What you need to know
- Amazon today announced new fitness tracking features for the Echo Buds.
- A new update for customers in the U.S. and UK will let the Buds log your workouts.
- You'll be able to trigger these fitness tracking features with added voice commands.
Amazon's Echo Buds just got better for fitness aficionados. The company is rolling out new updates in the U.S. and UK, enabling new fitness tracking functionality.
Once this update hits your device, you'll be able to enable fitness tracking by setting up a workout profile in the Alexa app. When this is done, Amazon says you can then use the Echo Buds to track "duration, steps, calories, distance, and pace of your walks or runs" with the new "Alexa, start my workout" command.
The company has also added the following complementary commands:
- "Alexa, start my run"
- "Alexa, pause my walk"
- "Alexa, end my workout"
- "Alexa, how far have I run?"
- "Alexa, what's my pace?"
- "Alexa how was my workout?"
These new features are rolling out over the next couple of days in the U.S and UK.
For non-fitness focused wearers, Amazon's Echo Buds remain a competent pair of earbuds. They offer great sound and hands-free Alexa, but our review dinged them for lacking wireless charging, relying on micro USB over the more modern USB-C, and shipping with just one color option. Hopefully, Amazon will fix those in the next iteration.
Amazon Echo Buds
With Active Noise Reduction onboard, the Echo Buds were already a good pick for runners. These new fitness-focused updates now build upon a good foundation for what were already a good pair of earbuds.
