Unofficial Review: Amazon Halo

[GolfSpy MPR]

Today, I received an invitation for an early-access purchase of Amazon Halo, Amazon's competitor to the Whoop health monitoring band. I'm definitely intrigued (which is why I signed up to be considered for early access in the first place). Among the big factors for me over the Whoop: price. Whoop (I believe) is about $30/month for their service. With the Halo, the first six months are free, and after that, monitoring is $4/month. That's a huge difference.

The downside for me (careful, gents, as this could bring in a political/cultural angle that we need to steer clear of) is giving all that information to Amazon. For me, this isn't about the merits of Amazon per se; it's just that they're so big. The Halo also has a microphone. It is supposed to be monitoring your tone of voice, to tell you when you're being irritable. While I see some interest in that, I also don't like active mics (I don't do Alexa, Siri, etc.).

So what do you all say? I think a test and review of this device, especially from a health/golf point of view, would be awesome. I myself want to know the data that the Halo collects. But I'm not thrilled about connecting it to Amazon, which is obviously able to make things cheaper just through their scale.

[IDontGiveAchuck]

Political agendas aside, I would be interested in how this one operates.

[cksurfdude]

First, I'd...
1. consider what I was looking to measure, 
..and..
2. look at what are the functional differences between those two devices .. if any .. and see if one is a better match for what I'm looking to do.

Are there any - good, not malware - health apps you can download into your smartphone and do almost the same thing(s)?

Then consider price. 

FWIW and to get it out of the way, while a large part of my working career was enmeshed in developing, improving and utilizing technology .. I currently lean heavily away from all the au-current over-sharing online of everything everywhere all the time (with, obviously, the big exception of the MGS Forums!).

[LeftyRM7]

I’ve been using whoop for a few months now and from what I’ve seen, the halo is far from competition for the whoop. After a little research, I quickly dismissed the halo as an alternative. It’s Amazon’s version of a basic fitness tracker, packaged to look like a whoop. Great marketing but that’s why it’s $20 less a month.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MyWifesSwingCoach]

21 hours ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

The downside for me (careful, gents, as this could bring in a political/cultural angle that we need to steer clear of) is giving all that information to Amazon.

[GolfSpy MPR]

So I pulled the trigger and my Halo arrived yesterday.

First impressions: it's simple. It's very lightweight; it's easy to put on and forget. I'm a watch-wearer (a heavier metal watch); my initial intention was to wear the Halo on the same wrist with my watch, but further up my arm. But my main watch slides a bit on my wrist, and having the two devices tap into each other was going to drive me nuts. I switched the Halo to my right wrist within the first hour of getting it.

I do wish the Halo could be charged while being worn; if you can get OCD with data collection (not wanting gaps) this might bother you as well.

In terms of data, I've kept Tone on so far, the feature in which the Halo monitors your speech and tells you the mood you're conveying. So far, I think it's on point. I had a Zoom class last night, a discussion of a book that really frustrated me. When I checked my Halo data after class, it characterized my speech samples as annoyed, stubborn, condescending, irritated, amused, and dismissive. Not the most flattering, but it does seem to suggest that it's working.

Why do I care about this feature? In particular, I want to monitor the difference when I'm speaking to my children at home. Obviously, this is not golf-related, but it might (possibly) spill over to on-course attitude.

The sleep information is very cool. On the first night, it scored my night's sleep as an 85. I would say that I normally sleep pretty well, going to bed at a reasonable hour nearly every night. What I found interesting is that I fell asleep quickly (3 minutes, according to Halo), entered deep sleep repeatedly in the first three hours or so of sleeping, but then reached only light and REM sleep the rest of the evening. It was only the first night, so I'm interested in seeing whether that's an anomaly or a pattern.

I also used the body fat percentage feature this morning. This technically is not a watch feature; you take pictures of yourself from the front, back, and sides, and Amazon uses AI to determine body fat percentage from that data. My cheap scale with body fat sensors has told me I'm checking in at about 18-19% body fat; Amazon has me at nearly 26%. My suspicion, unfortunately, is that Halo is more accurate, so I have work to do.

I posted on Twitter that with one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat. Paying for a gadget to insult me seems unnecessary. That said, the data is interesting so far, and I'm especially intrigued to see how access to the data (along with the other parts of the software) gives me a kick in the pants to make some needed changes.

[StrokerAce]

"...one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat"

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

[MattF]

52 minutes ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

with one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat. Paying for a gadget to insult me seems unnecessary.

Yeah, I get that for free from my wife...

[bens197]

If anyone thinks that they are exempt from industry, harvesting your data from website searches and smartphone tracking then I would love to sell you my angel investment stake in Augusta National GC.  

That said...

Whoop is clearly doing something correct and while I love my Apple Watch, the Halo definitely has some cool features, of which many are still available on my apple.

The dealbreaker for me would be the charging.  I am not a fan of the day-long battery cycle but I get it.  How's the battery life been thus far?

[GolfSpy MPR]

1 hour ago, bens197 said:

If anyone thinks that they are exempt from industry, harvesting your data from website searches and smartphone tracking then I would love to sell you my angel investment stake in Augusta National GC.  

That said...

Whoop is clearly doing something correct and while I love my Apple Watch, the Halo definitely has some cool features, of which many are still available on my apple.

The dealbreaker for me would be the charging.  I am not a fan of the day-long battery cycle but I get it.  How's the battery life been thus far?

So far, it seems to be as advertised: I've kept the voice analysis on, which is by far the biggest battery drain. With that, I'm going to probably charge once a day. I brought the charger to my office, and I'll likely start throwing it on when I arrive at the office at the beginning of the day. My understanding is that, with the voice analysis off, you get closer to a week of use between charges.

[Kenny B]

25 minutes ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

So far, it seems to be as advertised: I've kept the voice analysis on, which is by far the biggest battery drain. With that, I'm going to probably charge once a day. I brought the charger to my office, and I'll likely start throwing it on when I arrive at the office at the beginning of the day. My understanding is that, with the voice analysis off, you get closer to a week of use between charges.

When it says it's off, is it REALLY off??  Sorry, just paranoid from working in National Security for 35 years.  Other than tracking me on my phone and the internet (which I limit as much as I can), I don't social media and I certainly won't have Alexa, Siri, fitbit, whoop, halo, or anything else monitoring me.  The NSA has massive data storage centers (look up the one in Utah).  If the NSA has storage, but they say they are not spying on U.S, citizens, so do all of the big tech businesses and they are certainly spying to make a profit.

It's bad enough that when I search for something on the internet, my wife gets ads for what I searched for on Facebook (I don't have Facebook).  "...one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat"...   I don't need to be flooded with ads for antidepressants, self-help books, and Pelotons.

[bens197]

55 minutes ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

So far, it seems to be as advertised: I've kept the voice analysis on, which is by far the biggest battery drain. With that, I'm going to probably charge once a day. I brought the charger to my office, and I'll likely start throwing it on when I arrive at the office at the beginning of the day. My understanding is that, with the voice analysis off, you get closer to a week of use between charges.

I could live without the voice for a week of battery. 
 

Thanks for the updates

[bens197]

1 minute ago, Kenny B said:

It's bad enough that when I search for something on the internet, my wife gets ads for what I searched for on Facebook (I don't have Facebook).  "...one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat"...   I don't need to be flooded with ads for antidepressants, self-help books, and Pelotons.

Kenny...log into her Facebook and search for golf clubs and any other toys you want her to surprise you with

[GolfSpy MPR]

5 minutes ago, Kenny B said:

When it says it's off, is it REALLY off??  Sorry, just paranoid from working in National Security for 35 years.  Other than tracking me on my phone and the internet (which I limit as much as I can), I don't social media and I certainly won't have Alexa, Siri, fitbit, whoop, halo, or anything else monitoring me.  The NSA has massive data storage centers (look up the one in Utah).  If the NSA has storage, but they say they are not spying on U.S, citizens, so do all of the big tech businesses and they are certainly spying to make a profit.

It's bad enough that when I search for something on the internet, my wife gets ads for what I searched for on Facebook (I don't have Facebook).  "...one day with the Halo, it's told me I'm irritable, lazy, and fat"...   I don't need to be flooded with ads for antidepressants, self-help books, and Pelotons.

Can't speak to it personally, since I've had this for barely 24 hours. But if turning the voice analysis off gains 5+ days of battery life, it seems to me that's a decent indicator that it's actually off. As someone who shares much of your basic cynicism about such things, that strikes me as fairly strong evidence.

[Kenny B]

6 minutes ago, bens197 said:

Kenny...log into her Facebook and search for golf clubs and any other toys you want her to surprise you with

There's no surprising me with golf stuff.  She knows that if I want something, I buy it then and there.  We both do.  I get my golf stuff the way I like it, and she gets her golf stuff... with a little help from me, of course.  

I also don't know her Facebook password and don't want to know it.

[Kenny B]

5 minutes ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

Can't speak to it personally, since I've had this for barely 24 hours. But if turning the voice analysis off gains 5+ days of battery life, it seems to me that's a decent indicator that it's actually off. As someone who shares much of your basic cynicism about such things, that strikes me as fairly strong evidence.

Unless if it were REALLY off, it would actually get 2 weeks of battery life instead of what they advertise.  

[GolfSpy MPR]

1 minute ago, Kenny B said:

Unless if it were REALLY off, it would actually get 2 weeks of battery life instead of what they advertise.  

Or, the "battery drain" when it's "on" is a sham, to give you the impression that it's off when the battery lasts a week

[Kenny B]

1 minute ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

Or, the "battery drain" when it's "on" is a sham, to give you the impression that it's off when the battery lasts a week

Yep!  I said I was paranoid.  I'm not sure that I didn't have a chip implanted in me during my last surgery.  We are all getting one eventually, didn't you know?  

[GolfSpy_SHARK]

On 11/2/2020 at 1:05 PM, GolfSpy MPR said:

Today, I received an invitation for an early-access purchase of Amazon Halo, Amazon's competitor to the Whoop health monitoring band. I'm definitely intrigued (which is why I signed up to be considered for early access in the first place). Among the big factors for me over the Whoop: price. Whoop (I believe) is about $30/month for their service. With the Halo, the first six months are free, and after that, monitoring is $4/month. That's a huge difference.

The downside for me (careful, gents, as this could bring in a political/cultural angle that we need to steer clear of) is giving all that information to Amazon. For me, this isn't about the merits of Amazon per se; it's just that they're so big. The Halo also has a microphone. It is supposed to be monitoring your tone of voice, to tell you when you're being irritable. While I see some interest in that, I also don't like active mics (I don't do Alexa, Siri, etc.).

So what do you all say? I think a test and review of this device, especially from a health/golf point of view, would be awesome. I myself want to know the data that the Halo collects. But I'm not thrilled about connecting it to Amazon, which is obviously able to make things cheaper just through their scale.

I don’t have to much interest in these types of technology.

the information thing is everything though so that wouldn’t be overly concerning. If you have a phone chances (and by chances I mean 100%) the info is already out there

 

 

[MyWifesSwingCoach]

15 hours ago, Lacassem said:

I don’t have to much interest in these types of technology.

the information thing is everything though so that wouldn’t be overly concerning. If you have a phone chances (and by chances I mean 100%) the info is already out there

 

 

This is one of my favorites LMAO

[GolfSpy_SHARK]

1 hour ago, MyWifesSwingCoach said:

This is one of my favorites LMAO

Top 3 favorite memes by a far

[GolfSpy MPR]

Quick battery life update: charged it yesterday morning in my office about this time. Right now, the battery is at 54%. In theory, then, I could get through tonight's sleep and charge it tomorrow morning, but that would be cutting it closer than I'd like (if one of the major features is tracking sleep, I don't want to lose battery overnight). So with the voice analysis on, I'll likely be looking at charging each day.

[MyWifesSwingCoach]

53 minutes ago, GolfSpy MPR said:

Quick battery life update: charged it yesterday morning in my office about this time. Right now, the battery is at 54%. In theory, then, I could get through tonight's sleep and charge it tomorrow morning, but that would be cutting it closer than I'd like (if one of the major features is tracking sleep, I don't want to lose battery overnight). So with the voice analysis on, I'll likely be looking at charging each day.

What if you turn off voice analysis while you sleep to conserve battery? or is there a sleep mode that already does that?

[GolfSpy MPR]

11 minutes ago, MyWifesSwingCoach said:

What if you turn off voice analysis while you sleep to conserve battery? or is there a sleep mode that already does that?

I suspect that would help, but (ideally) I'd rather not babysit it. I may actually go the other way: there's an option to turn the voice analysis to be more frequent that takes the battery life from 2 days to 1. If I'm going to charge it daily anyway, I suppose I might as well get the most data from it.

[GolfSpy MPR]

One week in. Here's my update.

Start with the summary: so far, the Halo band is doing what I hoped it would do. By quantifying and gamifying certain personal fitness numbers, it motivates me to do things that are good for me.

In more detail:

Sleep

The nightly sleep score has been interesting. Each morning, it gives you an overall score for the previous night's sleep, which seems to take into account the total amount of time sleeping, the numbers of times you woke up, how long you stayed awake when you woke up, and how long you spent in each phase of sleep. So for last night, I got this:

Anything over 85 is considered excellent. I've averaged just under that for the past week.

I've been intrigued to learn that deep sleep is concentrated early in the night's sleep. I was also surprised to see the number of times I woke up in a night. The app explains that most of these are momentary and you don't ever remember them. I believe it said to be concerned if you're closer to 10 events or more per hour (which I suspect signals sleep apnea or something similar).

I've learned that my target for deep sleep is close to an hour a night. I often have far more REM sleep than is recommended. That said, I really don't have a good idea how to switch those numbers.

Tone

The Tone feature has been interesting. I will very likely keep it on for a few more weeks (possibly months), but I could foresee eventually shutting it off and enjoying the longer battery life.

Because I'm a pastor, the Tone feature gives me some pretty negative results, especially on Sundays or Wednesdays when I'm teaching publicly. Essentially, Halo divides your speech patterns into four categories: high energy positive, low energy positive, low energy negative, high energy negative. I end up getting a lot of passionate and authoritative on Sundays, which Halo flags as high energy negative.

This makes sense, as we all know what it's like in personal conversation to be preached at. But when I'm preaching, I'm going to kinda sound like I'm preaching

It still remains something I want to keep an eye on. I find it helpful when I look at the timeline and see more "positive" interactions during the time I'm home, for instance.

Activity

This has been the most useful item so far. Halo assigns you points for each day based on a combination of movement and heart rate. You get specific numbers of points for high, moderate, and low intensity activity. It also allots you 8 hours of sedentary time a day (not counting sleep); when you pass that, it begins deducting points. And that has exactly the kind of motivating effect I want it to have, because I hate losing points.

At the beginning, it asks you to get 150 points as a weekly goal. You will not get it if you have a desk job and don't intentionally add activity. On the other hand, if you go hard, you can rack up points in a hurry.

This past Saturday, a new couple moved to our area to attend our church and asked for help unloading their moving truck. It ended up being a full size U-Haul and a U-Haul trailer. But noon on Saturday, when we finished the job, I had amassed 180 Halo points for that morning alone.

In terms of practical value: the other morning I got up to probably an inch of snow on our driveway. Our driveway is long-ish. The amount of snow was small enough that the snow blower wasn't the best option, but even more, I knew that if I shoveled, I'd grab way more Halo points. 50 points later, I had this:

It's silly to be manipulated by a little band and made up points, but it works on me, so I'm going to use it to my advantage.

Halo's app also comes with a variety of workout guides: videos that you can follow along with, most of which require minimal equipment. Because I have the church building to myself, it's relative easy to set aside 20 minutes or so to get in a workout. After the first (very basic) workout, it was clear that it had been far too long since I have purposefully exercised, as I was hobbling around the next couple of days. But I'm back in the saddle now.

Body fat

Halo asks you to do a body fat scan every two weeks, so I still haven't done my second one after the first insulting one. That'll be next Wednesday. But I'm looking forward to it. As of this morning, I'm done about 3-4lbs from where I was last week. My goal is to get down closer to 160lbs, and ideally down from my current 26% body fat to something well under 20%. Knowing I have this measurement coming up provides some good incentive.

Overall

Because I've left the Tone feature on (with it's drain on battery life), I've had to figure out a time to charge the Halo each day. My solution right now is to get up, sync the night's sleep with the app, and then put the Halo on the charger while I shower in the morning. The Halo is water resistant enough to wear in the shower (I've done it), but the fabric band gets wet and stays wet a little too long. In the time it takes for me to get ready in the morning, the battery is easily able to top off again.

I do wish the Halo gave more direct access to everything that it's measuring. It clearly has some kind of thermometer, for instance, because it'll tell you your sleeping temperature compared to your awake temperature. Why can't I get a live reading from that sensor in the way that it allows me to check in live on my heartrate?

So far, I'm impressed. I think the potential exists in this band, though, to do even more in the app, and I hope Amazon keeps expanding its power.

[GolfSpy MPR]

One month in with the Halo now. Here's a quick update.

As of this week, I turned the voice analysis off. It was loosely interesting, but did not in the end justify the battery life it costs.

That leaves me with three main features of the Halo band and app: the activity tracker, the sleep tracker, and the body fat scan. And those features continue to be worthwhile for me. Essentially, the gamification features of the band (here's a "score" for you to chase and improve) do what they're supposed to do in motivating me to better choices.

I'll start with the sleep tracker. I typically don't struggle to sleep, so I can't say that the sleep tracker has changed my habits much at all. But I do find it interesting to see in the morning if my impression of my own restedness matches the Halo's evaluation of my sleep. I have not been one with a habit of getting up in the night and checking my phone, but it was something I did from time to time when I woke up and didn't immediately fall back asleep. Having the Halo monitoring my sleep discourages me from doing that; I find myself trying to get back to sleep as quickly as possible.

On the activity tracker: this has been the key element of the band for me. More than measuring mere steps or active minutes, it combines activity with heart rate to assign a certain number of points per active minute (more points for the higher intensity of the activity by heart rate). I think I've mentioned earlier: once you use up your allotted 8 hours of sedentary time in the day (not counting sleep), it starts deducting points.

When you first get the Halo, it gives you a minimum target of 150 points per week. You won't get it by sitting at your desk. So that was an early good incentive to start moving. The good habits start building, and month later, my target is 150 points every two days. I've gotten back to regularly using my stationary bike and weight machine. Chasing points, as silly and arbitrary as it is, works as a motivational tool for me.

My one complaint is its inconsistency in deciding whether my preaching is an "activity." A couple Sundays ago, I picked up 90 points, because I tend to pace around quite a bit when I preach. This past Sunday, it didn't see my two hours of teaching/preaching as an activity, and I got only 22 points for the entire day.

On the body fat analysis: it recommends scanning every other week; I'm doing it weekly right now. So far, in the four weeks I've had the Halo, I've dropped 7lbs (down to 163) and about 1.5% body fat (according to its scanner). At this point, I look forward to checking in with the scan to see how my work that week is paying off. I think I'm moving at a decent pace; if all goes well, by the time golf begins in the spring I should be down 8% body far or thereabouts from my starting point. That would put me in a very reasonable place.

A quibble: the app is inexcusably laggy. I have a recent phone (Galaxy Note 10 Lite); there is no reason for the delays between tapping things and the app responding. I'm hoping to see that ironed out in subsequent software revisions.