Whoop 4 Review – Everything You Need To Know Before Buying The New Whoop Strap
Whoop 4.0 Review
One of the most accurate ways to track fitness and sleep is by wearing tracking wearable like the Whoop 4.0. Whether you are simply looking to track your daily workout for calories burnt, running distance and speed or heart rate zones, or you are looking for a deeper look into your sleep data, heart rate variability, readiness to train, body temperature and breathing rate – the Whoop strap could be what you need.
We have worn a large majority of the fitness and sleep tracking devices like rings, watches, straps, headbands and sleep tracking mats out there, and the data that they give you come in varying levels of accuracy and actionable representation.
We have picked apart every piece of the newest Whoop 4.0 to provide the most comprehensive and in depth Whoop review available. Whoops most unique features like Strain Coach, Whoop Journal, Recovery, Sleep Coach, Health Monitor and Live Activity tracking have been analysed and an reviewed to make your decision on whether Whoop is worth it or not, a little easier.
We show you detailed descriptions of the Whoop battery life and charging, Whoop features and extras, Whoop pricing and memberships, after-purchase care, Whoop App and other key design intricacies to answer questions like: “can you wear the Whoop in a sauna?”.
Read on the see if the Whoop 4.0 is right for you.
Whoop Strap 4.0
We tested every feature of the Whoop and have a good handle on what the Whoop 4 can do. In short, the Whoop 4.0 is for anyone interested in improving sleep and tracking a fitness goal whether athlete or average joe. Personally, I love the design choices with strap interchangeability and don’t mind the membership style pricing in exchange for a cheaper initial investment.
What Do You Get With The Whoop 4.0?
Honestly, I feel like despite going deep with Whoop 4 features and functions, I still haven’t turned over every stone and the Whoop just keeps on giving more valuable functions. In this Whoop review, I will lay out what comes with the Whoop strap and exactly what all of the different data sets show you when it comes to the Strain, Sleep, Journal, Recovery and Health Monitor features.
When you buy the Whoop 4, the inclusions you get partly depends on the membership option you select and whether you add any of the extra battery packs or strap designs to your basket.
The bare bones option when shopping online for the Whoop gives you the Whoop 4.0 device with a basic strap, access to the Whoop App and Progress Assessments and fitness and sleep reporting.
With the Whoop membership options they can be broken down into the following:
1. $44/month and 12 month minimum
2. $35/month for an annual membership for which you pay $420 upfront
3. $30/month for a 24 month membership for which you pay $720 upfront
As you can see with the membership options, Whoop rewards you with a cheaper average monthly price for the device if you commit to a longer initial subscription. I went for the zero upfront option on a $44/month basis and added in a Superknit Band for $60, only because I don’t like being locked into memberships and it lowered my initial investment.
All of the Whoop Membership prices include the same access to the strap and the App, but there is also a Whoop Pro membership which you can add in for $18/month which gets you free shipping and 20% Whoop items, exclusive deals on new Whoop gear, one new Whoop item every 3 months for free. This is a great option for those who want to use the Whoop in the Whoop Body range and/or try out new strap colours and other Whoop gear.
Whoop Features
Whoop Sleep, Strain and Recovery
If you are wondering “Is the Whoop Worth It?” or “What Does Whoop Track?”, this is where you get your money’s worth out of the Whoop 4.0. The Whoop 4.0 features some unrivalled data collection and display using some really cool and user friendly data sets like the Strain Coach, Sleep Coach and Recovery.
The Whoop also uses other great features like the Whoop Journal and Smart Alarms to increase the effectiveness and actionable functions of using the Whoop. With it’s intelligent features, the Whoop can tell you how hard to train, when to rest, when to go to sleep and wake up, give insight into habits, foods and supplements that are good or bad for you and essentially how to optimise your life.
Strain Coach
On of my favourite features of the Whoop 4.0 is the Strain Coach. The strain coach really takes the guess work out of how hard you can go in training and gives you a good idea of when you need to back off the training intensity and your ability to perform.
As I went through my 30 days of using the Whoop for this Whoop review, one of the features I wanted to get a good handle on was the Strain Coach. Despite the temptation to always just give 100% in a given workout or activity, the Strain Coach is an effective way to actually encourage you to listen to your body.
For example, I went through a super emotionally taxing time where my Whoop recorded a strain of 14.9 and a peak HR of 200, this was sitting in a car driving! Usually, I would have dismissed this as something that would not effect my stress or strain levels and am still primed to train. What the Strain Coach is great at, is removing this guess work and showing the true daily impact of every little moment over the course of the day whether it is activity strain, work stress, emotional stress, effects of food, drink and alcohol and other stressors that you might not think have an impact on you.
The Strain Coach can be turned on or off, and basically gives you a dial reading with a number indicating how much strain or effort you are primed to deliver in a given day, based on your recovery score.
With the Whoop 4.0 a haptic vibration alarm will give a couple of vibrations on the device when you have hit your recommended strain score for the day, one of the very few intrusive features of the Whoop.
Why is the strain coach useful? The Whoop Strain Coach, gives you a target for output based on your recovery from you previous days sleep score and all other recovery metrics like HR, HRV, Skin temperature and respiratory rate. By sticking to your Strain coach indicator, you can stay within reasonable requirements for sleep so as to not incur heavy sleep debt and continued poor recovery levels.
Sleep Coach
Whoop steers you away from the one-size-fits all approach of simply assuming you need 8 hours of sleep. For many people, 8 hours is sufficient sleep for an effective recovery and to operate at their peak. Your sleep needs are largely dependant on your levels of exertion, stress, illness, injury and other factors, so 8 hours is not always on the money.
Whoop 4.0 is fantastic at giving you unique insights into your body and your own sleep needs based on how well you have been sleeping and how strenuous your day has been. The sleep coach is one of my favourite parts of having the Whoop and is a piece of data that really keeps me excited to use the Whoop.
Whoop establishes your baseline sleep after a couple of nights using the Whoop strap. Then, once you have a full 30 days of use, it compares your sleep statistics to your previous 30 days. With your baseline in mind, the Whoop takes your sleep debt, any naps you have taken and your recent activity or ‘strain’ and calculates your sleep needs.
This is a really good feature that we love as it takes away the guess work out of how much sleep you think you need and removes the standard way of thinking that 8 hours sleep is the golden number regardless of your individual daily outlook for stress and movement. With the sleep need, you can then set your alarm based on these sleep needs, to a specific sleep goal, or to an exact time.
The Sleep Coach gives you a suggested bed time and suggested wake time to achieve your sleep goals or if you need to wake up at an exact time it will estimate how much of your sleep need you will likely meet.
Whoop Sleep Metrics
The Whoop is one of the best sleep trackers we have tried, without a doubt. The Whoop uses a common 4 stages of sleep to portray data and breaks your sleep up into Awake, Light, Deep Sleep and REM Sleep.
The Whoop also gives an indication of your wake events, sleep efficiency (sleep latency), and respiratory rate for showing sleep quality. This is all fantastic information as it is very difficult to know how well you actually sleep without wearing a tracking device apart from an overall ‘feeling’. If you are experiencing a lot of wake events (my average is 1.5 per hour), low sleep efficiency and a high respiratory rate, it may indicate that you have poor sleep hygiene, poor nutrition and need to change up some habits around sleep like having an earlier mealtime before bed or reducing caffeine consumption later in the day.
While we are not sleep experts, we do know that periods of wakefulness are normal, light sleep makes up the majority of your sleep cycle, deep sleep is the body repair and healing phase and rem is the mentally restorative and learning phase.
I love all of the sleep data that Whoop shows, as it gives you a breakdown in minutes of how much time each phase contributed to your overall sleep ‘session’. Interestingly, I can attest to the accuracy of the Whoop for the sleep efficiency metric as it was able to pick up times when I was in bed but on my phone for a period before actually shutting off, indicating a lower sleep efficiency percentage.
Buy the Whoop 4.0 online at Whoop
Whoop Journal
The Whoop Journal is a surprisingly important feature of the Whoop 4.0 and is really only useful if you actually engage with it. The Whoop Journal allows you to discover the effects of certain habits, practices, foods and behaviours on your recovery, mood and sleep.
The Whoop journal is something I would strongly recommend inputting as much of your data into daily in order to get the most out of your Whoop device. Essentially, you can add in elements to your journal that are a regular or irregular occurrence in your daily life like caffeine, alcohol, meditation, anxiety and other practices and behaviours to see how they interact with each other.
For example, while you may think that coffee has very little effect on you if you consume it late in the day, close to sleep or generally heavy consumption, when you limit your consumption and record it in the Whoop journal you may find that your sleep, and therefore your recovery, improves out of sight.
The Whoop Journal can also take the guess work out of what sort of food choices are having a negative impact on your health. You can get insight into the best diet suited to you like paleo, vegan, plant-based, keto or Mediterranean diet and how these food choices contribute to better or worse scores. You can even track how medications and supplements like Melatonin, Creatine, Fish Oil, Magnesium, L-theanine and other popular health supplements or prescribed medications affect your sleep.
There are over 100 behaviours you can track using the Whoop Journal and you can choose to engage with it daily if you are trying to get super specific about elements of health and wellness you want to explore or you can dismiss this function and focus on the other important data.
Whoop Recovery
The Whoop Recovery data set is perhaps the most useful part of the Whoop for athletes and those who are very interested in their recovery levels and when they should train or when to back off the intensity.
The Whoop collates all of the important bits of data collected from your sleep including your sleep performance to give you a highly personalised snapshot of your ability or readiness to perform.
In a nutshell, your Recovery Score reflects how well prepared your body is to take on added Strain from exercise, work, competition, or other stressors and is an indication of how close to homeostasis (your natural resting state) your body is. Your Recovery level will also give you an indication of how much sleep is required to meet recovery needs into the next day.
By paying attention to your Recovery score, you can then base your workouts including the effort, intensity, load and volume that you add into your sessions. Adhering to your recovery score recommendations by way of your Strain coach, makes it easier to calculate how primed you are to take on a training regime or when you require rest to avoid injury, overtraining and burnout which is so common among athletes.
The Whoop Recovery function combines resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, sleep performance, blood oximetry and skin temperature on a given day and shows this with a coloured dial and percentage, broken down into red, yellow or green. Because everyone operates on a different scale depending on your current baseline levels, Whoop establishes this baseline by creating 4 days of data before giving recommendations.
Recovery is reported on a 0-100% scale and divided into three stages:
Green = Sufficient Recovery. 67% or above. Once you start to nail the sleep requirements and add in practices like breathwork, ice baths, sauna therapy, and good supplementations and hydration protocols you will find yourself in the green and feeling on point to push the body, being primed to adapt to a larger training load.
Yellow = Adequate Recovery. 34% - 66%. When I first started using the Whoop I was regularly sitting in the Yellow zone for recovery and this indicated to me that my current levels of perceived adequate sleep were off the mark. In the Yellow you are still able to adapt to high training load but might be compromised due to insufficient rest. This would indicate that you should limit super intense training.
Red = Low Recovery. 33% or below. If I am in the red zone for recovery I generally take the day off training and adjust some habits like increasing hydration, increasing sleep and increasing meditation while reducing stress and partaking in active recovery practices like stretching, yoga walking to minimise strain.
Whoop Health Monitor
The Whoop 4.0 gives some other metrics laid out in a smaller bar on your daily summary page on the Whoop App. The five metrics in the Health Monitor sections include Respiratory Rate, Blood Oxygen, Resting Heart Rate, Heart Rate Variability and Skin Temperature.
All of these are super important metrics to know and are figures that really indicate how well recovered you are, what physical and mental state you are in and how well primed you are to perform.
Respiratory Rate
Your Respiratory rate is the amount of breaths you take per minute and is a general indicator of cardiovascular fitness. A normal range is between 12 and 20 breaths per minute for most people.
What the Whoop shows you when your breathing rate is out of whack is that your oxygen demands have changed and that you may require more rest or change in diet or daily habits. High respiratory rate or an increase from your baseline can indicate anything from an illness, anxiety and stress, poor environment like air quality, allergic reactions, dehydration and more. Decreases can indicate obstructive sleep apnoea, drug use, hyperthyroidism and more.
Engaging with the Whoop Journal, I found that when I increased by intake of gluten containing breads and pastas, my respiratory rate increased among other metrics.
Blood Oxygen
On the Whoop, your blood oxygen reading is given as a percentage like most devices. Blood oxygen is an important metric as it indicates how oxygenated your cells are and in turn how well your lungs, heart and circulatory system are working in synergy.
For most, the typical blood oxygen level is 95-100%. Anything below this would indicate a potentially serious issue and can show a pattern of poor chances of recovery if your 02 levels are low consistently.
Resting Heart Rate
Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute when you are at rest. The Resting Heart Rate (RHR) is a strong indicator of cardiovascular health and levels of recovery and stress.
Heart Rate Variability
Heart rate variability is literally the variance in time between the beats of your heart. The perception is that your heart beats on a regular interval in a given time period, but this is generally false. Your heart has slight variations in beats per minute that represent your heart rate variability. In short, the greater this variability, the more primed or ready your body is to perform and take on strain. If your HRV is low, it may indicate that you have had poor sleep, are in a state of stress, are consuming too much alcohol, have a poor diet and hydration, or are in a state of nervous system strain.
When I first started using the Whoop, my HRV was sitting at around 45. By following the strain coach and sleep coach to a reasonable proximity, I was able to increase my HRV by about 20 points within the space of a few weeks.
We have written about the importance of HRV in some of our other articles and use this recovery metric as one of the most important indicators of how well recovered we are. When HRV is low, add in extra sleep, more meditation, extra hydration and reduce alcohol consumption as an easy way to increase it. When HRV is high, know that you are primed to train hard, race, compete and give extra intensity in your workouts.
It is worth noting that generally, your HRV score will decrease on average as you age, and Whoop has an algorithm that factors these age and gender characteristics into the device. “The middle 50% of 20-25 year olds usually have an average HRV in the 55-105 range, while 60-65 year olds tend to be between 25-45.”
It is worth taking a look at the HRV graph displayed on the Whoop website to see where you should be aiming. As a 31 year old male, I am aiming for between about 50-80ms for my HRV.
Skin Temperature
Skin temperature is an addition to the Whoop 4.0 that the Whoop 3.0 did not have.
“Normal skin temperature for healthy adults ranges between 92.3 and 98.4 Fahrenheit or 33-37 Celsius, far lower than the 98.6 F average core temp. Changes in skin temperature may indicate potential illness or injuries.”
Skin temperature is a big indicator of the state of the nervous system and the health of the body. Just think, when you have a fever or are sick you can express the poor state of the body with either a very hot skin temp or a very cold one, or even going from one to the other.
You skin is your largest organ and shows a lot about your current state, which is why the Whoop tracks it and includes readings on the Health Monitor section of the data. The Whoop uses your previous 90 days of data to establish a good skin temperature baseline as every one is slightly different. What can you do with skin temperature data from Whoop? Well, if you continue to register a high skin temperature, for example, even during cold nights, it may indicate that you are using too much heating and would benefit from turning on a fan, reducing blankets or removing sleep clothing like socks or pants.
I have found that sleeping nude significantly regulated my skin temperature and contributed to a better sleep score overall, as an example of what you can try to manipulate skin temperature while you sleep. Another way I impacted skin temperature in a positive way was by taking a sauna or using a sauna blanket close to bed time which has a great rebounding effect on your core body temperature, effectively lowering core body temperature post sauna which is an effective way to fall asleep faster and stay asleep.
Whoop Battery and Charging
One of the notable and unique features I am attracted to by the Whoop is its charging mechanism and battery design. Unlike many devices that include the battery integrated inside the device, the Whoop features a slide on battery pack that is charged separately to the device.
In separating the battery from the device, the Whoop hardware has a small battery inside the device but reduces the size and weight of the device by excluding a charging port from the Whoop and making it magnetic clip-on, clip-off charging. This also means that Whoop users can purchase additional battery packs and have a ready supply of charged batteries to clip onto the Whoop.
Once fully charged, I managed to get about 3 full days of use out of the Whoop with daily activity use including tracking runs on GPS and 24/7 wear which I found quite impressive.
The battery pack can be worn while using every feature of the Whoop and I found it not too bulky to sleep with even with the battery pack clipped on. The battery pack takes about 120-180 minutes to fully charge using the micro USB connection and the battery pack charges the Whoop from dead flat to full battery within about 2 hours.
The Whoop 4.0 Battery pack only offers one full charge for the whoop but features an auto-off or on function to conserve charging if needed. The battery pack can be worn in the shower and is water resistant up to one metre for 2 hours. Personally I would avoid charging in the water as the battery pack isn’t fully waterproof and would prefer to let the Whoop go flat for a period of time instead of risking water borne charging damage, despite being covered by the lifetime warranty.
Whoop Warranty
I truly can get around products that include a lifetime warranty – Whoop is one of these brands. As the Whoop is designed to be worn 24/7, it has to be able to take a fair beating. The epic thing about Whoop is that they cover any issues and problems with the device, for life, so long as you have purchased your Whoop directly and still maintain an active membership with Whoop.
To facilitate this, and to reduce waste, Whoop also refurbishes their hardware. What this means is that when you purchase a Whoop you may be buying a refurbished device. Don’t worry though, all refurbishments are certified and covered by the Whoop lifetime warranty and undergo testing and inspection within a quality inspection process, and includes a brand new band, buckle and clasp.
The lifetime warranty for Whoop places it in a cut above many other Whoop alternatives like the Biostrap, Oura Ring, Fitbit, Garmin, SleepOn Ring and other sleep and fitness tracking devices. Yes, the Whoop membership style pricing that entails a continued payment for the use of the Whoop means you will have to pay more for the Whoop in the long run compared to other ‘pay once’ devices, but this membership covers your lifetime warranty also.
Whoop Body – Whoop Clothing Line
Not everyone likes wearing the Whoop on the wrist. For people who don’t like wrist worn fitness and sleep tracking devices, the Whoop also has a range of clothing that allows you to use the Whoop without having it visible or on the wrist which can be uncomfortable for some users.
The Whoop Body range or smart apparel compatible with the WHOOP 4.0, includes boxers, bralettes, leggings, performance tops, and more. The Whoop Body range gives you the ability to simply remove the hardware from the Whoop strap and insert it into the specially designed pouch on the garment. This means girls can insert the Whoop into a sports bra top or guys can slide the Whoop into the training shorts and get the same tracking capability via a different area of the body.
Who Is The Whoop 4.0 Good For?
Really, the Whoop 4.0 is for those who want to go beyond simply tracking calories and Heart rate. Although these metrics are great, the Whoop is more suited to those who want to optimise their workouts and recovery routines by getting specific.
Without a doubt, the Whoop is good for athletes. I would even go as far as saying if you are an athlete without a tracking device like the Whoop you are at a disadvantage to your competitors. The reason for this is by giving you a window to your levels of recovery based on sleep and prior strain for activities, you can adjust your daily training regime to impact your overall recovery more effectively. In addition, as an athlete you can tweak your supplement intake, sleep routine, dietary habits, meal timings, caffeine intake and get data feedback after you engage with the Whoop journal and see a pattern of which behaviours and protocols work best for you.
The Whoop is not for someone who is looking for a social device like the Apple Watch. It is also not a good device for the weekend warrior types who generally only use the Whoop to track calories and HR in a workout one day a week without any interest in recovery.
I must say though, if you were not interested in sleep data before buying a Whoop, it does a really good job of making you want to sleep more to improve your sleep score which is a huge positive for anyone.
What Keeps Us Using Whoop?
Why buy the Whoop? What’s so good about Whoop? There are a few key Whoop features that keep the Whoop on my wrist and keep me interested in viewing and following the data.
The Whoop is super discreet on the wrist during the day and at night during sleep. The sleek design of the Whoop and the option to update and play with Whoop strap colours is a design feature that definitely sell me on the continued use of the Whoop.
The way that the Whoop presents the data on the Whoop App and allows you to interact with it is also a huge factor that keeps you engaged with using the Whoop. I absolutely love the simple traffic light style representations of your sleep, strain and recovery scores as they are a very simple and rudimentary way to categorise your state and use that for how you structure your training, rest, nutrition and sleep protocols.
Having the specific and unique features like the Strain and Sleep coach are a unique algorithm that we have not seen used as well in any other fitness and sleep tracking device, despite testing over 20 different devices including the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, Biostrap, Amazfit Band, Fitbit, SleepOn Ring, Withings Sleep Mat and other watches with tracking capability.
Whoop Rewards and Awards
If you are familiar with using apps like Duolingo for learning language, you will be familiar with the use of rewards and milestones that are very effective at keeping you using the app. The Whoop App also uses milestones and rewards to encourage continued use. When you use Whoop for 30 days, for example, you will be notified that you have hit 30 “recoveries” using the Whoop which I find has given an element of self-competition to hit the next milestone.
“Your WHOOP Level, displayed on your profile, is calculated by how many recoveries (or nights of sleep) you’ve logged.”
The Whoop Community is also a fantastic way to keep Whoop members accountable and gives you the chance to join or create a group that fits your personal life. The Whoop community feature lets you compete against members of the same group in terms of your daily, strain, recovery and sleep and gives you a ranking of your position in the group for each of these elements. You can view your stats over a daily, weekly or monthly view to see how you compare over time. It also allows you to see the individual stats, activities and profile data of each member to compete against a friend, family member, athlete or colleague.
Whoop Design and User Experience
The Whoop is designed to be worn 24/7 and after about 3 or 4 days of having the Whoop on all day and night, I began to forget it was even there. The Whoop features a super sleek strap design that curves the brains of the device nicely around the wrist.
The feel of the Whoop 4 on the wrist is ‘minimal’ in a word. The Superknit bands are flexible and comfortable. The bands can be adjusted to suit any wrist size and are pretty sturdy for most activities.
A point to note about the Whoop strap security is that it is probably not best suited for water based activities although waterproof. After testing the Whoop out in the surf a couple of times, the strap can be quite easily knocked off the wrist and twists around with the wash of the water. We would not recommend at all for surfing unfortunately. Maybe Whoop 5 could consider a stronger, military spec strap for more extreme sports.
A notable design feature and positive for user experience is the lack of digital display and notifications that the Whoop provides users. Yes, you can set up notifications relating to Whoop usage and data on the Whoop app, but unlike many other devices like the Apple watch for example, the Whoop is silent and sits quietly in the background collecting your data (in a good way!). The Whoop is extremely non-invasive in this way, and shows the main goal of the Whoop is to collect your data and display it to you in a user friendly way while actively promoting the best habits possible.
Having been used to the Apple Watch which buzzes, beeps and notifies every 10 seconds for something or other about standing, breathing, messages or socials, the Whoop is a more suited to those who are looking for a health monitor and health coach rather than a device to stay connected. For a simple Whoop vs Apple watch comparison, the Apple Watch is terrible for tracking sleep data and produces minimal fitness tracking data that I found useful. Not only that, the Apple Watch comes at an initial investment of about $650 while the Whoop starts at $18.
Changing Bands
While most fitness trackers and sleep tracking straps have minimal design options, the Whoop 4 has a smorgasbord of strap colours which we love about Whoop.
The Whoop allows you to customise your WHOOP Band, Hook, Clasp, and Fast Link™ slider. You can choose a standard combo or go down the SuperKnit Luxe Band path like I did which includes the precious metal plating, giving it a much more stylish feel.
Having come from a military background, I naturally chose the Olive drab colour which comes with a semi-gloss olive coloured metal trip which encases the brains of the Whoop. There are so many epic Whoop strap colours to choose from including the new range which comes in anything from Arctic White to Ivy Rhodium to Onyx Rose Gold or Lava Pink. You do you!
Although it’s not as easy as it looks to change bands, I’d recommend having at least two colours to mix and max your bands. You can also change the bands while you let one dry out if you don’t want to be wearing a wet strap around or to bed.
Whoop App
The Whoop App is stellar, honestly I have found it so easy to use and all of the relevant sleep and fitness data is presented so well in the app.
The Whoop App is really where science of the Whoop algorithm is displayed and gives you actionable and easy to digest information to optimise your routine.
The Whoop App is obviously included in whichever membership options you have chosen for your Whoop device and present the data under key headings and also includes profile information, community features and the Sleep, Strain and Recovery sections.
The Whoop App is downloaded on your device and then you simply link your specific device to your app. The Whoop App data can also be shared with other health monitoring apps on your phone like the Apple Health data.
Whoop For Sports
The Whoop is suitable for most sports and can definitely take a little bit of a beating. While all of our testing showed that wearing a Whoop for sports tracking like basketball, netball, tennis, pool swimming, functional fitness, rowing, soccer and football was good to go, we generally wouldn’t advise against wearing the Whoop in the ocean for surfing or swimming involving rough swell or waves. The design of the Whoop allows to feel comfortable around the wrist but also means it is not super secure and can fall off in the water based on our period of reviewing the Whoop ‘in the elements’.
Whoop GPS Unreliable
One interesting downside we found with the Whoop was its lack of reliability and accuracy for tracking running activities via GPS.
Having used the Whoop for running activities quite often and hoping to have an accurate ability to track average running speed, route and distance for runs it was a little disappointing to have the Whoop fail a couple of times during tracked runs.
After playing with GPS, location and privacy settings on my IPhone to troubleshoot the GPS failure, I was still unable to rectify the shortfalls in the Whoop GPS tracking. If anyone has had similar Whoop issues please reach out for solutions, we’d love to hear your own Whoop reviews.
Whoop In Sauna and Ice Baths
A question we had a lot of people reach out after our Whoop 3.0 review was: “can you wear the whoop in sauna?”, and “can you wear the whoop in ice baths?”.
After reaching out to Whoop and working through the FAQ’s on their website we were informed that the Whoop can be used in the extreme heat and cold that is produced by saunas and ice baths.
We have put the Whoop through some pretty solid contrast therapy testing over the last month and their have been zero glitches and issues after saunas in excess of 100 degrees Celsius and ice baths as cold as 5 degrees Celsius.
The wearable WHOOP tracker is a two-in-one device that uses both fitness and sleep data. The goal is to calculate overall recovery, which WHOOP defines as how prepared you are for activities in the day ahead based on your recent exercise, heart rate, and how well you slept the previous night.
The WHOOP has cultivated a major following within CrossFit and other workout communities. Many pro athletes also wear the tracker. That said, virtually anyone — even non-athletes — can benefit from the WHOOP’s comprehensive tracking system.
I recently had the pleasure of personally wearing and testing the WHOOP 3.0 for one week. Below you’ll find my breakdown of how the WHOOP operates, what it tracks, how it feels, and how well it works.
Due to shipping delays, I was unable to personally test the WHOOP 4.0, the latest version of the tracker that debuted in the fall of 2021. I’ve highlighted some of the key differences between the 3.0 and 4.0, but ultimately both iterations of the device are quite similar in terms of design, functionality, and operation.
Whoop 3.0 vs. 4.0
As with any upgraded product, the newest Whoop strap 4.0 has had some modifications and additions that are not available with the 3.0. The Whoop 4.0 added features are:
Tracking for pulse oximeter, blood oxygen, and skin temperature (all important to assess recovery)
Added photodiodes (those little panels and lights you see on the underside) used to track recovery and activity metrics with greater accuracy. The Whoop 4 has four times as many tracking diodes as Whoop 3.
Vibrations to alert for alarms when using the sleep coach and to alert on strain level
The Whoop 4 is two thirds the size of the Whoop 3
Whoop 4 can be integrated with the new Whoop Body range
There are not huge modifications to the Whoop 4 vs 3 and this is quite standard for brands to slowly introduce new features as next generation products are released to the market. The Whoop 4 also comes with a waterproof wireless battery pack that the Whoop 3 does not work with. The good news is, if you have the Whoop 3.0, the benefit of having a Whoop is that you can request the upgrade to the new device and can still use the current version of the Whoop app with your older device until you get the newer one.
Whoop 5.0 – What To Expect
When considering buying the Whoop 4.0, many people wonder: “what will the Whoop 5.0 include?”. One of the key things that I think is missing on the Whoop 4 and all earlier designs is a simple time indication.
Many Whoop users find themselves having to wear a secondary device like a watch to tell them the time. This makes you look a little over the top and is definitely a simple technology that can be integrated into the newest Whoop strap.
When is the Whoop 5.0 coming? Unsure, but I would hope that a super small digital clock would be included on the newest model to remove perhaps the biggest downfall of the Whoop 4.0, as mentioned in many Whoop reviews.
Other features we would anticipate the latest Whoop strap including are further integration with other recovery apps and sharing of fitness and sleep tracking data across apps, additional Whoop device choices like rings or watches, improved Whoop battery life, and improved strap security and strength.
Conclusion on Whoop 4.0 Review
The Whoop 4.0 strap gets an overall 4.6 out of 5 from me. The areas that I think the Whoop could make some super simple modifications or additions would be to include a small, discreet digital time display to avoid the need to wear another watch. The Whoop could also have the option for a military spec and extreme sport ‘secure strap’ that sacrifices a little bit of that comfort for strap security.
Overall, we found the Whoop 4.0 to deliver very digestible data in the sleep, strain and recovery sections and found the Whoop journal an extremely useful tool to discover what habits, supplements, meal timings, foods, sleep protocols work on an individual level.
We feel that the longer you use the Whoop strap, the more attuned you can become to what makes you perform well and recover smart, and what makes you suffer, sleep poorly and not operate at your peak.
While there are many Whoop alternatives out there like the Apple Watch, Amazfit Band, Oura ring, Biostrap and SleepOn ring, we have the strong opinion that the Whoop strap represents the current best possible sleep and fitness tracking device on the market in 2022.
