Amazon has been slowly building its Halo fitness brand, with the original Halo and Halo View fitness trackers, and it’s just launched another gadget at its September launch event. This isn’t a smartwatch, but it still ‘watches’… you sleep.
That’s a dramatic way of putting it, but the Amazon Halo Rise is essentially a sleep tracking gadget that’s designed to improve the quality of your shut-eye. The newest device in the Halo line costs $139.99 (regional prices TBA) and it’s coming out later in 2022.
The Halo Rise tracks your sleep via sensors, and can monitor your respirations and movements. It uses machine learning to give you detailed breakdowns of your slumber sessions and can even differentiate between you and other people sharing your bed, so snoring spoons won’t ruin your metrics.
The Amazon Halo Rise also has environmental sensors, to check things like temperature and light, and can use this information to advise you how to improve your naps.
What’s more, the Rise has a clock and a big light; these can combine to slowly wake you up at a time of your choosing, theoretically giving you a gentler rise than a blaring smartphone alarm.
As you’d expect, the Halo Rise works with other Alexa devices; for instance, you can see your sleep metrics on your Echo, or ask Alexa to play your favorite song as you wake. It also can work out when you’re getting into bed, and dim lights or turn off other distractions as you do so.
Sleep tech is a massively growing market right now, and this is Amazon’s biggest push into the market so far. It remains to be seen how it works with the existing Halo gadgets, but it shows that Amazon’s really serious about its health and fitness products.
We’ll be sure to test the Halo Rise as soon as we can, so we can see how it compares to other sleep-tracking heavyweights.