It is a sleep monitor for those who like to avoid wearing jewellery.
With the $140 Halo Rise, a new bedside sleep tracker launching later this year that also functions as a morning alarm clock, Amazon hopes to expand its presence in the wellness sector. The debut follows Amazon’s release of the Halo View, a follow-up to the original Halo fitness tracker, in 2021. It’s yet another indication that tech behemoths like Amazon are working to improve how we sleep.
For people who prefer not to wear a wristband or smartwatch overnight but still want to monitor their sleep, the Halo Rise is made to be an alternative to the Halo Band. According to Amazon, because it rests on your nightstand rather than your body, it may collect data about environmental elements that might be influencing your sleep.
There are no cameras or microphones on the Halo Rise. Instead, it makes use of low-energy sensors to find tiny breathing-related movements. The Halo app then displays these findings after Amazon utilises machine learning to convert those movements into different sleep stages. The manufacturer claims that the polysomnography test, which doctors generally use to examine sleep patterns, was used to train and validate the Halo Rise sleep algorithm.
On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled the Halo Rise at its annual fall product launch event, which also saw the introduction of the Kindle Scribe, the Fire TV Omni QLED, three new Echo Dot smart speakers, and a number of other products.
The Halo Rise’s release coincides with a rise in tech companies’ interest in sleep tracking. For instance, Apple’s WatchOS 9 software update, which debuted on September 12, gave the Apple Watch the ability to track various sleep stages. Over the past year, sleep analysis capabilities have been introduced by Fitbit and Samsung that look at long-term trends and assign an animal mascot to represent the user’s sleep.
Additionally, starting in 2021, Google, which owns Fitbit, will include sleep tracking in its second-generation Nest Hub. Similar to other devices that employ contactless radar to monitor sleep stages, this one is also intended to be a multipurpose smart home gadget. In contrast, the Halo Rise was only created with sleep in mind. Although the absence of a microphone is consoling from a privacy perspective, it also means that, unlike the Nest Hub, the Halo Rise cannot detect coughing or snoring.
Read more about the Amazon event
Halo Rise, Astro, Kindle Scribe, and More on the Amazon Event Live Blog
You Can Wear Amazon’s Halo Rise Sleep Tracker Instead of Wearing One
For fans of notation, the Kindle Scribe is an E Ink Tablet with a Stylus.
When you enter the room, Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED recognises you.
At a time when the IT sector is facing criticism over the volume of personal data businesses acquire and how that information is protected, Amazon’s sleep-sensing device makes its debut. According to Amazon, the Halo Rise transmits breathing patterns and micro-movements to the cloud, where they are converted into stages of sleep. However, this data is secured both during transmission and while stored in the cloud, and it is automatically wiped after 10 days. Amazon further states that it will not sell customer health information or utilise it for marketing, product suggestions, or advertising, and that the data always remains on the device until a sleep session is started.
Similar to the Halo Band, owners of Halo Rise will be able to download and delete their health information. According to Amazon, the device is programmed to only assess the person who is closest to it and not the other occupants of the bed or any pets. According to Amazon, the Halo Rise’s algorithms are solely tuned to recognise sleep and won’t recognise any other activity taking place in the bedroom.
There isn’t much that distinguishes the Halo Rise from Amazon’s Halo Bands in terms of the metrics related to sleep that it can collect. Similar to Amazon’s wearables, it can track how much time you’ve spent in various sleep stages and give you a sleep score that rates how well you slept. Additionally, it includes a six-month Amazon Halo membership, which usually costs $4 per month.
You don’t need to wear anything to sleep in order to obtain that data, which is one of the main advantages of utilising the Halo Rise over the Halo band, according to Amazon. Unlike the bands, the Halo Rise can also detect environmental factors that can interfere with getting a good night’s sleep, such as humidity, temperature, and light. Whether Amazon intends to develop new measurements or insights based on information from both the Halo Rise and the Halo band is unknown.
The Halo Rise doubles as an alarm clock and wake-up light because it is designed to be kept on your bedside. According to Amazon, it should wake you up at the ideal moment based on the stages of your sleep. The Halo Rise comes with the aforementioned environmental sensors, a digital clock with physical buttons, and a tiny speaker for the alarm. A semicircle-shaped array of 300-lux LEDs serve as the wake-up light.
Since the Halo Rise was created with sleep in mind, there is no built-in Alexa capabilities. However, if you have an Echo, you can connect it to the Halo Rise and ask Alexa how you slept, or include the Rise in your night routine.
Launching a product like the Halo Rise not only enables Amazon to more directly compete with rivals like Google and Apple, but it may also strengthen the company’s position in the home market. According to Strategy Analytics, Amazon held 28.2% of the global market for smart displays and speakers in the first quarter of 2022. Amazon’s main rival, Google, captured 17.2% of the market during the same time period.
first released at 9:20 a.m. on September 28, 2022. PT.
This article’s information is not meant to be taken as health or medical advice; rather, it is meant for educational and informational reasons only. If you have any concerns about a health objective or a medical issue, always seek the advice of a doctor or other trained health expert.
