Amazon Halo fitness band–how to set up and use its many features

Amazon’s Halo Fitness Band is its first foray into the fitness tracker space and is currently available along with Amazon’s fitness tracker, the Amazon Halo View, that includes a small screen.

If you recently received your new Halo fitness band from Amazon, you likely learned that there are many features and things to set up!

This article takes a deep dive into our Halo Band and shows you the tips that worked for us to set up and use the tracker.

So let’s get going!

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.

Related reading:

• Amazon Halo Tone Analysis : A Beginner’s User Guide and review
• Amazon Halo’s new Movement Health Assessment and score feature lives up to expectations
• Amazon Halo vs. Fitbit Sense vs. Whoop: Which is better?

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases using links in this post.

Amazon’s Halo Fitness Band details

The Halo Fitness band comes in a nice attractive package with an excellent product-to-package ratio.

The product package should contain the following essentials to get you started:

1. Halo Fitness Band
2. USB Charging cord–there is no charging block. You’ll need a USB port or an adapter.
3. Starter Booklet

Not having a display for the device actually helps speed up the setup process.

The initial setup process for the Halo tracker is super easy and convenient. You set up the fitness tracker in just a couple of minutes, and your new tracker is ready to put to the test!

So let’s run through those steps–follow along with us below.

Amazon Halo Setup – the basics

First off, place the tracker on its charging unit, connect the charger’s USB to a USB port, use a USB adapter or hub, and connect it to a wall outlet. 

Before you can actually charge the Halo, remember to pull off the sticker from the fitness tracker’s back.

I learned that lesson the hard way when my Halo wouldn’t charge.

Once you remove the sticker, press on the charging clamp and insert the fitness tracker in a way so that the four charging contacts (look like dots) on the back of the tracker align with the charging points in the charger.

How do I know if the Halo Band is charging?

When the Amazon Halo band is successfully charging, you see a familiar red light on the side of the device.

When you first charge the device, you see a blinking white light suggesting that your tracker is ready to be paired with your mobile device.

Another tip to remember is that your Halo tracker’s button should face outward when the tracker is being placed and charged inside the charger.

The Halo’s lights explained.

• The light turns green when your Halo tracker is wholly charged.
• The light is red when it’s charging.
• The light is white when it’s ready to pair.

How to pair your Amazon Halo Fitness Band with your mobile phone or tablet

Once you charge your Halo, it’s ready to pair with your mobile device. We found that our Halo band came charged straight out of the box!

So, it only took a few minutes of charging before the white light came on, letting us know it’s ready to be paired.

While you wait for your Halo to charge, get your mobile phone ready!

1. First, download and install the ‘Amazon Halo’ app from Apple’s app store or Google’s Play store.
   1. The Amazon Halo app is compatible with iOS 12.0 or greater and Android 7.0 or greater.
2. Make sure your Bluetooth is on and working on your mobile device.
3. Once you install the Halo app, follow the prompts to provide it access to Bluetooth.
4. Tap on ‘OK’ to get started with the pairing.

Set up your Amazon Halo Fitness Tracker with the app

The initial pairing process was a breeze!

Once you start the pairing process and enter your Amazon account credentials, you are prompted to enter details such as your birthdate, sex, height, and weight.

This information is used to calculate accurate calories and other workout-related metrics.

The setup process guides you through setting up notifications. You can set up notifications to alert you when your Band is fully charged and ready.

We liked this feature and found it helpful. We appreciated getting alerts when the Halo’s battery level was low, so we know precisely when it needed to charge.

In the past, with other fitness trackers, we simply charged it overnight–every night.

That probably led to shortening the battery life. So, it’s nice to get the notification and know we are maximizing the battery’s performance.

Put on your Halo Fitness Band!

The next step in the setup process is to remove the charger’s band and choose which wrist you want to wear.

Make sure that the button faces you and that it’s a snug fit on your wrist!

That’s it!! You just set up your Amazon Halo

The easiest way to verify that your setup was correct is to launch the Amazon Halo app and tap on the ‘Live’ tab from the bottom.

You should now see your current heart rate in the ‘Heart’ tab at the top.

If you do not see the heart rate data, you are not set up correctly and should restart the process.

Amazon Halo Fitness tracker, beyond the basics

Now that you have set up and started using the Halo tracker from Amazon, let’s look at some features.

Plus, we’ll go over some of Halo’s additional settings that you might find helpful in your fitness and wellness journey.

The Amazon Halo app has four major self-explanatory tabs:

1. The main Activity dashboard is the first tab called Data (graph icon)
2. The live tab (location pin icon) features your heart rate and tone data.
3. Labs (flask icon) feature fitness programs that you can sign up for 
4. Settings (gear icon) is the last tab that offers additional options for customization.

Let’s look at some of these tabs. This is especially helpful if you move to Halo from a Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Watch, or another wearable device.

Main Halo activity dashboard

The first tab, Data shows you all your fitness information in one glance.

Neatly divided into four quadrants, the fitness dashboard shows your activity details in several steps and “points,” your sleep score, tone, and body fat percentage score.

This analysis tab also shows you the battery percentage of your Halo band at the top right corner of the screen.

What are Amazon Halo Activity Points?

Halo awards you points based on the intensity and duration of your movement or exercise.

You earn points for every minute you are moving when wearing the band.

For a light walk of 20 minutes, you earn 1 point. You earn 1 point per minute and 2 points per minute for an intense workout or moderate exercise.

Following CDC and WHO recommendations, the weekly goal is set up for 150 points. The higher your activity score/ points, the better it is for your health.

Please note that if you are sedentary for over 8 hours, you lose 1 point for every hour!! Again this was learned the hard way. : ) 

The harder you push, the more points you win. It’s as simple as that.

Your heart rate determines whether your exercise is light, moderate, or intense and assigns points.

These Halo points are reset to zero every Monday, and you start a new week with a new goal!

Heart-healthy requires you to complete 150 – 299 points weekly.

On the other hand, a very active regimen required 300+ weekly points.

Although the Amazon Halo points is quite intuitive, we couldn’t find a way to change the weekly goal for Halo activity points. That being said, the tracker can auto-detect the type and intensity of your exercise and assign appropriate points. This makes it super convenient.

Amazon Halo Sleep Score and Sleep Monitoring

Each morning, the app populates a sleep score in the second quadrant of the dashboard.

It’s a score that ranges from zero to a hundred. The higher the score, the better is your sleep quality.

A score of 85 or higher signifies you slept well.

Anything below 70 could mean that you may want to make some changes.

The sleep tracker works automatically. You don’t need to switch on anything.

When you wake up the following day and check your analytics, the details are right there at your fingertips.

For users who suffer from sleep apnea, this analysis helps you track how many times you were awake or had a light sleep due to snoring-related issues.

The 11 Sleep lab aids are also quite handy.

There are aids to help you fall asleep early, such as listening to a bedtime story or listening to isochronic tones to reduce stress to fall asleep faster. 

Also, check the labs under Sleep quality, which provide tools that provide various calming music options, yoga Nidra, meditation, and more to help you get quality sleep.

How does the Halo band measure sleep

The Halo band measures your time to fall asleep, total sleep time, the number of times you wake up during the night, and more to determine the overall Sleep score.

In contrast to the Apple Watch Sleep score system, the Halo provides detailed sleep metrics around REM, light, and deep sleep states.

It keeps track of sleep disturbances and your sleep efficiency scores.

The Halo tracker also measures your body’s skin temperature while asleep.

After using the band for a few days, you have sufficient data for Halo to determine your body’s optimal temperature for the best sleeping experience. 

Look for this information at the bottom of the Sleep score dashboard. 

If you can’t reach your optimal sleeping temperature, consider purchasing a cooling or heating mattress or device for your bed.

“Overall, we are pretty impressed with the whole Sleep monitoring feature on the Amazon Halo. Between the detailed metrics and a wide variety of labs combined with auto-detection, the Halo makes it a worthwhile device if you are looking for a wearable with simple yet powerful sleep monitoring features.”

There’s a lot of data with the Halo Fitness band.

We left out a few things here–we didn’t try out the tone at this point (we did later in this article) and Body fat percentage features.

We also like to better understand all the privacy-related settings before trying out these features.

• The Science behind Amazon Halo’s Voice Tone analysis and plans for Blood Glucose and Blood Pressure monitoring

Live tab on the Halo App

The Halo fitness tracker doesn’t have a display, so the app provides an easy way to access your heart rate information.

The Live tab is the second tab from the left at the bottom of the app. It’s a straightforward tab that shows your real-time heart rate.

The Tone section of this tab allows you to do tone analysis once you set up the feature.  

The tone is a vocal analysis tool that analyzes a user’s voice for their energy and positivity.

The feature is meant to help you better understand how you sound to others. And thereby improve your communication and relationships.

The Labs Section of the Halo App offers a wide variety of choices.

This is where the rubber meets the road.

This section is essentially why you pay your monthly subscription fees beyond the activity monitoring, sleep tracking, tone analysis, and body fat percentage metrics.

The Labs section provides users to choose programs and aids for five major areas:

• Activity
• Sleep
• Nutrition
• Mindfulness
• Tone

A ‘What’s New’ and ‘What’s Popular’ section highlights some of these offerings.

The Amazon Halo platform provides users with many fitness training activities that can be chosen.

You can choose from Foundations, Strength, Cardio, Barre, Yoga, Outdoor, Overall Fitness, HIIT, Pilates, etc.

You can choose a Lab program from a given brand, such as Mayo Clinic, or decide by specifying a duration (from 1 week to 4 weeks programs) or selecting programs with daily audio/video instructions.

Each program spells out an overview of the program, specific equipment needed for completing the workout (e.g., a yoga mat or a dumbbell, etc.), and its length.

You can choose a lab, set up a reminder time, and set up a nudge–then start your training.

These labs are backed by science and designed in collaboration with some of your favorite training brands.

However, unlike Peloton or the new Apple Fitness+, we didn’t find options to join live trainer-led sessions.

Overall the curated Halo lab programs seem pretty good and cover various fitness disciplines, and more importantly, the user experience is very intuitive.

Amazon Halo Tracker Privacy and other Settings

This is an essential section for fine-tuning your Halo experience. Users concerned about privacy issues related to the Halo Fitness tracker should find enough features to mitigate their worries.

Halo’s settings

The Settings tab in the Halo lab clearly shows you how much battery percentage remains.

You also see the elapsed time since you last synced your band with the app.

The following important section is Data & Privacy for your health data.

Here you have several choices.

First, you can either download your health data or delete it completely.

If you decide on using the body scan feature to keep track of your body fat percentage, you can save the scans to the Amazon cloud or completely delete the body data using the options provided in this section.

There is also an ‘Account linking’ section under Data & privacy where you can link your Halo account with Weight Watchers or other available apps.

This section allows you to share specific health data with your chosen companies, so you have complete control of your data.

This is also where users can connect with their health care providers to share their EMR records in the future.

Block out Microphone Access on Amazon Halo

One other important point around the Privacy feature is the microphone on the band.

If you decide that you do not want to use the Tone Analysis feature for privacy reasons, you can also block the microphone.

To restrict Halo’s access to your microphone.

1. Open the Settings app on your phone (this is for iPhone)
2. Tap on Privacy
3. Scroll down and tap on microphone
4. Disable Amazon Halo and or Amazon Alexa here

The Halo app only shows up on this screen if you set up the Tone analysis feature on the app.

The other crude way is simply using tape and blocking out the Microphone port on the Fitness band.

This is the aperture next to the button on your Halo fitness band.

Impressions from testing out the Halo Tone Analysis Feature

After publishing this article, we later tested Amazon’s Halo Tone analysis feature’s setup, use, and analysis features.

We found it to be interesting, especially the real-time tone analysis feature.

Check out our review of this feature on its own: Amazon Halo Tone Analysis: A Beginner’s User Guide and review.

First Impressions of Amazon’s Halo Fitness Tracker

In summary, overall, we found Amazon’s Halo fitness tracker surprisingly intuitive and cleverly designed. 

The Halo tracker is lightweight but packs many features, including heart rate monitoring, sleep monitoring, and skin temperature monitoring.

Although it doesn’t have advanced bells and whistles such as ECG, SpO2 monitoring, fall detection, and other such features yet, the Halo does a terrific job with both activity monitoring and sleep monitoring.

The battery performance on the Halo tracker is pretty impressive so far.

Our Halo lasts close to a week without requiring re-charging at its current daily battery drain.

Coming from Apple Watch needing charging once or more per day, that’s pretty awesome battery life!

What about the price tag?

For an affordable price and six months of free lab training offerings, this is a desirable value proposition for those looking to get an easy-to-use, wear, and forget-it fitness tracker.

Amazon claims it made the Halo band using a comfortable and durable material. We plan on wearing it continuously over a few weeks to provide you with some additional insight.

It takes a little time to get used to the concept of Amazon Halo points.

But once you get it, meeting your 150 weekly quotas is pretty straightforward, especially with the help of third-party labs.

Although the heart rate monitor on the band appears to be very accurate, we could not locate tools that offer deeper insights such as resting heart rate, heart rate training zone or heart rate variability. It’s possible that they will introduce these features in the future since the device already has an advanced optical heart rate sensor.

If you were looking for a fitness tracker with built-in music storage or an option to listen to Spotify or podcasts, the Halo is not for you.

Instead, Amazon’s Halo offers a focused fitness and lifestyle tracking device.

If you have already received your Halo band, let us know which labs you find interesting and valuable for your daily routines.

For those of you who are still on the fence, we think there’s a lot of value for money in this offering from Amazon. You should give it a try. 

Not having a display on your fitness tracker is frankly a little weird at first! That’s especially true if you previously owned an Apple Watch, Garmin, or Fitbit device.

However, it surprisingly offers a much more relaxing experience once you get past that.

Gone are all those constant texts, nags, and notifications (and, on some devices, calls.) With the Halo (and the similar Whoop), you actually get the opportunity to focus on what really matters–your health and fitness goals.

And if you really want that screen, Amazon introduced the Amazon Halo View, which offers a small touch color display.

The Halo View includes all the health features of the band AND some additional features like blood oxygen saturation monitoring and calorie counting. Plus, the battery lasts longer, up to 7 days, before needing a charge!

What do you think?

Are you planning to get an Amazon Halo band or add it to your gift wish list, or even give it as a holiday gift? Let us know!