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Apple Watch vs Whoop strap
- Thread starter UBS28
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Purely from a fitness standpoint the Whoop seems to have a lot of stuff built into it. I've never heard of them until now but it looks pretty cool. Apple's watch in my opinion is a nice fitness tracker but but isn't just solely based on fitness. Its a big part of it but the workout app in my opinion is due for an overhaul as its remained basically the same since it was launched.
With that being said I have no idea how well the Whoop strap performs. Its also another subscription so it would be a hard pass for me.
With that being said I have no idea how well the Whoop strap performs. Its also another subscription so it would be a hard pass for me.
@UBS28 you should begin by defining "best" in the sense of what exactly does that mean to you with regards to fitness tracking? Typically it's difficult to give a recommendation without knowing this information, but in this specific case I think it's fairly obvious which choice to make.
I'd not heard of Whoop, but @claude512 prompted me to skim the DCRainmaker review.
DCR's final paragraph seems to give pretty clear guidance:
That, coupled with the Whoop costing more than an Apple Watch, would suggest the Apple Watch would be the better choice unless there is some specific feature of the Whoop that you would find worth the high cost. That Whoop subscription costs you as much an Apple Watch SE - and you have to keep paying again and again.
Link to review here:
www.dcrainmaker.com
I'd not heard of Whoop, but @claude512 prompted me to skim the DCRainmaker review.
DCR's final paragraph seems to give pretty clear guidance:
So, unfortunately, at this point, despite really liking the promise of the platform and the app itself, I just can’t justify spending $30/month anymore for a service whose foundations are based on inaccurate data, has no knowledge of my training goals, and doesn’t provide me with guidance other than telling me to sleep 11 hours a night…every night.
That, coupled with the Whoop costing more than an Apple Watch, would suggest the Apple Watch would be the better choice unless there is some specific feature of the Whoop that you would find worth the high cost. That Whoop subscription costs you as much an Apple Watch SE - and you have to keep paying again and again.
Link to review here:
Whoop 3.0 Band & Platform In-Depth Review
There’s arguably no product I’ve *ever* reviewed in over a decade doing this that has me as conflicted as the Whoop strap. It’s both fascinating and perplexing at the same time. It’s got enormous potential, and after four months of
www.dcrainmaker.com
Yes, and dcrainmaker is *the* authority on anything fitness. His reviews are insanely thorough. Always the first place I look when considering new fitness tech.
@UBS28 you should begin by defining "best" in the sense of what exactly does that mean to you with regards to fitness tracking? Typically it's difficult to give a recommendation without knowing this information, but in this specific case I think it's fairly obvious which choice to make.
I'd not heard of Whoop, but @claude512 prompted me to skim the DCRainmaker review.
DCR's final paragraph seems to give pretty clear guidance:
So, unfortunately, at this point, despite really liking the promise of the platform and the app itself, I just can’t justify spending $30/month anymore for a service whose foundations are based on inaccurate data, has no knowledge of my training goals, and doesn’t provide me with guidance other than telling me to sleep 11 hours a night…every night.
That, coupled with the Whoop costing more than an Apple Watch, would suggest the Apple Watch would be the better choice unless there is some specific feature of the Whoop that you would find worth the high cost. That Whoop subscription costs you as much an Apple Watch SE - and you have to keep paying again and again.
Link to review here:
Whoop 3.0 Band & Platform In-Depth Review
There’s arguably no product I’ve *ever* reviewed in over a decade doing this that has me as conflicted as the Whoop strap. It’s both fascinating and perplexing at the same time. It’s got enormous potential, and after four months of
The most important feature for me, is to measure my fatigue.
So I want metrics telling when I am ready for Zone 5+ interval sessions or whether I should take it a bit easier.
The monthly fee is something I don’t like either. So if Whoop is not miles better, I might go for the Apple Watch.
But it seems a few athletes are using Whoop I noticed so they must be doing something right.
So you're not so much looking for an "activity tracker" as you're looking for a device/platform to help you with training load / recovery planning.
From what I read of DCR's review, I'm not sure the Whoop accurately gives any sense of that.
I don't know that the Apple Watch does this either - as best as I know, the stock Workout app does not provide anything related to training load. Perhaps a third party app does, but if so I'm not familiar with it. I'm (at this point) pretty casual about any training, and thus don't have any need for monitoring training load.
My suggestion is to look more deeply into the Polar and Garmin platforms as well as look into third party apps for Apple Watch.
Be cautious in what you assume about a product being used by an athlete -- if I were the marketing director at Whoop, first thing I'd do is set up sponsorships with known pro athletes and ensure they're seen wearing my product so as to create exactly this perception. Even if those athletes (& their coaches) are actually primarily using something else.
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I had to register when I saw this post (after lurking on this site for more than 10 years).
WHOOP made me take the step into the world of AW with the launch of AW6 (I ordered right after the event and got my AW 24 sep).
Before the WHOOP strap I was stout in my position that I would never abandon my mechanical watches, even if I did see the benefits of a smart watch.
I got a WHOOP strap instead as a compliment for the exercise monitoring etc. But in the end I felt it stupid to have both a HR monitor and a watch and that the WHOOP app ate battery from my phone, and as I said this september I made the jump to AW and I don't regret it at all so far.
The biggest plus side of WHOOP is that it emphasizes recovery, this made me actually get more out of my exercises while I actually exercise less than I would with out these reminders (I'm mostly a runner and WHOOP as with all HR bands is best suited for aerobic exercise). This is something I wish Apple had built in their activity/health app.
An other advantage WHOOP has, specially if you go to the gym and work with weights, is that it is much less sensitive than an AW. It might get beat up and scratched but it is actually really hard to break.
Otherwise I really can't say anything that is neither good or bad (except for one thing) about WHOOP compared to other bands/straps/watches that measure HR. WHOOP is a one trick pony AW is a multitool.
The bad thing is their sleep monitoring, just as with apps for the AW you simply can't determine REM sleep, deep sleep etc from a wrist mounted HR reading. This is all just bull **** and you need to have head electrodes and to a EEG to get something useful out of this.
I left WHOOP while still having a couple of months left on my running subscription and I'm not regretting it (will not renew).
WHOOP made me take the step into the world of AW with the launch of AW6 (I ordered right after the event and got my AW 24 sep).
Before the WHOOP strap I was stout in my position that I would never abandon my mechanical watches, even if I did see the benefits of a smart watch.
I got a WHOOP strap instead as a compliment for the exercise monitoring etc. But in the end I felt it stupid to have both a HR monitor and a watch and that the WHOOP app ate battery from my phone, and as I said this september I made the jump to AW and I don't regret it at all so far.
The biggest plus side of WHOOP is that it emphasizes recovery, this made me actually get more out of my exercises while I actually exercise less than I would with out these reminders (I'm mostly a runner and WHOOP as with all HR bands is best suited for aerobic exercise). This is something I wish Apple had built in their activity/health app.
An other advantage WHOOP has, specially if you go to the gym and work with weights, is that it is much less sensitive than an AW. It might get beat up and scratched but it is actually really hard to break.
Otherwise I really can't say anything that is neither good or bad (except for one thing) about WHOOP compared to other bands/straps/watches that measure HR. WHOOP is a one trick pony AW is a multitool.
The bad thing is their sleep monitoring, just as with apps for the AW you simply can't determine REM sleep, deep sleep etc from a wrist mounted HR reading. This is all just bull **** and you need to have head electrodes and to a EEG to get something useful out of this.
I left WHOOP while still having a couple of months left on my running subscription and I'm not regretting it (will not renew).
Whoop, right now, is mostly snake oil. The concept is brilliant, the app design is good, and I think it's where a lot of people want to go but it's just not there. From what I can tell the heart rate is inaccurate and exertion tracking is inaccurate which are two of the primary things it needs to get right to work. For instance, a round of golf, or working in the garden will show higher stress scores than a 10K run, or so the stories go.
It's also a cheap ass strap, and a dumb design that's a lot of people wind up leaving the charger on when they shower, ruining the charger.
For the record, I only had it for a couple of days and got hit by a medical issue that stopped my ability to test it so I returned it.
The thing, however, is that their data presentation is really good. Apple Health is a cluster duck with information spread out all over the place and no cohesive way of looking at it. It's all there, more health information than Whoop or Garmin, but it's a mess and not combined into something useful.
Garmin has a reasonably cohesive structure, much more so than Apple, but it's missing the intuitiveness of the Whoop design and the accuracy of the Apple watch.
Whoop has the intuitive design but not the data accuracy.
Garmin, Apple or Fitbit should buy Whoop or copy them. Whoever nails this is going do something amazing.
It's also a cheap ass strap, and a dumb design that's a lot of people wind up leaving the charger on when they shower, ruining the charger.
For the record, I only had it for a couple of days and got hit by a medical issue that stopped my ability to test it so I returned it.
The thing, however, is that their data presentation is really good. Apple Health is a cluster duck with information spread out all over the place and no cohesive way of looking at it. It's all there, more health information than Whoop or Garmin, but it's a mess and not combined into something useful.
Garmin has a reasonably cohesive structure, much more so than Apple, but it's missing the intuitiveness of the Whoop design and the accuracy of the Apple watch.
Whoop has the intuitive design but not the data accuracy.
Garmin, Apple or Fitbit should buy Whoop or copy them. Whoever nails this is going do something amazing.