Amazon’s Halo fitness tracker can now help you avoid throwing out your back
A virtual personal trainer (sort of)
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Amazonhas launched a new feature for its Halofitness tracker, which essentially turns it into a virtual personal trainer. Movement Health analyzes the way you perform basic physical motions and uses AI to suggest ways to improve. The idea is to help build functional strength, so you don’t throw your back out or get neck pain performing everyday tasks.
First, theAmazon Halosmartphone app leads you through a series of basic movements (including balances, squats andarmraises), and its computer vision and machine learning technologies check for instabilities in your stability, mobility and posture.
Once the assessment is complete, you’ll be given specific details about all of these areas, plus an overall score out of 100. The app will also provide a breakdown of data covering your core, lower body, hips, and shoulders. This whole process should take no more than about 10 minutes.
Next, the app will give you a program of exercises to complete, based on the issues identified during the assessment. These should take around 5-10 minutes to complete, three days a week. Regular assessments with the app should (hopefully) show that you’re starting to make progress.
To make sure you’re performing the exercises correctly, you’ll get spoken guidance from a professional coach and physiotherapist.
Halo effect
The Halo is a very unusual fitness tracker; rather than merely counting steps and monitoring your pulse, it tracks your wellbeing in more novel ways too, such as monitoring your tone of voice for signs of stress or strain.
Other fitness trackers use changes in heart rate or, in the case of theFitbit Sense, the conductivity of your skin to detect stress levels. The Halo takes a different track, monitoring your vocal tone and word selection throughout the day for ‘positivity’ and ‘energy’.
Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.
Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.
It’s up to you to decide what to do with this information (with no screen, the Halo can’t lead you through calming breathing exercises as other devices do), but it can help you get a better understanding of how your mood changes, and which factors might affect it.
Another unusual feature is Body, which requires you to take four photos of yourself in tight clothing, and uses this data to calculate your body fat percentage. It also creates a 3D model of your body, so you can see your physique from all angles (an experienceour reviewerdidn’t particularly enjoy).
So many of the Halo’s features use cloud computing rather than on-device processing, there’s plenty of potential for new features without the need to upgrade the hardware. It’ll be interesting to see what other tools will be added in future updates.
Cat is TechRadar’s Homes Editor specializing in kitchen appliances and smart home technology. She’s been a tech journalist for 15 years, and is here to help you choose the right devices for your home and do more with them. When not working she’s a keen home baker, and makes a pretty mean macaron.
The Samsung Galaxy Ring 2 could fix a major smart ring flaw according to patent
Xiaomi Smart Band 9 review: the cheapest fitness tracker you should consider buying
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 (2024) review: one of the best Pro laptops around just got better
