Amazon announces new fitness wearable, health services

 Amazon recently announced a new fitness band and a range of health services to go along with it.

As per The Verge, the new USD 79.99 Halo View includes a colour AMOLED display (similar to Fitbit's Charge 5) and a year of Amazon's Halo membership, which is required to access the tracker's more advanced analytics.

Amazon is also launching a Halo Fitness service, which provides workout videos similar to Apple Fitness Plus, and Halo Nutrition, which helps you with your meal plan.

Amazon is pitching the Halo View as a follow-up to its previous Halo Band fitness tracker, which didn't include a screen. While the Halo View can gather a ton of biometric data, including heart rate, blood oxygen level, and skin temperature, it won't be gathering your voice data.

Amazon has dropped the microphone that the original Halo used to monitor and analyse your emotions (though that feature will still be available in the Halo app). The Halo View can also do sleep tracking and alert you to text messages with a haptic motor.

The Halo View will come in three colours: black, green, and purple. People will also be able to buy additional bands (Amazon promises 15 colours of the sport bands), including ones made out of fabric, leather, and metal.

Amazon said it has seven days of battery life and can be charged in 90 minutes, which is good, especially if you'll be using it to track your sleep. Amazon said it'll be shipping in time for the holidays.

The Halo Membership, which costs USD 3.99 a month after the first year that you get free with the View, will let you access advanced features like Amazon's body composition scanning, activity points system, sleep analysis, Alexa integration (where Alexa devices can give you information that Halo collects), and more.

It also gives you access to the new services Amazon announced recently. Halo Fitness will include "hundreds" of cardio, strength, yoga, outdoor, and mobility classes, led by Halo coaches.

Similar to Apple Fitness Plus, you'll also be able to see metrics like heart rate from your Halo band overlaid on the video, though that functionality won't be available when the service launches "later this year."

Amazon's Halo Nutrition includes a collection of recipes from companies like Weight Watchers, Lifesum, and the Amazon-owned Whole Foods and includes Alexa integration -- if you're planning on making a recipe, you can add the ingredients to your Alexa shopping list.

Amazon said Halo Nutrition will be available in January 2022. Both Nutrition and Fitness will be available to customers who have the original Halo Band as well, as they'll live in the Halo App.