What is an Amazon Halo Membership? Prices, features, and everything you need to know

Amazon Halo is a suite of several different AI-powered health tools, which the Halo Band can access through the sensor and the Amazon Halo app. These tools can provide valuable insights to the overall health and wellness of the user; they focus heavily on five areas: Activity, Sleep, Body, Tone, and Labs.

With Activity, Amazon Halo uses current physical activity guidelines from the American Heart Association to give points to users based on how active they are throughout the day. Since the points are based on those guidelines, you will get more points for running than walking. It also negatively highlights a sedentary lifestyle by deducting a point for every hour over eight hours of sedentary time (the eight hours is for sleep).

Sleep allows the Halo Band to track the wearer's sleep and awake time by using the motion, heart rate, and temperature data from the Halo Band sensor. You will even be able to see how long you spend in each different phase of sleep (light, deep, REM).

The Body area is the most interesting. With an active Halo membership, users will be able to use their smartphone's camera with the Halo app to do a full-body scan to measure things like body fat percentage at home, with accuracy comparable to the doctor's office. These measurements would also be twice as accurate as what you get with leading smart scales, according to Amazon.

Tone is all about your voice, which is a good indicator of social and emotional well-being. Tone uses machine learning to analyze the amount of energy and positivity in your voice, helping you understand just how you sound to others.

The Labs are challenges, experiments, and custom workouts that are all backed by science, and they are geared to help each user with their needs. In short, Labs will help you build better, healthier habits over time. Amazon Halo experts make the Labs, but you can also find others from professional brands and personalities like Adaptiv, 8fit, American Heart Association, Harvard Health Publishing, Headspace, Lifesum, Mayo Clinic, and more.

We aren't sure if you can use the Amazon Halo app without the Halo Band because the app is not listed on the App Store just yet. However, it's highly likely that the Amazon Halo service will not work without the Halo Band, although you could use the Halo Band without the Halo service.

Yes. With the initial purchase of the Amazon Halo Band, which costs $65 in Early Access right now, you will get six months of Amazon Halo membership included. But you can choose not to continue the membership once the trial has concluded. However, the Amazon Halo Band will be very limited in features sans membership, as it will only track steps, sleep time, and heart rate.

While many people get a little creeped out with things like Alexa possibly eavesdropping on conversations, Amazon claims that the foundation of the Halo service is built on privacy. There are multiple layers of privacy and security built-in to the service, so your health data is safe and secure. All health data is encrypted in transit, and while in the cloud — only the user can download or delete their information directly from the Amazon Halo app.

And if you're concerned about the body scan images, don't worry! The scanned images are deleted from the cloud immediately after they are processed, so only you can see your scan.

Amazon has already confirmed that it will be collaborating with top health and wellness companies to allow users to connect their Amazon Halo account with other apps and services. This will all be opt-in, and users can back out at any time if they need to.

An individual Amazon Halo membership will cost $3.99 per month, plus any applicable tax. The initial purchase of the Amazon Halo Band, which costs $65 in Early Access and $100 after the Early Access period, includes six months of free Halo membership. Still, it will auto-renew at the standard rate once the trial ends.

If you decide you no longer want to use Amazon Halo, you will need to contact Amazon customer service to cancel.