Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo Membership

It's a good idea to focus on your health and wellness, and that includes not only exercising more and eating better, but also getting a good night's sleep, maintaining a healthy heart rate, and keeping stressors at bay. A good first step to keeping track of your progress is a fitness tracker or smartwatch like one from Fitbit or the Amazon Halo Band or Halo View. But you'll probably also want a source for tips, advice, workouts, and more. This is where complementary services like Fitbit Premium and Amazon Halo membership come in. 

When comparing Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership, there are some obvious differences, most notably that the former works with Fitbit devices and the latter with Amazon's Halo Band and Halo View. But if you haven't yet decided which device to go with, we're here to help by comparing the two services that can be used with each.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo Membership: So, what are they exactly?

Before jumping into the features each service offers, let's look at what they are. Fitbit Premium is a companion service designed for use with a Fitbit tracker or smartwatch. When you sign up, you get access to additional features, including access to more workouts and mindfulness content through premium content partners, advanced sleep insights, a daily readiness score, nutrition inspiration, and access to a detailed wellness report. 

Similarly, Amazon Halo service works with the Amazon Halo View and Halo Band activity trackers, providing access to workouts, mindfulness exercises, sleep tracking, tone analysis, and detailed nutrition advice, recipes, and more.

The main difference is that each service is designed as a companion for a respective activity tracker. You have more compatibility with Fitbit Premium since it works with a wider range of devices from the company, including both activity trackers and smartwatches. The Amazon Halo membership only works with two trackers. The Amazon Halo membership is also significantly cheaper per month, but it's also an essential component with the trackers it works with if you want to get access to even the most basic services. With Fitbit, you get tons of features without Premium.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership: Let's break things down

To give you a better idea of how they differ, let's break things down.

As you can see, the two services are comparable when it comes to the bare bones. The difference is that the features provided with the Amazon Halo membership are ones that typically come standard with Fitbit trackers and smartwatches, whereas the features that come with Fitbit Premium are, for the most part, enhanced versions of those features you already get for free.

However, let's look deeper.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership: Exercise and mindfulness

When it comes to fitness trackers, the most important aspect is, of course, fitness. Both apps include access to hundreds of workouts from partners. With Fitbit, you can access a variety of workouts with the device but can get more from content partners like Calm, Les Mills, Aaptiv, and others with Premium. There are workouts of all types, from HIIT to yoga to kickboxing so you can combine them or use a guided program ranging from one to three weeks if you're looking for progression. A single program, for example, can include strength, mobility, cardio, HIIT, leg, upper body, and full body days. 

You can easily cast a Fitbit Premium workout from an Android or iOS device to a TV and/or speakers to watch and listen on a big screen. With some Fitbit smartwatches, you can also view the workouts right on the watch display. The real value here is that you can track workouts as well as daily activity and calories burned using the Fitbit device, which will tell you things like your heart rate, active zone minutes, and more.

A big part of the Fitbit Premium upgrade is the ability to generate and download a full wellness report, which provides a summary of your activity, sleep, heart rate, weight, and menstrual health over the period of a month and even a year. You also get a 90-day view of your health metrics dashboard.

Some of the newer Fitbit devices also include a Daily Readiness Score with a Premium subscription, which examines your heart rate variability, activity, and sleep over time to help you determine the optimal time to exercise.

With the Amazon Halo membership, you also get access to hundreds of workouts from sources like Orangetheory, SWEAT, and Aaptiv. New updated fitness filters make it simple to search workouts by type, length, intensity, target areas, and specific fitness goals. You can also peruse the list and bookmark workouts to do later. Use the devices to measure your movement health and receive personalized plans to help you improve. 

Along with heart rate, you can track active and sedentary time, intensity of movements, and basic steps and calories burned. Based on guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA), you will also get a movement score and measurements for your mobility, stability, and posture.

Along with physical exercises, both offer access to plenty for mindfulness. Fitbit Premium offers everything from motivational talks to bedtime stories and other calming content from the likes of Calm, Deepak Chopra, and Ten Percent Happier. There are more than 200 sessions with guided audio tracks, but you can also access to limited mindfulness content without a Fitbit Premium subscription.

With the Amazon Halo membership, you also get access to tons of mindfulness content to help you manage stress, find focus, and meditate. Programs are available from premium partners like Headspace and Better Sleep. There are limited programs available without the subscription as well.

The two services both offer a lot of the same type of content, but it's tough to compete with an established fitness brand like Fitbit in this department. The content partners, workouts, the ability to join the community for motivation, and to even compete in challenges with friends and family members, are valuable. A lot of this is available without a Premium subscription as well, which means you can get similar access with a Fitbit device without paying for Premium as you could with an Amazon Halo device while having to pay.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership: Sleep and nutrition

What about other key details, like sleep and nutrition? Both offer tracking and content, but this is where they differ tremendously.

When it comes to sleep tracking, Fitbit is arguably second-to-none. Having reviewed many fitness trackers over the years, I have often looked specifically at sleep data and find that Fitbit yields the most accurate results overall. It tracks not only how many hours of sleep you get per night but also time spent in light, deep, and REM sleep stages. You'll also get a Sleep Score at the end of each night that you can strive to improve. This is all, by the way, standard with a Fitbit device. Fitbit Premium adds a further detailed breakdown of your Sleep Score along with things like the ability to detect snoring and noise.

With the Amazon Halo membership, you can also get detailed sleep data information, including patterns, stages, time awake versus asleep, how long it takes you to fall asleep, and even your sleep temperature.

With nutrition, Fitbit Premium offers nutrition inspiration through guided programs on how to eat healthy, for example, kicking your sugar habit, or even understanding calories. You can also manually log your food each day to track how many calories you are consuming versus burning. Additionally, Premium includes access to a variety of healthy recipes, complete with short video demos on how to make them. But the food-related content is fairly limited.

Amazon Halo membership ups the ante here with weekly menu tools to help you cook healthier meals. The content follows seven different eating styles, including vegan and keto, so you can create a curated menu to follow, including both main meals as well as snacks. The recipes come from partners like Whole Foods Market (which Amazon owns), WW (formerly Weight Watchers), Lifesum, and Pinch of Yum. The best part? The menu automatically syncs with your shopping list on Alexa or other Amazon app or service so you can pick up what you need to prep the week's meals on your next grocery run.

For someone who is really focused on tracking sleep, Fitbit is the better option, and you don't even need Premium to get detailed analysis. If you're really focusing on your nutrition, however, and want a guided program, of sorts, consider opting for the Amazon Halo membership and tracker.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership: What else can they do?

For Fitbit Premium, there is other data. For example, you can get a deeper dive into your stress management score with the newer devices, though keep in mind that the basic stress management score comes for free with the latest trackers. There is also a feature that helps you understand your blood glucose trends, part of the personalized wellness report. It will show a trend over the past 30 days, which you can use for additional insight beyond instruction from a doctor, or even to provide to your doctor during an assessment or if you have questions or concerns.

Because Fitbit has a large community of users, you can join different challenges with others, which can be a really motivating factor on your health and wellness journey. And the best part is that it doesn't even require a Fitbit Premium subscription. You do, however, get access to special games and challenges with Fitbit Premium.

Fitbit also offers advanced skin temperature details with the Fitbit Sense device when you upgrade to Premium, including a minute-by-minute breakdown.

For the Amazon Halo membership, one of the unique additions is a feature called tone analysis that will analyze the tone of your voice to let you know how you sound to others. For someone with kids, a spouse, or employees, it's a good way to make sure your tone is friendly versus unknowingly harsh.

You can analyze your body fat percentage with the Amazon Halo membership, even viewing a 3D body model of yourself to help you improve and track progress over time. Note that you can also analyze body fat percentage with a Fitbit device using an optional Fitbit Aria smart bathroom scale linked to the app, and this works without a Premium subscription.

If you'd prefer not to use these features due to concerns over privacy, you can simply opt-out of scanning your body or analyzing your voice. Amazon also confirms that all health data is encrypted (Fitbit assures the same) and you can download and delete the data at any time. After taking your body scan, the data is automatically deleted and downloaded only to your phone. Note that if you are particularly concerned about privacy, you can opt for the Amazon Halo View vs. the Halo Band, which removes the built-in mics for Tone Analysis and uses your phone's mics instead.

Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership: Which should you get?

When deciding between these two fitness and wellness services, it's really a matter of determining first which fitness tracker you want to buy. You can't use Fitbit Premium without a Fitbit device and you can't use Amazon Halo membership without the Amazon Halo Band or Halo View.

As a long-time Fitbit user myself, I would lean towards a Fitbit tracker, considering there's a wealth of them from which to choose, including both bands and smartwatches across every price point. But here's the thing: I'm not convinced you need a Premium subscription, especially if you decide to access workouts from other service. There are tons of great fitness apps out there, some of which are free. Some of the additional features you get with Premium are nice-to-haves but I find as someone who works out daily that I can live without them. What you get for free is more than enough.

With that said, almost every new Fitbit device comes with a free trial to Fitbit Premium, ranging anywhere from three months for up to a year. So, I would strongly encourage signing up and keeping the date of renewal marked on your calendar. Use the trial period to see for yourself how you feel and if you want to keep it once the trial period runs out.

If you have your heart set on an Amazon Halo device like the Halo Band, however, which is appealing since it does away with a distracting screen, or the Halo View, both also come with a free trial to Amazon Halo membership. Unlike with Fitbit Premium, chances are you'll find the subscription is essential for these two devices. You get very limited access without it, including limited access to programs and workouts, limited recipes, and very basic sleep data. Thus, while these trackers are affordable, you need to factor in the recurring cost of the subscription into the price.

Bottom line: when deciding between Fitbit Premium vs. Amazon Halo membership, I'd go with a Fitbit device and Fitbit Premium. You'll get more out of it over the long run with premium content from a growing list of premium partners, reliable tracking of everything from heart rate to sleep and active minutes, and plenty of choice when it comes to finding the best Fitbit tracker for you. Even if you decide not to renew Premium, the standard Fitbit experience is still world's ahead of Amazon Halo. If nutrition is really important, there are tons of free, third-party cooking and recipe apps that offer healthy cooking options you can look into to supplement the experience.