Amazon Halo now works with Alexa Unlike some of Amazon's wearable rivals that have built-in voice assistants, the company's own fitness tracker has just launched an opt-in-only skill that pairs Halo with Alexa-enabled smart speakers

Although one of the best fitness trackers, the $9999 Halo did not offer the smarts of Siri on the Apple Watch 6 or Alexa on the Fitbit Versa 3 The new Halo skill for voice assistants brings a synergy that was probably missing when the display-less activity tracker was launched in the fall

Amazon Halo offers a comprehensive view of your health with standard features like heart rate monitoring and sleep tracking, and more unusual tools like a body fat scanner and tone analysis

So if users opt in to the new Halo skill for Alexa, they can ask the voice assistant for all this data collected by the fitness tracker They can ask Alexa when their last body scan was done, how many body points they achieved this week, etc This skill works on the best Alexa speakers as well as the Amazon Echo, and on the mobile Alexa app

Because it requires access to the microphone and camera, Halo attracted privacy concerns upon its debut Amazon stated that the new optional Alexa skill does not store your Halo health data as part of your Alexa response history, reminding you that you can manage and delete your data at any time in the Halo app

Amazon offers the option to create a PIN to access responses about Halo

I like Amazon Halo I don't wear it every day, but sometimes I do because it is a discreet band However, I don't think I'm going to activate this skill If I need to know something, it's easier to check the app I was also a little concerned that Alexa might recommend ordering healthier snacks based on my latest body fat scan, but Amazon has promised that Halo's data will not be used for marketing on any platform

If this sounds like one of the best Alexa skills for getting hands-free updates on your Halo activity, you can now connect your fitness tracker to the voice assistant Amazon Halo is currently available from Amazon so if you're interested in getting one yourself, you'll need to find a third-party retailer, as it's not available from Amazon