Whoop is a long-standing health and fitness company that makes one of the most in-depth fitness wearables you can buy. Favored by athletes and celebrity endorsers like LeBron James and Michael Phelps, Whoop has dropped a new feature that may make it more appealing to the average person: an AI fitness coach.
According to Whoop, it’s the first fitness wearable with an AI coach available to interpret your data, help you plan workouts and reach your goals. Whoop Coach is intended to revolutionize on-demand personalized advice and recommendations.
I got to test Whoop and its new AI coach, which is still in beta. While this feature may not make the high yearly subscription cost worth it for everyone, it’s cool if you want advice tailored to your wellness journey.
What is the Whoop band?
When I first started wearing my Whoop, I was surprised to see no screen or buttons. Everything is done within the app. I got another surprise when I logged into the app. Whoop doesn’t track the typical factors that other wearable devices do. You won’t get any insights into your steps, stairs or active minutes.
It measures only strain, sleep and recovery with the help of five LEDs, a body temperature sensor and four photodiodes. Despite being limited to these three metrics, it measures them well, presenting them in charts and graphs that help demonstrate how they interact with each other.
Things I liked about the Whoop 4 band:
- Personalized data based on your sleep, strain and recovery.
- The app is easy to use, with tabs for each metric.
- The charger slides onto the band, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to put it back on after it’s charged.
- Whoop says you should get about five days off one charge. I found that to be true.
- Lifetime warranty as long as you bought it from Whoop and have an active membership.
Things I didn’t like:
- The optional alarm that vibrates the band to wake you up was effective, though the double tap that’s supposed to turn it off didn’t always work. Most mornings, I had to hit it several times to get it to stop.
- The charger was difficult to slide onto the band the first few times.
- Switching bands was a frustrating experience because the way Whoop hinges is not intuitive.
- The band is waterproof, though because it is so wide, it took at least two hours to dry.
- The Whoop membership is steep, with no monthly payment option. An annual membership costs $239 upfront and $399 for 24 months.
Whoop also sells clothing — sports bras, underwear, tops and bottoms — that the tracker slips into. So you’re not limited to just wearing it on your wrist. I like this versatility because wearing my Fitbit on one wrist and Whoop on the other felt intrusive sometimes. And though the Whoop 4 is 33% smaller than the previous generation, it’s still a little larger than I like for my wrist. It felt like a backpack buckle around my wrist. However, I would happily slip it into a pair of leggings to still get the data that Whoop offers.
Introducing Whoop Coach
