The WHOOP is quite cool

A review of the WHOOP fitness tracker.

#health

I owned an Oura ring for a few years. It was bulky, and it had pretty limited features in the app.

Then, about a month and a half ago, it just stopped working. I couldn’t charge it past 1%. And it was out of warranty. Yikes.

So I switched to the WHOOP. I’m actually quite happy with it!

Here are a few things I like about it:

  1. “Behaviors”

One of WHOOP’s core loops is the Journal. Every day, it will ask “Did any of these things happen yesterday?” That list is a customizable list of behaviors, both positive and negative, like:

  • Wore blue-light glasses
  • Drank alcohol
  • Shared a bed

Tracking these is actually pretty interesting! You can set goals for these as well. For instance, “I want to wear blue-light glasses four nights this week”.

  1. Behaviors => scores

Once you’ve set these behaviors, WHOOP will start to interpret the correlation between them and your actual sleep/recovery scores. I’m not sure how accurate it is.

It’s been cool to see a relationship between some of these behaviors, and my sleep score. Not surprisingly, for instance, if I go to bed at a consistent time, my sleep score is higher (about 2 or 3 points).

As a very light drinker, it was nice to see that when I drink alcohol, it hasn’t had a substantial impact on my recovery the next day.

Oura didn’t do anything like this! I’m impressed with it so far. Even if it is a very small amount of processing power for them to determine this stuff, it feels like it is doing more than my Oura did, which makes the subscription feel worth it. Speaking of…

  1. I don’t know about the subscription yet

WHOOP is $30/mo. That subscription includes the device, any upgrades/replacements, and access to the software.

The Oura is $299-$349 for the device, with a $6/mo subscription.

I haven’t had it long enough to know yet whether the device coverage is truly that straightforward. But if it is, it’s very interesting.

I don’t generally like renting stuff, which is what this model pretty much is. I won’t ever own a WHOOP, I’ll just be renting it. But considering that the sensors aren’t open/accessible anyway (at least, as far as I know), that’s probably a compromise you have to make.

Overall, I’m happy with it so far. The Oura was bulky. And the app was interesting at first (the novelty of it, at least) but I quickly found it a pain to navigate.

I’m finding the WHOOP app compelling enough that I want to open it around and poke around at things. I want to find new behaviors to track. I want to make sure the data is complete. That may change in the future, but it’s where I’m at right now.

If you’re interested, here’s a referral link to join WHOOP. We’ll both get a free month if you sign up.