Amazon encroaches even further on Fitbit’s territory with a new, revised wearable following its screenless wristband tracker release last year. The new version, the Halo View, features a color AMOLED display, haptic feedback, tracking of sleep, activity, blood oxygen levels, among other features, and is bundled with new programs Halo Fitness and Halo Nutrition as additions to the existing Halo subscription program. What’s more, it’s priced at $79.99, even cheaper than the original Halo band.
Similar to the Fitbit Charge series, the new fitness tracker features an optical heart rate monitor, skin temperature sensor, and accelerometer and is swim-proof up to 50 meters. Amazon promises a seven-day battery life that fully charges in 90 minutes. The new Halo View will ship in time for the 2021 holiday season.
While details are scant, Amazon’s statement does imply that Tone and other Halo features, such as body-composition scanning using your phone’s camera, will be supported via the Halo app. Launched with the original Halo band, Tone is a feature that uses the band’s microphone to eavesdrop on you throughout the day – with your compliance, of course – to detect emotions or stress levels in your voice, all in the interest of assessing your mental health (the dystopian Big Brother factor here helped the original Halo earn the title of the “world’s creepiest fitness tracker“).
According to the release, Halo Fitness will launch with “hundreds of classes, including cardio, strength, yoga, outdoor, and mobility classes,” created from its own Halo trainers, and will tap into fitness content already available from brands including rē•spin by Halle Berry, Orangetheory Fitness, and SWEAT.
In addition, Halo Nutrition, set to release January 2022, will feature a collection of recipes from Weight Watchers and Lifesum, and will integrate with Amazon-owned Alexa and Whole Foods to easily add a recipe’s ingredients to your shopping list. Amazon says it will be adding more content to its Fitness and Nutrition programs at no extra cost (a similar offer to Fitbit’s Premium plan, which costs $10 a month).
The new Halo View comes in three colors: sage green, lavender dream, and active black. You can also get the band in two sizes. Fifteen additional sports bands are available for purchase starting at $14.99, and eight fabric bands for $29.99 each.
As Amazon moves squarely into the fitness content space (and pretty much every other space in its quest for world domination), what does that mean for the likes of Peloton, already beset by stiff competition from Apple and Lululemon, which recently acquired Mirror? Well, clearly Amazon has deep pockets and experience producing high-production original content, which means the company “could easily out-produce Peloton, which would force Peloton to spend more money on its workout content production in order to stay competitive,” according to The Motley Fool. What’s worse: “Amazon could also poach some of Peloton’s most popular coaches.”
In the meantime, stay tuned for Connect the Watt‘s full review of Amazon’s new offering.
All images courtesy of Amazon
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