WHOOP 4.0 Review
Tech Info
| Product: | Whoop 4.0 |
| Description: | Personalised Digital Fitness and Health Coach |
| Website: | https://www.whoop.com/gb/en/ |
| Price: | Membership Plans start at £229 for 1 Year |
I’ve been wearing the Whoop 4.0 band for over a year now; this is certainly the longest I’ve tested a piece of tech before writing up a review. Over this time, I feel like I’ve gained a good insight into how the Whoop 4.0 has benefitted my day-to-day life. Especially since partway through wearing it, I began training for a half marathon. Read my (not so) Rapid Review below for the key points.
What Is the Whoop 4.0 Band?
The Whoop 4.0 is a small fitness and insight tracker that fits on your wrist via a fabric band. There’s no screen on the device itself, so insights and the AI Coach are accessed through the app (available on iOS and Android). The device itself records health data such as heart rate, skin temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygen and HRV (heart rate variability). You can also link other health and fitness apps with the Whoop such as Apple Health and Strava.
Getting Going
It’s not a difficult process to get your Whoop 4.0 set up and connected to your smartphone. I found that the quickstart instructions were more than adequate. I’ll say right from the beginning that this is a piece of tech that gets much better the longer you wear it – and by wearing it consistently. At first, there’s not much to get into apart from looking at how your sleep has been analysed. You do get some reports that are available later, but at this stage they are devised with general statistics rather than based on data the Whoop 4.0 has collected about you.
When Things Get Interesting
Once you’ve been wearing your Whoop 4.0 for about a month (30 days), the data it gives about you is far more personalised. But, and I can’t stress this enough, give it another month and it gets even better; give it six and even more so. The Whoop 4.0 is a long-term commitment if you want to get the best out of it. Equally, if you want detailed personalised insights, you need to give it data regularly by filling in the journal each day.
At first, some of the insights can seem a little off. I think this is because it starts making conclusions with little data. Sometimes a tweak to the journal or more time makes them more accurate. I think you do have to take some of these insights with a pinch of salt though. The Whoop 4.0 can only make deductions based on the information it has and sometimes it mistakes correlation for causality.
For example, at the time of writing this the Whoop 4.0 thinks that menstrual cramps have a +4% impact on my recovery. I can assure you that this is not the case. In the case of menstrual cramps, there are other elements at play that the Whoop 4.0 can’t factor in. As I work from home, I’m lucky enough to be able to take things a little easier around that time of the month. I also make sure to prioritise sleep more than usual as I know this will make that time more bearable. Therefore, I’d say it’s more likely that it’s the extra sleep and rest that’s giving the +4% impact. So, it’s times like these when I think it’s worth reflecting on the wider picture and what you can’t tell the Whoop 4.0.
Journaling
You don’t have to fill in the journal each day, but you get a lot more from the Whoop 4.0 if you do, since this is how it finds most of the insights that impact your daily recovery. Other insights come from recording your sleep and activities. If you do opt to fill in the journal, you decide what to put in there. There’s a handy timesaving feature here that allows you to edit responses from the previous day. I’m a creature of habit so this suited me well.
Strain, Sleep, Recovery
Each morning I’ve found it fascinating looking at the analysis of my sleep from the night before and seeing my recovery. Over time, my recovery status has become more accurate with how I feel. There are three colours; red indicates a poor recovery, yellow indicates a moderate recovery and green indicates a good recovery. At the end of each day, you can also see how much strain the day’s activities have put on your body on a scale of 0-21. If you want to know more about how they calculate the strain, here’s a link to Whoop’s explanation.
I’ve struggled with getting good sleep for a long time and this is an area where the Whoop 4.0 has helped me. Being able to analyse my own habits, not just around sleep but also around strain, has been a game changer. For example, I gained a more accurate idea of the gap between how long I slept compared to the time I spent in bed, and the quality of my sleep. I also gained a better understanding of the amount of strain housework and walking the dog put on my body.
Often, I had well-exceeded my strain target for the day before I’d even got as far as a run to train for my half marathon. It might sound silly, but although I already knew I was extremely tired, before the Whoop 4.0 I would just keep pushing on through. The Whoop 4.0 has helped me to be more mindful about when it might be better to rest or train with a lower strain activity. It’s also prompted me to factor in time for falling asleep as well as time asleep in bed. Not getting overtired as often has been a big positive as a result of these changes.
Health Monitor
The Whoop 4.0 monitors five health metrics on a daily basis. Once it has enough data it can tell you when these are out of your normal range. These metrics are: heart rate; skin temperature; respiratory rate; blood oxygen; HRV (heart rate variability). Over time, as I’ve become fitter while training for my half marathon, it’s been great being able to see some of these metrics change. Also fascinating, is looking at these figures after a night out drinking – it really shows you how much strain alcohol puts on your body. I also noticed changes when I was feeling physically and mentally under the weather. In tandem with the daily recovery, this sometimes acted as a reminder for when to take more of a rest.
A Little Too Much Information
When I looked at the weekly and monthly reports, initially I found the amount of information overwhelming. These reports did evolve over time though and in my opinion, they became more user friendly. I really liked the year review. This was presented in a format that I felt was clearer than the earlier weekly and monthly reports.
Within the app, you have access to an AI Whoop Coach. You can ask them general questions about training and health, or questions about your own health and training data that the app has recorded. I’ve found this to be insightful and specific to my needs. For example, it’s easy to retrieve a piece of data about my sleep, such as my sleep debt. I’ve also used it to compare the methods I’ve been using to train for my half marathon with modern training trends. The Whoop Coach even made suggestions and gave tips based on the training I had recorded in the app.
Battery Life and Charging
To charge the Whoop 4.0 you get a little charging block which you charge independently from the device and then attach it to the Whoop. This means you never have to take the Whoop off and can keep it fully charged easily. I found that I needed to charge mine every few days, more often if I trained more or if my days were higher strain.
Stinky Band
The Whoop 4.0 came with two fabric bands, one white and one dark grey. I’m a bit of a muck magnet and I have a dog who follows suit, so I didn’t even entertain wearing the white band. Aesthetically, I also think the dark grey band looks better with the device and on my wrist. On the website, there are a range of band colours to choose from.
Whilst the fabric band is comfy and I didn’t notice any kind of rash that you can sometimes get with sports bands, it does get a bit stinky. Particularly after a couple of heavy, sweaty workouts. I didn’t notice the band getting stinky when my exercise was mostly walking the dog.
It’s not a major issue as the band detaches from the Whoop 4.0 easily for washing and dries quickly. For me it was more of a minor annoyance as it needed washing quite regularly. Depending on the temperature outside, I washed it roughly every week. That was after walking the dog every day, running four times a week and strength training two-three times a week.
Tracking and Autodetect Activities
You can track activities from the Whoop app or normally via connected activity trackers. I connected Strava and Apple Health. So, any time that I tracked an activity from my Apple watch using the native activity tracker, it uploaded to the Whoop 4.0. Additionally, runs I completed using the Nike Run Club app – also started from my Apple Watch – uploaded to the Whoop 4.0 automatically. I think this is through the link between Apple Health and the Nike Run Club App.
The Whoop 4.0 also autodetects activities. Sometimes it simply detects an activity and leaves it to you to fill in what you were doing – if anything. Quite often, the Whoop 4.0 detected activities while I was doing housework. In this case I left the activity without a name. As the device collects more data about you, it starts to detect named activities that you’ve previously recorded manually, for example ‘walking’, ‘running’ or ‘yoga’.
Although, this is not always accurate. The Whoop sometimes thinks that when I’m doing housework, I’m doing yoga or HIIT instead! For walking and running, on the few occasions when I forgot to manually record the activity, usually, the Whoop accurately identified the activity and when it took place.
Water Activities and Heart Rate Training Zones
The Whoop 4.0 boasts waterproof capabilities. The device you wear on your wrist is IP68 dustproof and water-resistant up to 10 metres for up to 2 hours. It can also be worn in both chlorinated and salt water. The battery pack is IP68 water-resistant at depths up to 1 metre for 2 hours. I tested out the Whoop 4.0 device in water while on holiday in Italy. I swam in the sea and in a swimming pool. There was no need to tell it I was swimming; it auto tracked the activity each time, and I experienced no deterioration in function from the device afterwards.
Once a week, I train to try and improve my VO2 Max. I do a kind of interval training where I aim to train in different heart rate zones during different periods of my workout. Workouts recorded with the Whoop 4.0 show how long you spent in each heart rate zone and display a graph showing when this occurred. I’ve used this to check I’m training in the right zones for what I’m trying to achieve.
Recently, an update has meant that you can see the heart rate zone you’re currently training in on the lock screen of your smartphone. However, my phone is in my running shorts pocket while I’m training, so it’s difficult to take advantage of this – especially when training in an intense zone.
Whoop Development and Membership
Over the time I’ve been wearing the Whoop 4.0, the device has received regular firmware updates. In addition, the app has evolved to become more user friendly and to contain more features. I think this shows a commitment to constantly improving the experience for the user.
However, the Whoop 4.0 is an expensive piece of kit. It’s not a one-off purchase for a piece of tech but rather a membership that you will need to keep paying for whilst you want the service. Currently, you can sign up for £384 for 2 years, or £229 for 1 year. Obviously, this will price out a lot of people. Even if you can afford it, it’s still a lot of money. Although there is a one-month free trial you can take advantage of first.
Is It Worth It?
If you’ve got the money, then yes. There’s so much that the Whoop 4.0 offers that you don’t get with a simple fitness tracker. With a fitness tracker, you’re left with loads of data which you must analyse yourself. It’s true that you still need to draw your own conclusions about how to act based on the analysis in your weekly and monthly reports, and on the insights provided by filling in the journal. However, the data is analysed for you, and you have an effective AI coach to support you with your questions and goals. Each week, you can also use different plans to help you focus on an area of training or to prioritise sleep or relaxation for example.
The Whoop 4.0 takes a holistic approach to facilitating good health, fitness and wellbeing. It’s personalised based on the data from your own body, so you form habits that are good for you. I think it’s as much about what you put in as what the Whoop 4.0 offers. So yes, the Whoop 4.0 is worth it if you have the money and are the kind of person who will engage with this sort of device as a long-term commitment.
Rapid Reviews Rating
4 out of 5
4
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