Whoop 4.0 vs. Apple Watch

I have had Whoop for like 3 years. I still have it, but I bought a Garmin watch and havent been using my whoop and my subscription ends in November.

Pros:
It's comfortable and nonassuming. You can forget you are wearing it, and the nylon strap doesn't rub your skin. The rubber strap my Garmin came with I hated so I bought a nylon strap, but it's still not as good as the Whoop band.

It chargers while you are wearing it so you don't have to take it off and battery life is pretty good at 4 or 5 days. I charge my Garmin while I shower and it has a battery life of 10 or so days so it never gets low and I can catch 15-20% charge while I shower. The whoop battery isnt a negative, and the charging is easy, but other companies have closed the gap on that front.

App is really good. It tells you everything you need to know and is simple and clean. It doesn't frick up and does exactly what it says it's going to do.


Cons:
Not cheap. I would buy a yearly subscription every year on black Friday at 25% off, but it was still came out to $18/month. Month to month with no discount is $30. It's a subscription model so my upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 was "free." Their theory as they explain it is an apple watch is $400 and needs to be replaced about every 2 years to keep up with the tech, but they give you the hardware and software upgrades free with your subscription so it all evens out over time. Makes sense in theory, just depends on how often you upgrade your devices.

The tracking for me didn't always seem right. It's still a wrist based strap. I wore my Garmin and whoop simulatiously for about 2 weeks and everything for the most part was the same within very small margins of error with one exception. My whoop has told me forever my sleep efficiency wasn't very good and I was spending an hour during sleep "awake" even when I slept like a dead body. My Garmin seems to be much better at tracking my sleep as it lines up with how I feel when I wake up. Nights I felt like I had some restless sleep it reflects that and nights where I woke up and the same spot I fell asleep it shows almost know awake time. I emailed them about this a couple of times and they said everything looked good on their end so I'm not sure why that is.

You have to have your phone to look at the real time data during a workout. Obviously, it has no screen. So, for example, if you are doing a zone 2 run, you have to bring your phone to monitor your heart rate where as my Garmin I can see it on the watch face without my phone. My Garmin can store music as well so I can put my headphones in and zone 2 with nothing but my watch. Both pretty big cons, imo.

The company is very much a woke tech company. I don't really give a shite about that, but I do follow them on social media and during every political thing they have to come out with a statement and blah blah blah. And the founder is a mid 30s very much finance bro. Again, whatever, but I was already getting a little bit of product fatigue and couple that with getting a little annoyed with the company and I replaced the product.



Pretty much the summary is: it's a good product, but watch companies have done a good job of catching up to what differentiated whoop 5 years ago. I'm on the same page as liking the simplicity and it not having a million little gadgets on it, but not having a face has some serious cons too. I actually turned off everything on my Garmin other than calls and texts and my model doesn't have a speaker so all it does is push me a notification.

I like Whoops app a bit better than Garmin, but I like the functionality of the Garmin better with having the watch face. For example, I can program run 400 meters at a certain time domain, rest 1 minute and have that pushed directly to the watch face. Whoop can't do that.

Whoop is subscription based, so not necessarily cheaper.

I just got a Garmin Instinct 2 a few weeks ago. It's not sleek like some models and more rugged looking. If you do a features comparison it stacks up almost equally to the top of the line Garmin Fenix watches. The watch also stays charged for almost a month in smart watch mode so that was a huge selling feature to me. Hated going on a vacation and having to remember my Apple watch charger. One main thing you're missing on the Instinct is a pretty color touch screen if that's important to you. I've used it on runs and gym workouts and have been happy with the advanced data it collects vs an Apple Watch (at least the one I had). If you want a nice screen, Garmin just released the Forerunner 255 that has a nice list of features for a reasonable price.

True- I was actually torn between the Venu 2 and what I ended up getting. Garmin has so many watches it's worth it to take the time to compare multiple models.

Crap I didn’t even consider Garmin. Those are better than an Apple Watch?

Garmin if you go the watch route. Whoop with bicep strap if you really don’t wanna wear a watch. I really don’t like Whoop’s subscription model with the 1 year commitment though.

I’ve been looking at getting a watch to track my workouts. From this thread it seems like Garmin is the best choice, any suggestions on what model you’d get if you bought a new one?

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YouTube channels

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Was there one in particular you watched?

Looking to get a watch I can wear during my lifting sessions

Appreciate the help