As health and wellness accessories continue to be an important part of our tech landscape, it’s easy to get locked into the all-around smartwatch category. We even recently posed the question of whether smartwatches are actually making traditional watches obsolete. But what if your focus for a wearable device isn’t suited for a smartwatch? What if you’re looking for something more subtle with more of an emphasis on health than apps and notifications? That’s where a Whoop band could come into play.
Whoop was originally launched by a Harvard student with a strong tech background in 2012 with a focus on bringing health and workout data to a modern wearable. The band started to build its share of early adopters in the elite athlete market, so it’s no surprise that today, its focus stays centered on athletics and wellness. But today’s Whoop is actually a fairly worthy competitor to the Apple Watch — just not for the smart functionality. It’s Whoop’s obsessive focus on health tracking that really sets it apart. Plus, there are some practical benefits to its form factor, the way it charges, how long the battery lasts, and more. Here are the things it can do that an Apple Watch simply can’t.
Perhaps one of the most prevalent complaints you’ll hear about any full-featured smartwatch, including Apple’s flagship, is that it’s yet another device you have to remember to charge. While there are some smartwatches that include a solid level of smart features that have decent battery life (such as some offerings from Fitbit), Apple Watches simply put a focus on functionality and hardware that means you’ll get a couple days max out of your watch in real-world use.
Whoop, on the other hand, doesn’t feature a screen or on-device apps at all. This means it can put all of its battery focus into the health tracking functions and workouts. On all of Whoop’s modern band models, the company advertises 14+ days of battery life. That’s two weeks of functionality, tracking, and reliability. So if you’re willing to sacrifice some of the at-a-glance functionality of an Apple Watch and you’re one of those people that really doesn’t like having to remember to charge your devices, then the Whoop is a bona fide standout in this category.
If the long, reliable battery life isn’t enough for you, one of the most unique features of the Whoop is that you don’t even have to take the band off to charge it. Unlike an Apple Watch that has to be removed and plopped onto a charging puck, Whoop’s Peak and Life bands come with a separate charging cradle that clicks onto the top of the device. This charging cradle carries with it a built-in battery that contains a little extra juice, so you can top it off if the band itself is dead.
It isn’t just a backup battery in a pinch, though. You can actually use the Whoop snap-on charger to essentially get a smart band that you never have to remove. If you charge up the backup battery component in the morning and go about your day with the band, but notice that it’s running low — simply pop on the backup battery and continue about your day. The device becomes a little bulkier to wear at this moment, but once the battery pack has done its job, you can pop it off and drop it back on its charger. Now you’ve got a fully charged band without ever needing to remove the host device. It’s a very forgiving system for the chronically under-charged.
One of the things a Whoop band can do that an Apple Watch can’t do is actually centered on something the Whoop does less of. Stay with us here: Since the Whoop doesn’t have a screen at all, there’s nothing to pop up and pull your attention throughout the day. This is great for someone whose attention is easily pulled by wrist-buzzing moments throughout the day. However, you can still access health tracking data, so you don’t need to sacrifice that aspect of your wearable just to lose the notification.
The fact that it doesn’t contain a screen also delivers another benefit: It’s more subtle to wear. Especially with the launch of the Apple Watch Ultra line, many smartwatches are going in a decidedly maximalist direction. This means that it’s not going to be sleek or subtle, and many users find it cumbersome to wear during workouts or to bed. The Whoop is designed as an ultra-light, fabric band that looks more like a simple bracelet than a smart device. This makes it perfect for tracking around the clock without feeling uncomfortable or looking like you’ve got a whole computer strapped to your wrist.
While the Apple Watch’s health and fitness tracking features are nothing to sneeze at, Whoop has a truly unique approach to tracking your metrics and distilling them down to an interesting, impactful number. Whoop’s unique Healthspan system offers a series of insights that the company claims will measure both your Whoop age (a specific version of a biological age tracker) as well as the pace at which you’re aging.
These metrics are calculated by considering nine key categories that cover sleep, fitness, and general stress on your body (Whoop calls it “strain”). While the Apple Watch can track many of these things, it isn’t as comprehensive in combining them and analyzing them as a unit and tapping into research to determine what’s really affecting your current health and your long-term healthiness. Whoop even gives you the option to upload blood results from your real doctor to factor into these numbers to give an even more accurate picture. It’s all with an eye toward living longer and healthier during that time.
The other key area where the Whoop band feels more full-featured than the Apple Watch is its focus on data and analytics over the long haul. Both devices do feature similar sensors that track pulse, blood oxygen, and VO2 max (your general fitness level). Apple Watch is, admittedly, the only one of the two that has certain FDA-cleared alerts for hypertension and sleep apnea. But what Whoop does well comes alive in its “always-on” data approach.
This factor is partially due to the Whoop’s ease and wearability, and partially just how the software handles and delivers data and trending. First, because a Whoop band lasts much longer on a single charge, and with some models, is even chargeable while you’re wearing it, it’ll naturally capture more data and better trends than the Apple Watch, which you have to take off to charge more. Then, the Whoop app has a focus on collecting more data (some report even a full week) before it delivers all of its key trends to you. The Apple Watch can offer long-term trending data, but it’s more about where your heart rate is at the moment, what it means for a workout, and other in-the-moment stats.
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