SmartHalo - Bike smarter. Reviews

The device is fantastic, battery life is awesome- one month between occasional rides and sitting in my garage. The features are good- I like the navigation for running errands, and it’s great that I can import my own GPX routes that I design on my PC for when I want to bike around for exercise. But honestly I feel like the alarm gives me the most piece of mind, it’s great if you live in a high theft area like me where even with a heavy U-lock I’m never quite confident my bike won’t disappear. My only complaint is that the alarm / light features rely on the Bluetooth signal- if you‘re in Bluetooth range, the alarm is disabled and the auto light is enabled. Kind of makes sense, but when I’m in a store I want the alarm on, and when I’m at home and my bike’s sitting in the garage I want the auto light off- regardless of whether I’m nearby or. Maybe they can add geofencing for this? In the meantime I found I can force-quit SmartHalo as a signal to disconnect the Bluetooth and tell my this app to go into “away mode”.

Really excited to see what the this app 2 looks like but unfortunately it’s been pushed back quite a bit. I suppose that’s hat’s to be expected with Kickstarter projects though.

I can say my expectations are met. It does exactly what they say it will do, navigation is great, battery has been going forever without needing a recharge (installed it early January, 3 miles commute each way to work, took a couple weeks off due to nasty weather).

I mainly bought for navigation, and I have used the auto light a couple times, but I really can’t tell you much about the security or health tracking.

My wish list would be multiple routes I can choose from (which they say is coming), and ability to design my own direction map and import it, third party tracking (if I share a link, or an account, something, others should be able to track me in real time) after my accident my wife has been worried whenever I ride, so I’m still using RoadID for each ride.

The promise of Smart Halo is amazing. I think that’s why they were successful to raise money with an idea. The product does not live up to half of the promises. Personally, I just gave up on them. Recently, I had to leave my bike on the car so I at least wanted to use the alarm function, just to figure out I cannot even log into my account and the device will not wake up even after plugging it in my computer. Maybe they are out of business. It could have been nice to know and not to waste good amount of time to try to make it work. I am sure they put their blood and tears to make this work and eventually it did not and it happens. Communication channels could have been utilized better. Best of luck in your next adventure. Believe it or not, I really wanted this thing to work as promised as much as you did.

The companion app for the this app is beautiful, intuitive and simple to use, as is the device itself. And once you get put the door, I like the fact that you don’t really need to use SmartHalo until you’re done. You can focus on biking and not fiddling with your phone!

I highly recommend the this app and the companion app to anyone who gets around town by bike. It’s easy to appreciate the design work that went into the system, making it easy to use and beautiful.

Big fan of the this app. As others have noted it’s a great base but has a bit too go before it’s truly worth the price tag. It’s most beneficial feature is the navigation, which I find as a biker in NYC to make going to unfamiliar places a lot safer and easier. One recommendation would be to integrate google maps navigation into smart halo. Their biking navigation is superior and I find sometimes smart halo sends you up roads you shouldn’t go.

If u haven’t purchased it DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!! Give it about another year because a few friends and I purchased 3 and they’re all having problems. We tried communicating with people at smart halo and their excuse was your phone might not be updated make sure u have the up to date software for your phone and your smart halo and now they just flat out don’t answer emails! I have the first smart halo and nevehad amy problems but this one is ridiculous how many issues I’ve had. I tried emailing to get my money back and NOTHING from them😡

I so badly wanted this to work. I helped fund their start up - both this app one and this app two.

The hardware is extremely unreliable - while I have gotten it to work in the past, it has failed 100% of the time in the past three weeks. Switching between the old and new devices is cumbersome, and often just does not work. One of the lights at the 10 o’clock position remains on 100% of the time. The website says to plug it into a USB connection to reset it, which I do after every ride - however it fails again within 15 minutes.

The device is unresponsive to touch. Navigation software tends to route you onto a six lane highways even when there is a protected bike path nearby. Why is this app trying to kill me?

I’m so frustrated with this product. I wish one could leave zero stars.

Unfortunately SmartHalo for the smart halo just didn’t work. I followed you directions to download SmartHalo which we did but it seem to get stuck once we try to connect a smart halo to our phone tried numerous timesThe terms and conditions on SmartHalo we’re just not go any farther so we couldn’t download or connect the smart halo to the I phone… unfortunately lost interest in this product. We will return and get our money back and find something else

I was contacted by CS who are trying to address my issues so I am giving them time before writing a full review.

First, it was almost impossible to register. Wouldn't even recognize that I'd set a birth year that wasn't 2006. Then it couldn't find a route -- any route -- from Reagan Airport to my favourite bike co-op, even though I know from experience that myriad routes exist. I don't know what they're basing this tech on, but it's not a very solid foundation.

Natigstion no longer works and there have been no updates from the company in several months. I hope they figure something out because this had potential

Sadly the company collapsed. During covid they could not stay afloat even though my smarthalo2 is actually super awesome and I love it.

Kinda crazy, great design and worked well for me. Yet now, they are gone. Hopefully SmartHalo stays alive.

Best of luck to everyone, looks like this died.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SmartHalo doesn’t work on my iPhone which has a fully updated operating system. I contacted the company by email 4 days ago and haven’t heard anything, either. Without the navigation app, the device hardware makes a good hickey puck.

Does SmartHalo still works? The support page goes to a dns conflict page. Trying to create account but SmartHalo stuck term of use page ands not loading the term to move forward.

I loved this app. I bought their first & second devices. Unfortunately the company did not survive the COVID Panic.

I think the this app and SmartHalo work great. Navigation is good (alternate routes is a great update), lights work good, fitness works good and alarm is super loud.

Not sure what happened with the latest update but now it is off by several miles on each trip.

They’re supposed to send me a confirmation email to connect your app the the Device but no one sent me anything and no replies to my emails. What kind of company is this? Will be returning this product pretty soon!

The user experience is best I have ever had, compare to other similar bluetooth/wireless pairing devices. this app really has done a great job. Awesome product too!! Totally worth the wait.

I tried plugging in the halo to an outlet and a computer, but SmartHalo just says “no devices in range”. There are no instructions on how to fix this problem.

I’ll come back to this and update it periodically, but here are my quick takes on using the this app app* over the past 6 months of daily urban commuting:

PROS:
- recent update to choose between several filtered route options

CONS:
- inability to track past routes
- no apple watch integration or siri integration (that i can find)
- health tracking algorithm seems incorrect; vastly under reports calories compared with other apps
- if i stay connected to app while at home, the headlight on the device turns on while it’s parked in my living room

* only commenting on app, not the this app hardware, which is completely amazing, 9.5/10, highly recommend

Product paid months ago, never got the this app and NOBODY answer to any contact or mail !
Seems to be an huge fraud ! Stay out of this thing !