Meet Amazon’s Angel, Halo
A review of a wearable device created by a Tech giant, two days before the US election during a pandemic by an Amazon-addicted Xennial who has owned the Halo for 78 hours.
I’m one of those Gen X-er’s that [used to] is able to pull off the Gen Y thing. I pick up languages pretty darn quickly, so it’s easy to get into the texting cadences. I’m zero chill. I have a straw fedora. I’ve cancelled a bunch of things even though me and my friends agree with Obama that it’s kind of fucked up. I early voted. I got COVID bangs. Oh yeah, and The Social Dilemma has kept me awake for several nights on end. But, I do not own any wearables: an Apple Watch, Air Pods, Fitbit, etc.
Why such a Johnny-come-lately to the world of wearables? Even my father, a notorious luddite, got a wearable pedometer nearly 20 years ago for his birthday. This was the same year he asked for a pair of these glasses for Father’s Day. For those doing the quick GenX to father math, this is not a man who was a senior citizen at the time. But, I genuinely appreciate a Lo-tech/Hi-tech kind of lewk.
I should back up by saying that I have no affiliation with Amazon whatsoever, although we have gotten a lot closer over the last seven months. Her know-it-all niece, Alexa (nicknamed, “the Magical Entertainment Beast”), lives in my house, plays my favorite music, orders all my groceries, tells me how to make mac n’ cheese into the shape of a pumpkin, how to bake with leftover Halloween candy, and streams photos of my family who I rarely get to see now. Reluctantly, she’s my roommate, although I feel she costs me a hell of a lot of money.
I digress.
Perhaps this attachment to Alexa and Prime is what led Amazon to invite me to an exclusive “Early Access” chance to buy the Amazon Halo. Note: To all those big tech companies who are trying to figure out my algorithm for purchasing things, it’s simply offering me exclusive early access — that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. You can stop collecting my data now.
Upon receiving this invite, I did a quick purview of the sell vid. Seemed okay at first. Here are the main features:
Measures heart rate, activity, and sleeping habits— okay, nothing different then what I have seen other wearables do.
Does not tell you when your emails or texts are coming through — great, checks all of The Social Dilemma paranoia I have.
Body Composition. Can tell you your body fat through pictures more accurately than body composition scales. Excuse me — just through pictures?? Science or magic, you tell me. (P.S. This is terrifying to start thinking about the “science” [read: data mining] behind this.)
Then it got real interesting. It measures the tone of your voice. To anyone who has ever been married, has had a mother or a sister, or lived with anyone ever and has been accused of having an edge, a tone, a tinge, a resting bitch voice, this is huge. In the age of “the Karen,” this is fucking huge.
I promptly signed up to receive the official invite and waited for the exclusive access code. BONUS to Amazon for selling this at $30 below the retail price. If there was ever a hesitation on my part (there wasn’t), this helped tremendously. I paid $64.99. Blush band, rose gold, size medium.
Here’s the review part.
So, I will spare you the unboxing details. This is no Net-A-Porter experience. This is a sixty-four-dollar item, and it has a lot of self awareness. It comes in a small box. The bracelet is sort of cheap looking. I think you can upgrade the band but I will not, since no one ever sees me anyway. Do I think this holds up to the Apple watches and stuff like it? Definitely seems less glamorous, but I have nothing to personally compare it to you. I would say if you are stuck in your house all day, this is totally fine.
Charging. This part bothered me a bit. The description of the item doesn’t say whether it comes with a charging pad, though it shows pictures of the charging pad. Then Amazon suggests that other customers have bought the charging pad with their purchase of the band, which suggests that it doesn’t actually come with one. Through some additional research, it seemed like it would have to come with a charger, and I gambled that it would.
The charging pad is kind of difficult to figure out. There are four different possible ways to lay the device onto the charger, and I will say I got it wrong twice in three days. And yes, the obvious problem here is that I am charging this twice in three days. This is something that you are supposed to be able to wear all day for several days. And, it for sure could if it wasn’t using the device to record your tone all day.
You can shut off this tonality measurement part, if you want, but if you did this, you are insane. This part is truly fascinating and interesting enough for me to keep this device around for a few months more.
First, you read a couple of mundane passages, and the device learns your voice. Then, it starts to track your conversations throughout the day. If you are especially concerned about how you sound during a specific conversation, you can track that specific block of time to get feedback and review after the fact. You can also track your voice in live time.
For instance, you can say “Hey gurrrrlll!” into the mic with your most charming but aloof David Rose voice, which it will characterize as “UNCONFIDENT, DISCOURAGED, SAD. Let’s try this again, “HEY GUURRRRLLLL!!!” Now, DELIGHTED, but also FRIENDLY and CURIOUS.
Interesting. Is this purely going on tonality and not content? I wonder.
How about when I say, “The President of the United States is Donald Trump.” Feedback: “You sounded mostly focused, but also interested and disappointed.”
Halo, you are my goddamned new best friend!!! That is a complex emotion I have and you nailed it. Holy shit! If we can teach this robot to say, You sound exasperated and existential, that is some next level type AI. Fingers crossed!
In all seriousness, this is interesting, because one of the Halo “labs” (basically, further reading material to help you triage the issues that they find from their data collecting on you) suggests that you compare data about your tone after you had a good night sleep as opposed to a poor night’s sleep. MAY I GENTLY SUGGEST, Halo, that also one’s tonality also degrades after you tell them their body composition and how accurate this device is for measuring body composition?
Warning: To all those wanting to get this to measure their body composition, please be really, really sure you want to actually know your body composition. During 2020. Before the holiday season. Ever really. Especially when this device is telling you that this is super accurate.
This part is so, so brutal, guys. You are supposed to strip down to your underwear and let Bezos take a full 360 scan of your bod, which involves 4 pictures of you in your underwear, during COVID. May I assume there’s not a ton of showering and grooming going on these days? May I assume that you have met or exceeded the nation’s average of a 14% increase in alcohol consumption since the beginning of the pandemic (women, 17%)? Will you allow me assume this? Yes, you get the picture here. There’s not a ton to be proud of these days.
For those of you horrified by allowing a device to take pictures of your never-nude but almost naked body that will remain on the cloud or cyberspace or Bezo’s Snapchats forever, there’s a lot of disclaimers and instructions and pleas and checking that you understand about the privacy issues that come along with this. Fine. Watch The Social Dilemma for all of the horror.
Anyway, you/they do the scan and then something I didn’t realize happens…happens. The pictures of you remain on the phone in the Halo App, although you do have the option to “hide” the pictures. And then, below it, a black and white rendering of you sits below you on the screen. So, say you are at 38% body fat, you can toggle the percentage and see what black and white cartoon avatar can look like at 10% body fat.
I’m really not a body-shamer here, but I’m pretty convinced that this avatar is as hideous and unflattering on JLo as it is me. I’m really pretty sure. Amazon, make this avatar hotter, please. Don’t just show her in her undies, put her in a cute dress with some pumps. Give her a face, a head, some awesome hair. THANK YOU.
As far as accuracy goes, it did seem to match pretty closely with a scan that I did at my gym not too long ago. This could be a fluke but this function of the app did seem to work.
All that is said and done, I would recommend this device. I really want my friends and family members to get it so I can check their logs against mine after we have a conversation that is in question. Or perhaps after I say, “The President of the United States is Joe Biden” and Halo says, “You sounded RIGHT, but also HAPPY and RELIEVED.”
