Amazon has released its new Movement health score feature on the Halo Fitness band. Currently available to all Halo users, this new feature is designed to help users analyze and improve mobility, stability, and posture.
The company had announced on June 3rd that it will be releasing this new smartphone-based movement and flexibility assessment to its Halo Fitness Band users. The new feature is live and is ready for Halo users to test out.
We set up our Halo Band and tested the Movement Health Score feature. Here’s what we found.
UPDATE: Amazon no longer supports Halo products, including the Halo Band, Halo View, and Halo Rise. Beginning on August 1, 2023, these products and the Amazon Halo app won’t work.
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Amazon Halo Movement Health Basics
How does Amazon Halo’s Movement Health feature work?
A user’s posture, mobility, and stability are assessed with the help of 5 simple movements outlined with the help of video tutorials on the app.
These simple movements are very similar to what you have to take when you visit your physiotherapist. They consist of the following exercises:
- Single leg balance (1 each leg)
- Forward lunge (3 each leg)
- Overhead Squat (6 reps)
- Overhead Reach (3 reps) and
- Feet Together Squat ( 3 reps)
These five exercises are designed to ensure that if you do them consistently, it improves your mobility score over time.
Amazon Halo’s Movement health feature leverages computer vision and machine learning to analyze your movement. Based on the assessment of your mobility, it generates a movement score and insightful feedback with a set of recommendations.
How to use Amazon Halo Movement Score feature?
To access these exercises using the Halo app on your phone, open the Halo app and tap on the ‘Data’ tab. Choose ‘Get Started’ with Movement and then tap on ‘Find your movement score’ and follow along with the instructions on the app.
Understanding your Amazon Halo Movement Score
The Amazon Halo movement scores are classified into five different categories ranging from ‘Poor’ to ‘Great.’ When you complete the mobility assessment, you find a score within a range of 0 – 100. These are interpreted as follows:
- Poor ( 0 – 59 ) – Users with a score in the Poor range can experience stiffness or limited mobility during their everyday movements.
- Fair (60 – 69) – Users with a score in this range may mind some challenging tasks such as reaching a high self or stepping over an obstacle, according to Amazon.
- Okay ( 70 – 79) – This range for mobility and flexibility is sort of in the middle. You may feel slight stiffness when looking over your shoulder or reaching up high, or jumping.
- Good (80 – 89) – This is the range one should be striving for if they are in good health. A score of 80 or higher means that you are moving well. and lastly,
- Great (90 – 100) – Movements are effortless for users with a score in this range. Professional athletes and dancers tend to fall into this range where high mobility and stability are expected.
Low Movement Score on Amazon Halo?
The chances are that some of us may find ourselves with a mobility score in the Poor/Fair or Okay ranges. The Amazon Halo provides a series of movement corrective exercises that can help address limitations and improve your score over time or help you maintain where you are at.
You see these short stretching recommendations following your movement assessment.
Amazon Halo content provides some excellent offerings when it comes to Mobility type exercises and stretching. Here is how you can find these additional exercises beyond the recommended corrective exercises and programs.
- Head over to the ‘Discover’ tab on the app
- Tap on ‘Fitness’ at the top of your screen
- Next, Tap on the ‘FILTERS’ dropdown at the right side of the screen
- Choose ‘MOBILITY’ as the Workout Type
- Tap on ‘SHOW RESULTS’
You find an amazing list of mobility exercise content ranging from 2 to 10 minutes designed to target various body areas known to show stiffness.
Whether you are looking for hip-opener exercises, hamstring stretching guide, or Thoracic and lower back opener to get your shoulder joint relaxed and ready, you find these short stretching exercises really helpful.
Amazon recommends that you perform their suggested list of movement corrective exercises once you have finished taking the assessment. Over several weeks you can see improvements in your movement score.
We suggest checking out your Movement score every week as you try out these corrective exercises daily. If you only exercise two to three times a week, it may take longer to see improvements in your movement score.
Many users find that if they perform some of these stretches during their non-workout days, it keeps them more fit and flexible.
Either you can set up a reminder to do these stretches every day when you wake up, or you can do some of these light stretches daily before you go to bed.
The regular use of these movement corrective exercises definitely shows you improvements in your movement score much faster.
Get started with Amazon Halo Movement Assessment.
The Halo movement assessment usually takes around 10 minutes from start to finish.
Before you get started with the Amazon Halo Movement assessment, you need the following:
- Your Phone is charged and ready to go with the Amazon Halo app running the latest version.
- Wear form-fitting clothing for the assessment and avoid sweatshirts or loose baggy pants/shorts
- You need a good area with at least 6 – 10 feet of open space
Tap on GET STARTED for MOVEMENT on the Data tab, and the app guides you step-by-step.
Make sure to keep the volume turned up on your phone so that you can follow along with the audio prompts to help you with the assessment exercises.
The first thing required is to provide camera access to the Amazon Halo app to get started.
You can go ahead and permit them, and once you are done with the assessment and received your movement score, head over to Settings > Privacy > Camera and disable access for Amazon Halo. (iPhone Settings).
The next part of the process requires you to place your phone on the floor against a wall or object with the screen facing you.
The ‘Level’ process is a cool Amazon Halo feature that automatically scans your position and assists you in getting your phone position correct so that the camera can scan your postures correctly.
Once the camera has determined the right viewing angle, you see the video image of a person guiding you through the 5 sets of movements one by one.
It begins with a demo of the exercise, and then you follow along to the voice prompt and perform the exercises in sequence.
With the completion of each exercise, you hear and see a ‘Complete,’ and you are guided to the next exercise.
After the exercises, the Halo algorithm completes the assessment and automatically provides you with a movement score.
I must admit that the feeling of the camera tracking your whole body to conduct this assessment felt really weird! But it was definitely helpful.
The Halo Movement Score and Feedback
In my case, a movement score of 70 (Okay) suggested that there is definitely room for improvement.
Tapping on ‘See Full Results’ on this screen provides you the breakdown of the score along the three key dimensions:
- Mobility
- Stability and
- Posture
Not only does the app provide you with the scores of each of these underlying metrics, but it also provides you with a detailed summary suggesting where the problem areas may be located that interfere with my mobility.
Here is the kicker! It doesn’t stop there.
Scroll down on this screen a little more, and it provides you with mobility and stability score details for your Shoulder, hip, and lower mobility under the ‘DETAILED RESULTS.’
The Halo program finally provides you with a personalized program and recommendations based on this assessment.
These recommendations include a series of workouts which include Yoga, Mobility, bodyweight-based strength training, and Yoga cross-training.
The best part is that you don’t have to set up reminders on your phone to do these recommended exercises to improve your mobility score.
Enable the Notifications and set it to your preferred time.
It pings you to get busy with these short 10-minute stretching regimens that are specifically designed based on your assessment.
You also have the option to play these movement exercises without intros by tapping on ‘Play without intros’ to save time. Your progress is tracked daily automatically as you complete the recommended movement exercises.
Here’s the Unpopular Opinion
Many media outlets have written off the Amazon Halo Fitness band because the prevalent thinking is that there are risks associated with user privacy. The feature offerings are not great.
We disagree with that assessment.
Given the price, the Amazon Halo band offers a ton of value to a user interested in staying fit, flexible, and healthy without sacrificing user privacy.
We have been testing the Amazon Halo since it was released.
Although the fitness band may not look very sharp or feature-rich, the accompanying software definitely features some very exciting offerings.
We also checked out the ‘Tone’ feature and found that it really does work. Recent studies have shown that the Amazon Body fat percentage assessment is pretty accurate.
From a user experience and usability perspective, the Amazon Halo team has done a phenomenal job when it comes to incorporating the movement health feature into the app.
The user experience is straightforward and can be followed by anyone. One shortcoming that we noticed during the movement assessment was that the sequence of exercises ( between the reps) is quite fast.
So when you are making the forward lunges, it expects you to do them with a little speed. That could be challenging to many who may not be very flexible with their hamstrings and hip flexors.
The other user experience-related design element that stood out for us was that the Halo app did not ping us to change our privacy settings at the end of the assessment.
Privacy Settings and User Data
Given that there is so much noise about Amazon and Privacy, it would have been worthwhile for the app to remind me at the end that ‘Hey, you may want to remove the camera access for the app.’
Unfortunately, we had to remind ourselves to switch off the camera access.
If you are super paranoid, tap on the Settings tab on the Halo app, and from the ‘BODY DATA’ section, you can delete body data completely. This includes any scan images, 3D avatars, body fat, and weight data.
For those using the Movement assessment, once you have completed the assessment, you can delete this from ‘Delete Movement Data’ in the subsequent section of the Settings tab.
As a user, you have full control over the privacy of your data using the detailed settings that Amazon has included in the Halo app.
Overall, the user experience of determining mobility score, understanding and interpreting the mobility score, and receiving a personalized list of recommended exercises was very easy, intuitive, and well designed.
Combine this user experience with the amount of video content you are getting from the Halo app for just $3.99 a month, and you have a potential winning product in the fitness tech space.
It’s time for the Amazon Halo team to re-imagine the Halo hardware. The fitness band and the charging cradle could use some polishing up when they are ready to release the product’s next iteration.
Amazon has been building up its Fitness content offerings for Halo subscribers. These content offerings cover areas from Fitness and mobility, sleep, nutrition, mindfulness, and tone.
Recently the company partnered up with Russel Wilson ( NFL Seahawks Quarterback) and his trainer to design a fitness program for Halo users. We expect to see more such celebrity and elite athlete-based offerings coming to the Halo this year.
I thoroughly enjoyed using the Halo Movement assessment feature and plan on using the feature and recommended stretching exercises to improve my movement score from OKAY to GOOD this summer.
Lastly, if you are interested in getting the Halo band, you can buy it from Amazon.
They, in fact, had a sale during Amazon Prime day where the band was priced at $69 ish. It usually retails for $99.
Bonus Tip for Apple iPhone Users
If you are an Apple iPhone user, you can not only check out the Amazon Halo movement assessment using the app but also take advantage of the mobility metrics of the Apple Health app to understand your overall mobility.
- Monitor your injury recovery and mobility using your iPhone
- How to set up and use the Walking Steadiness Score feature and notifications in iOS 15
From the Health app on your iPhone, tap on the Browse tab and choose Mobility.
Pay attention to your walking asymmetry, step length, and walking steadiness scores and see how these metrics evolve as you get more flexible, regain more balance and improve your posture with the help of the Amazon Halo exercise recommendations.
We hope this article provided you with a good overview of this terrific feature offering from Amazon Halo. Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.
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Hi. It sounds like you know a lot about the movement score.
Do you know anything about troubleshooting the setup? I’m thinking there must be a setting for my camera that’s wrong. although I did give the halo app permission to use the camera, it won’t let me get past the setup.
I set my phone on the floor and tilt it. Then I move back so my whole body is in the frame, with arms up in the air…..and it keeps telling me it’s having trouble!!
I’m using an android. And, I’ve done all the troubleshooting Amazon sent via email, like unregistering, etc.
Any ideas?
Hi Jody,
Did you try completing uninstalling the Halo app and all its data and then adding it back in?
Also, make sure that your phone connects to WiFi instead of mobile data, just in case that’s an issue.
And if you didn’t already restart your Halo, try that by pressing and holding the button on the Halo Band for 15 seconds. The LED blinks white once the device successfully rebooted.