WHOOP 4.0 with 12 Month Subscription – Wearable Health, Fitness & Activity Tracker – Continuous Monitoring, Performance Optimization, Heart Rate Tracking – Improve Sleep, Strain, Recovery, Wellness

Ton, tons of information
I was looking for something to track my sleep. There’s 1 million gimmicks out there with devices like under your mattress or using the Apple Watch or what not. A lot of them are dubious in their accuracy. I spent a lot of time looking into various methodologies and devices to find one that is legitimate. I think this is the one. It is a little expensive after the first year with the monthly bill but there’s a real accurate set of data given about you every minute of every day. It does a better job than several other devices that I’ve tried in the past and it feels more accurate based on how I’m doing. the most interesting thing is that it does encourage me to be more active as well. I did come into this looking only for a sleep tracker, but because of all the other data that is collected it encouraged me to get more active. All in all, I do think this had had a positive impact on my welfare and well-being. I’ll probably continue to subscribe even after the free year of service ends. Recommended if you’re interested in having in-depth and accurate knowledge about what your body is doing.

Hot Garbage *update 6: May 2025.
** May 17This will be my last update, my subscription is up in a few weeks, and I will not be renewing it. I’ve decided to try the pantherwearables eclipse. It’s a new device so it might be totally terrible but hard to imagine it’s worse than the whoop. Today I completed a 5.8 mile hike wearing a 65 pound weight vest. As I’ve observed before there’s a pretty agreed-upon metabolic standard for walking, even a pretty casual flat walk around your neighbourhood burns something on the order of 100 to 110 cal per mile, more if you’re a bigger person less if you’re smaller. If you add in Hills and extra loading, uneven terrain, you burn yet more calories per mile. Every fitness tracker I’ve had (and this is the sixth or seventh I’ve used) ties out with this rough equation. Some a little higher, some a little lower. The whoop, however, thinks. 5.8 miles carrying 60 pounds as a 190# man is worth 223 cal. It’s tracking my distance. It knows how far I went and yet 223 calories. Maybe mine was just a dud, I suggested that to them early on they told me to reset it update the firmware, nothing helped. So unless my particular sensor was just a lemon, I’m confident saying that calling the whoop worthless is giving it too much credit. It’s expensive and what you get for your expensive subscription is bad data and useless feedback. Not anymore. Cheers.** update March 9. I completed a 5.1 mile hike with an average pace of 3.5 mph. What does the whoop say? 271 calories. If you look at the internet. For my weight and that pace the calorie burn is between 550 and 620 kcal. But whoop, whoop says 271. I have never used a more inaccurate unreliable piece of trash.**update 10/19 deducting yet another star. The device is basically worthless. Sad because it’s a good idea and is expensive. Did a 3 mile walk this morning to warm up. I’m 190# man. Walking a flat mile even at a somewhat leisurely pace costs my body 110-125Kcal. Wearing the whoop and my Apple Watch. Watch records 350 kcal burned. The whoop…123. Both set to “walking” worn on opposite wrists. 123 vs 350. The device is absolute garbage. Avoid it.** update 9/12. Deducting another starI really wanted to love this device and maybe mine is just a lemon. The readings, specifically heart rate which is one of the only things I am really truly interested in are so far from accurate that the device is almost worthless. This is disappointing because the device is both expensive and has an expensive subscription associated with it. I did a hard workout again wearing both my Apple Watch and my WHOOP. Was 30 minute EMOM. Alternating rounds of 10 double unders And 15 Russian kettlebell swings at 80#. So at least for me a metabolically demanding workout. During the double unders Apple Watch has my heart rate pegged between 165 and 175 Which makes sense based on the activity and how I feel (like I’m sprinting). The average for the whole Apple device was just under 150 BPM. Conversely, the whoop worn on my other wrist Shows my heart rate during the double-unders at between 96 and 120 (Which again is moronic) And my heart rate for the overall workout at 127. Only after I started my cool down and my heart rate dropped did the Apple Watch and the WHOOP come into line. I wonder if the WHOOP is just too imprecise as a piece of hardware so when your heart rate is extremely fast it’s missing beats, I’m just theorizing but it’s disappointing in any event. The AI WHOOP support is also completely worthless. canned responses and useless troubleshooting pages. I don’t know what device to recommend, but if you’re serious about your data, this ain’t it**update 8/25.I wore my my Apple Watch Ultra and Whoop at the same time today (albeit Whoop on right arm Apple Watch on left) as discussed in the main review below. I set both devices to “functional strength” and then went about my work out. Main part of the work out was 30 minutes. During that time. The whoop registered 241 cals burned and an avg heart rate of 119. The Apple registered 327 cals burned and an average heart rate of 129. I also noticed that during certain periods of the session, the Apple registered my heart rate at 145 bpm and the Whoop 107. I’ve been an athlete my whole life I know what 107 feels like, and I know what 145 feels like. I also at that point timed my pulse and got 140. Not sure if the whoop reflects a high degree of latency (claims it doesn’t) but that reading is way way off. Could also account for the meaningful deviation in calories. I pinged the whoop chat bot to ask. It was useless. Offered a lot of semi science mumbo jumbo about strain calculations. I’m deducting another star.I work out daily. Have for the last decade and a half. When I was younger it was conditioning for various combat sports. Now that I’m in my 40s it’s conditioning for the combat sport that is life. I still get after it pretty hard every day, and in the last few years have become interested in tracking biometrics. It started with various Fitbit devices, which were super limited, moving up to the pretty good Garmin instinct solar, to The OK Apple Watch Ultra (you can find my review on here somewhere) And now the Whoop. The reason I wanted to move away from the Apple Watch is threefold (although candidly the device is deeply flawed in general). 1) It’s far too busy, too much going on, too many notifications too much buzzing 2) The battery life sucks (2.5 days max) and 3) I really like watches, actual watches, aesthetically I think the Apple Watch Ultra is just awful. The WHOOP checks all the boxes. It has no screen or buttons, it does not buzz. It is extremely minimalist. It is very lightweight And comfortable. Battery life is about a week, However, in a bit of pretty ingenious engineering, you don’t take it off to charge it. You charge a small battery pack That Whoop wears like a backpack on your wrist. So every few days I just slap that on after my workout the Whoop charges fully in a manner of minutes and we go about our day. The Whoop interface is ok. Its fine. I think there’s a lot of data in there and I’m just getting used to accessing it. I like that it’s sleep and recovery focused. Every day I get a grade for my sleep quality (usually not great) And a related grade level of “recovery” from yesterday. I don’t pretend to know the science behind the recovery statistics, however directionally they are in line with the way my body feels in the morning and throughout the day. The major flaw in the WHOOP design that I have encountered so far in its “strain” calculations. Once you wear the device for a few days It starts to make customize recommendations for how hard you should push yourself physically given your recovery level. That’s fine, Although I tend to just move through my schedule of splits and conditioning irrespective of what the Whoop says. What I have observed though, and it annoys me, is that the calorie calculations are way off relative to every other device I’ve ever used. For a given activity I think they’re probably 20 to 30% low relative to the Apple and 40% low relative to the Garmin. They’re also internally contradictory. Here is an example: today was a conditioning day. I did a pretty hard workout which consisted of timed sets of pull-ups, push-ups, and jump squats. It’s a 30 minute timer. You do seven pull-ups 15 push-ups and 20 squats per minute and then rest the next minute, etc. So you wind up doing the high volume of movements. And your heart rate is quite elevated. My Apple Watch records this session at a bit over 400 calories. My WHOOP records it at 258 calories. I’m not sure which is right, But I will say that the WHOOP has a “strain” score, which is roughly a measure of how hard your body is working during the exercise. Before the exercise “processed” my score 8.2, with a heart rate averaging in the 130s with peaks in the low 160s. When I finish the exercise and added in the movements as prompted by the WHOOP It recalculates the strain score to 16.8. Reflecting the work rate associated with the movements I was doing. So the strain increased to almost double to accommodate the amount of work done during the session. Why did the amount of calories calculated by the WHOOP not increase? Exertion requires thermodynamic energy; my strain went up because I was doing more work, work = energy output= calories. So that is a bit bit silly. Overall I’m still pretty happy and the actual numbers don’t matter, although little sloppy nits like this bother me. Maybe they’ll work it out in a future software release.

I ordered from Amazon (as the leading site said, delays), and it came the next day. 2nd day wearing it, it already shows me my sleep patterns, stress levels, recovery rate, and so much more. It is brilliant for those wanting to improve their health and optimize their performance. You need to wear it for four days to gather all your data, but it already shows me so many insights. Highly recommended!

I bought this as a birthday gift for my husband. He is quite happy with the product. How good it is in terms of tracking and performance will only be known after some data is collected and compared with his other device. Hope this will help him understand his recovery patterns after long runs.

Great fitness tracker! Very accurate in tracking steps, heart rate, and sleep. The battery lasts long, and it’s comfortable to wear all day. Definitely a great companion for my workouts