TechEnvoke
I enjoy sleeping. Then, when I finally wake up, I like seeing how well I slept. Maybe it’s because I’m really competitive or because I enjoy the feedback that comes from an app telling me if I slept well or not. Despite this, I haven’t used most sleep monitors because I find them to be either uncomfortable or overly obtrusive. I was intrigued by the Halo Rise’s premise when Amazon first announced it. The Rise, which costs $140 (but is currently on sale for $100), claims to detect your breathing rate using motion sensing and utilize that data to determine how long you’ve slept. In addition to being a clock, alarm clock, and bedside lamp, it also has a lovely appearance.
Design
In many aspects, it works well with my life. physical first. A grey CD-sized disc called The Halo Rise exists (remember those? That’s flat on one side and convex on the other, resting on top of a metal support (and yes, I am aware that the D already stands for disc). In addition to an arc of lights that can be adjusted to mimic the gentle brightness of daybreak and bring you up more softly, the even surface is home to LEDs that display the time.
I appreciate the Rise’s sleek, contemporary design, which should go with most furniture. Also very painless was setup. Similar to Google’s Nest Hub, which also tracks your sleep using motion detection, the Halo Rise must be placed next to your bed and within easy reach. Even though my nightstand was situated a few inches lower than what Amazon advised, the device still functioned despite my concern that it wasn’t tall enough for it.
It’s also crucial to position the Rise close to your bed because, unlike the Nest Hub, it lacks an integrated microphone, requiring you to reach over and press the snooze button when it goes off. This gets me to one of my minor gripes: The Rise has two buttons on its top. A smaller one, about the size of a pinky, for turning off the alarm, and a larger one to its left for sleeping. I am aware that most alarm clocks are made in this way, and it makes sense because you won’t likely require a follow-up if you are awake enough to correctly click the smaller button. However, because there is no way to audibly halt the Halo Rise, the buttons are so tiny, and Being near to one another is quite annoying. When the phone rang again ten minutes later, I had to dash back to my bedroom while brushing my teeth because I had repeatedly accidentally clicked the snooze button.
That is really the extent of my hardware criticism of Halo Rise. In order to make the buttons easier to press and the font on the clock easier to see, I also wish it were a little bit bigger. But other from those two occasions, all other interactions must be made through the app.
Sleep-tracking
Every morning, Amazon will display a recap of the previous night, along with your sleep score and duration. A message appears next to it, either praising you on your performance or advising you to take it easy that day if you hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before. When the Rise urged me to take it easy after only two hours of sleep, I absolutely utilized that advice as an excuse to avoid working or exercising during the next four weeks.
The Halo Rise has generally been good at recognizing when I’ve drifted off and woken up. In fact, it outperformed Google’s smart display, which frequently made mistakes when I woke up. I don’t like that Amazon puts my “time taken to fall asleep” as part of my alleged performance each night, in contrast to the majority of other sleep trackers. I don’t view the time I spend surfing Reddit or playing games after I go into bed as time spent attempting to fall asleep. I wish the Rise had the intelligence to detect when I put my phone aside and turn off the light using its built-in light sensor. I actually try to drift off into la la land at that time, but I suppose not everyone prefers a dark bedroom, so this might not be appropriate for everyone.
The realization that my sleeping environment was warmer than I had anticipated was the most useful. Until the app suggested I change it to the suggested range of 60 to 70 degrees (Fahrenheit), I had trouble falling and staying asleep. Having this knowledge confirmed my urge to turn on the air conditioner more frequently right before night because I resist doing so out of guilt. After that, my sleep was significantly improved, and the app thanked me for maintaining the optimal temperature in my room.
The Halo Rise is not the only sleep tracker that can do this, to be clear. The Nest Hub also monitors the light and temperature in your space. However, Google utilizes its onboard microphones to listen for noises of snoring or coughing instead of humidity. I found it more useful to learn how humid my surroundings were because I don’t snore but cough a lot as a result of dry air. Your preferences here may vary depending on your worries.
Google will track daytime naps whereas Amazon does not, which is another significant distinction between the Halo Rise and the Nest Hub. The Rise won’t track your sleep if you go back to bed in the middle of the day. But on one particular Saturday, I lingered in bed for hours after getting up and passed off at 1:48 p.m., still recovering from a long, difficult week. The Amazon app actually updated after I eventually got out of bed at at 4:43 pm to add those roughly three hours to my record.
Wrap-up
In the past, I would check my phone first thing in the morning to see what alerts there were, the weather, and my horoscope. I am aware that it is not scientific, and I don’t have much weight in it, but I consider it a means to be better prepared for the day. My initial check-in has been replaced with opening the Halo app ever since I set up the Halo Rise. It will advise me on how hard to push myself throughout my daily workout and how early I may need to go to bed that night.
A minor but crucial component of Amazon’s expanding entrance into the health and wellness industry is The Halo Rise. The device is placed in the most private region of our homes and provides assistance with a certain aspect of wellbeing. The corporation is obviously making an investment in health management tools with products like the Halo Band and app features like body composition scanning, mobility and posture assessment, as well as the contentious tone monitoring that tracks your speech. Amazon’s goals are clear given that it just completed the acquisition of One Medical and opened its pharmacy in 2020. The issue is whether we would be prepared to surrender our private information for the convenience that an all-Amazon healthcare system may offer.