WHOOP sent me a fitness band & provided me with a membership for review. All opinions are my own.
WHOOP is a brand of fitness tracker (think along the lines of the FitBit or Apple Watch) but with multiple features that make it pretty unique from those options! Due to thos differences, I think the WHOOP band will be a better fit for some people than other options on the market.
One of the biggest ways that WHOOP is unique is the band itself is free. Using WHOOP requires a subscription. You can pay $30 monthly if you just want to sign up for one month, or you can pay for 1 year or 2 years of service at once. I think this is a neat feature because it allows less financial risk for people who may not know if they’re interested in using an activity tracker long-term. It can feel like a big investment to spend a few hundred dollars for a fitness tracker if you’ve never had one before and aren’t sure how much you will use it.
In that case, paying $30 for a month and getting a band to try out can be a great way to see if it’s really something you’ll enjoy and want to keep using or not.
Another unique feature of the WHOOP is it is “SuperKnit” soft, stretchy band without a watch face. You won’t have to worry about scratching the screen, and the battery lasts longer because it doesn’t have to light up a screen. The band is really comfortable to wear because it is stretchy. The bands come in a wide range of colors.
The third feature that stood out to me about the WHOOP, is you can charge it while it stays on your wrist! No need to take it off and plug it in. Instead, the charger attaches to your WHOOP band and charges it as you go about your day. Not needing to take it off to charge is really convenient.
The WHOOP brand has been around for a while, and we were sent the new 4.0 which is smaller, smarter and has new biometric tracking including skin temp, blood oxygen and more.
You can gain a lot of insight about your activity and health from this band! It monitors your sleep and provides you with information on your sleep duration, quality, consistency and efficiency. It will even suggest ideal bed and wake times based on your circadian rhythm. The band offers haptic alerts, so it can wake you up with gentle vibrations instead of an annoying alarm.
The band doesn’t just measure your activity, but also your recovery! It’ll let you know how ready your body is to perform. It seeks to identify your daily life stress level, illness, activity and more, to then recommend to you how much strain you should allow on your body that day.
Whoop strain is a measure of your cardiovascular exertion based on your physical and mental stress. It can recommend activities to you based on how much strain you’ve already placed on your body for the day, and how much more you can handle. This can help you avoid over-training or undertraining.
The whoop journal can be used to track habits such as your nutrition and mental health.
Worried about committing now and missing out on updated WHOOP bands of the future? If you’re a committed subscriber and a new version of the band comes out, you’ll be able to claim an upgrade free!
All of this info can be accessed from the WHOOP app. I’d say this is the only downside to the WHOOP that I have come across. It doesn’t have a screen on the band itself, so you do have to access all the information from the app. However, with other fitness trackers I’ve seen, it’s a lot easier to access information from their apps than their tiny screens anyway.
Ryan has been wearing his WHOOP band for about a month now and he’s been really pleased with it. He finds the band really comfortable to wear. He said he thinks he’s been charging it about every third day, and that it recharges quickly. He really likes the variety of information that it provides him. He especially likes how it doesn’t just tell him how much he slept, but if he has recovered well while sleeping and about the quality of sleep that he got.
He initially thought that he would prefer a band that would be a one-time fee, rather than a subscription model like the WHOOP has. However, once he realized that you get the upgraded versions when they come out, he felt differently. Initially, he thought you’d get one band, and just continue paying for it indefinitely, which could make the WHOOP a worse deal in the long-run vs a more expensive fitness tracker but that just had a one-time expense. Once he realized that you get the upgraded WHOOP devices when they come out, he thought the monthly model felt like a better deal.
Buy it: Whoop.com.
Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
This post currently has 7 responses.
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My friend uses a fitbit so I will have to tell her about this alternative. That’s not a bad deal on the subscription.
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How interesting! I have never heard of this health tracker band before, but it does sound a lot better than the ones with screens. I actually find watches and bracelets uncomfortable, but this one seems more doable. I would be hesitant about having to pay monthly as well, but the fact that you get upgrades is awesome! Thank you so much for your review.
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What a plus to get the band for free and be able to decide what length of subscription works best. I don’t think it would bother me to get the activity information through the app since that is what I usually do anyway.
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This sounds like a very good fitness band. There are so many of them out there that tell you everything or nothing. I am not sure if I would want to go with something that was $30 a month.
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It looks like a very helpful product.
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How long roughly battery lasts? I.e is it enough for 1-2 day trail hike without charging? Looks really slick, love it!
That is very interesting. I have never heard of them. I will have to check them out.