrition programs, mindfulness exercises, and meditations created by Halo experts, as well as experts from 8fit, Aaptiv, American Heart Association, Exhale On Demand, Headspace, Julian Treasure, Mayo Clinic, Openfit, P.volve, Russell Wilson, Relax Melodies, and more. Over 150 programs are designed to drive useful discoveries, like if a lower temperature aids sleep, if yoga stretches contribute to a lower heart rate, or if a program of strength training reduces body fat percentage.
• Alexa for Halo: Customers can connect their Alexa to Halo, giving them the ability to simply ask for updates on their health and wellness information—including activity score, sleep quality, body composition—from an Alexa-enabled device. Just ask, “Alexa, how did I sleep last night?” or “Alexa, how may activity points do I have?”

Priced at $79.99, the Halo View is obviously not your run of the mill fitness band that sells for half that tag. With BMI measurements, Alexa support, and intonation analysis, the Halo View is positioned in the upper segment of the health and sports trackers out there.