If you’re serious about fitness, you need a serious tracker.
Whoop and Garmin are two top contenders,
but which one is right for you?
Let’s take a closer look and find out.
The fitness tracker marketplace is growing rapidly with more and more brands creating innovative fitness bands, trackers, and watches to help you keep an eye on your body, training, lifestyle, and daily fitness routine so that you can gather insights about your body 24/7 to level up your fitness game.
Having a band with fitness tracking and health monitoring capabilities will show you the vital metrics and will give you a new perspective on your lifestyle and how to optimize it.
Whoop vs Garmin
This article talks about the two most popular fitness tracker brands Garmin and Whoop and in this Garmin vs Whoop comparison you will learn the features, pros, and cons of both brands to make an informed decision.
Before diving deep, let me give you a quick review of each of these brands.
Related: Whoop Alternatives
Garmin:
Garmin is a well-known brand for making powerful smartwatches and recently they have started developing wearables for tracking performance while cycling, running, and swimming.
Compared with Whoop, Garmin is slightly behind in sleep cycle tracking and health statistics. Few Garmin models like Elevate V4 have a superior heart rate sensor than Whoop for those involved in high-intensity training and activities with a lot of wrist movement.
But an average Garmin smartwatch won’t be able to track sleeping positions, sleep cycles, naps when you fell asleep or woke up.
There are tons of other features that you will miss in Whoop which are GPS, NFC, smart notifications, live tracking, Live sharing, safety features, distance tracking, pace, speed, elevation gain/loss, calories burned data, contactless payments, on-board music storage, and a lot more.
Whoop Quick Features:
Whoop does a wonderful job of providing sleep statistics and recovery data and takes sleep tracking to the next level to ensure you get good sleep.
Similarly, it gives advanced stats about cardiovascular activities, strength training workouts, cardio, weightlifting, and also shoe calories burned.
It’s a monthly subscription-based wristband that can be worn on the torso, waist, and calf and all the stats are easy to view either on a smartphone or a web dashboard.
For some people, the lack of display on the band is a disappointment but for some, it is peace of mind as it won’t break while playing rugby, hockey, etc. Unlike Garmin, you cannot connect Whoop with iPhone but the recurring monthly fee is where the excitement of many people fades off.
Before we begin the review, you must know that neither of these brands is perfect and both brands have their perks and flaws but both Whoop and Garmin are competitive yet most popular brands.
To continue reading this head-to-head comparison that highlights the differences and similarities between Whoop vs Garmin to help you decide which one is superior and which one is inferior.
Related: Amazon Halo vs Whoop
Garmin Vivoactive 4:
Garmin Vivoactive 4 is an extremely powerful smartwatch equipped with innovative features and it’s technically superior to any other smartwatch on the market. It’s a gift for both a professional and a beginner runner or a fitness enthusiast.
This watch isn’t any ordinary watch that can track your activities or fitness, but it goes a step beyond tracking and gives you details about resting heart, low or high heart rate, a gauge to show hardness during activities inside or outside the water.
Furthermore, it tracks all types of movements and tracks all types of sports and activities like indoor walking, running, cycling, swimming, golf, and a lot more. Plus, it has an adaptive fit and can easily adjust for any wrist size.
A plethora of other superior features includes Gyroscope technology for movement measurement, velocity measurement, notifications of calls, texts, emails, and so on. With all these features working at the same time, it depletes battery power quickly so don’t mind if the band lasts for a couple of days only per charge.
Whoop 4.0:
Whoop 4.0 is the latest wristband by Whoop that looks nice and sleek and without any doubt, it’s a wonderful fitness tracking gadget that can do a lot of things like can track heart rate, skin temperature, skin conductance, respiratory rate, pulse oximetry, and a wide variety of biometric data.
It not only calculates the data but helps you make decisions based on that data and even it can help you detect signs of abnormalities to detect illness in its early stages, and an amazing tracking sensor in Whoop can alert users of warning signs of Covid-19 as well.
Furthermore, it has wireless charging, longer battery life, and offers exceptional sleep tracking but it lacks a step counter as a company thinks it’s not an important thing to track.
WHOOP VS GARMIN: SLEEP TRACKING:
| Features | Garmin | Whoop |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep tracking | Yes | Yes |
| Sleep stages tracking (light, deep, REM) | Yes | Yes |
| Heart rate monitoring during sleep | Yes | Yes |
| Sleep score/rating | Yes | Yes |
| Smart wake-up feature (using sleep stages) | Yes | Yes |
| Sleep insights and suggestions | Yes | Yes |
| Integration with other apps/devices | Yes | No |
| Sleep Efficiency | No | Yes |
| Sleep Disturbances | No | Yes |
| Sleep Autonomy | No | Yes |
| REM Latency & Density | No | Yes |
| Recovery Score | No | Yes |
| Respiration Rate | Yes | Yes |
| Pulse Ox | Yes | No |
| Sleep Score | Yes | Yes (Colors) |
Design:
Let’s begin with the design comparison between Garmin vs Whoop to see which one is the best when it comes to wrist comfort.
Garmin:
The clear difference between both of these trackers is that Garmin has a considerable digital display that makes it slightly heavier than Whoop.
But that’s not all as Garmin smartwatches come in various materials like leather, silicone, nylon, and titanium and there’s also a CLD-coated steel or stainless steel bezel. So yeah Garmin won’t only feel heavier but uncomfortable while sleeping especially when the wrist bends slightly during the night.
Whoop:
Whoop lacks a digital display which make it durable to wear in harsh environments and practically weightless as well. Furthermore, Whoop offers different type of bands and colors and the band is slightly thicker and knitted around the sensor so it sits on the skin perfectly and never cause any skin irritation. The band is thread through the clasp to adjust the tightness.
The best part is the type of bands like Any-wear arm sleeve, bicep band, and body apparel to place the tracker away from the wrist it is required for a certain types of activities like snorkeling as it cannot handle water pressure more than 10 meters.
Fitness Tracking:
Garmin better tracks peak performance results and you can set the modes to track specific exercises to workouts and other activities like hiking, skiing, bouldering, indoor climbing, or other high-intensity interval training workouts.
Similarly, it can automatically detect while you are running, swimming, and cycling and can start calculating your body vitals.
Whoop on the other gives Garmin tough competition and gives advanced stats about your activities and workouts with extreme accuracy, thanks to the cutting-edge sensors ( 5 LEDs and 4 Photodiodes ).
Unfortunately, Whoop lacks a step counter but rest assured it tracks all sorts of biometric data like heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen saturation levels, breathing rates, sleep ERM cycles, skin temperature, estimates strain, recovery, and gives you extravagant details of your physiological performance so that you can keep yourself emotionally ( With tone analysis ), physically, and mentally healthy.
The cherry on top is that depending on your activities and routines, it gives you personalized diet plans, workouts, medication, and nutrition recommendations as well.
Calorie Tracking:
Garmin tracks active and passive calories burns and you can access the mobile application to check the burned calories on top of that it recommends some activities to help you burn more calories if required.
Whoop on the other end does almost a similar job to Garmin but with Whoop users can log daily calorie intake and track calorie burns and meet their daily targets based on the information provided by the app in the form of activities.
Sleep Tracking:
A large part of our life goes into sleeping and good sleep promises a great day that’s why many people consider getting a fitness tracker that can efficiently track sleep, naps, waking up time and can recommend a handful of other things related to sleep.
Garmin:
Garmin does have a sleep tracking feature and shows sleep features in certain protocols but it lacks a sleep couch ( Recommendation of sleep depending on physical activities you do ) feature like Whoop.
Other than that, it can track sleep stages like REM sleep, light sleep, and deep sleep a great thing about Garmin is the tracking of OX score which means how much oxygen the body absorbs at night.
All the vitals while sleeping are recorded and shown in the app like respiration rate at night, Heart rate variability, and sleep score. Unfortunately, a handful of high-end Garmin watches have a body recovery option.
Whoop:
Whoop does a more wonderful job than Garmin when it comes to sleep tracking, thanks to the innovative protocols it has to track your sleep and tells how the body recovers at night. There are three colors to differentiate between sleep scores: green color means good sleep, yellow color means you need some improvements in your sleep, and red light shows poor sleep quality or nap.
An amazing feature Whoop has is a sleep couch feature that keeps an eye on your daily workouts and physical activities and recommends how much sleep your need.
Moreover, Whoop tracks sleep stages, respiratory rate, disturbance, and a unique thing about Whoop is that Garmin doesn’t have is a track of restless nights when you keep waking up at night.
Sleep tracking is a complex task for a fitness tracker and Whoop does it so efficiently that you can see your sleep duration, resting rate, sleep performance, and a number of times you wake up.
Heart Rate Monitoring:
Heart rate monitoring is one of the most important purposes of any fitness tracker and both Garmin and Whoop are equipped with sensors to track your heart rate and other heart-related data.
Garmin:
Garmin features a powerful sensor to accurately measure heart rate, and heart rate variability, and it has a unique feature of body battery energy that indicates how much your body is prepared for another day of training.
Whoop:
Whoop with a woven strap sits comfortably on your wrist and being exceptionally lightweight means you will keep wearing it without any discomfort that way you will have a 24/7 view of your body vitals especially the stats related to your heart. Whoop has advanced sensors to accurately measure heart rate, heart rate variability, and resting heart, and it also has a body battery energy monitor. The sensors are advanced enough to collect data 100 times per second than Garmin which makes it a powerful and reliable competitor.
Applications:
Both fitness trackers come with a companion app and both apps have their pros and cons, so let’s see in detail.
Garmin:
Garmin has a GPS Garmin app with a user-friendly interface and features according to the plan that you have selected with Garmin. The app offers plenty of features like Garmin pay, and Garmin track, and when you open the app, there will be recovery, training readiness, and HRV status at the top of the app.
The digital display of the smartwatch shows basic stats but a detailed view is only available on the smartphone app. Other than that, from the app, you can make payments, share information in real time with LiveTrack, access the online fitness community, and connect it with other apps like Strava and My FitnessPal, etc.
Whoop:
Whoop is strict when it comes to accessing the app as you cannot see anything for free on the app unless you get a monthly subscription.
The app on the other hand is pretty easy and intuitive with amazing fonts and sharp colors. Like the Garmin app, it also shows things like strain, recovery score, and sleep hours on top. The app has a feature the daily journal and based on that it can give you weekly and monthly assessments. Beyond that, you get to see extensive health metrics as well.
Activity Tracking with Sensors:
As mentioned earlier, both Garmin and Whoop are equipped with smart sensors to measure and track physical activities. So let’s take a detailed look at which one is the best regarding tracking activity.
Garmin:
Garmin cannot detect all activities but it does tracks a handful of activities like running, cycling, swimming, hiking, and other major activities and provides an enormous amount of data that can be helpful for a common foe to a professional athlete.
You can expect detailed insights for major activities and it also gives running dynamics and hiking measurements with elevation sensors.
There’s a built-in GPS and pre-plan routes with navigational features. Few of the Garmin models have training readiness score that shows if the body is ready for the next workout or physical activity or not.
Whoop:
Whoop is capable to detect 97 different activities and you get to see detailed insights of all the activities on the app which helps you take a look at your heart rate, calories burn, distance, strain score, strain couch, and a lot more.
Durability and Water-resistant:
Garmin smartwatch is designed to withstand harsh environments and it is water-resistant for up to 50 meters. Furthermore, you can wear it in the swimming pool, beach, or shower but exposure to soap, shampoo, lotions, or chlorinated water can damage the watch.
Regarding the construction, the watch is made with fiber-reinforced polymer case and the lens is made with gorilla glass or sapphire crystal so forget about breaking it won’t even get scratched and yes it’s also dust-resistant.
The best part is that a few Garmin Models like Fenix 6, Venu, Swim 2, and Vivofit are more capable and have swim-tracking features and the capability to go as deep as 100 meters for snorkeling or other high-speed water sports.
Whoop is less durable than Garmin as it can only handle 10 meters of water depth pressure and it can break at even 32 feet deep inside the water. The bands are made of microfilament yarn so yeah the band is water-resistant and can be worn in rain or snow but it’s not a suitable band for deep-water activities like snorkeling or even diving.
Battery Performance:
Garmin as an outdoor watch comes with a smaller yet powerful enough battery that it could last for 18 days but the extended battery life is only available in high-end models like Fenix 7. But an average Garmin watch can still give a higher battery life of at least 7 days which is still a decent figure. The best part is that Garmin models can take power from Sun to extend the battery life as well but only a couple of models by Garmin are capable to do that.
Whoop on the other end is slightly behind the Garmin and offers a maximum battery backup of 4 to 5 days on a single charge which is still impressive the best part is the latest charging mechanism that allows you to charge the band without removing it from the wrist so that you don’t miss a beat.
Price of both Fitness Trackers:
Garmin is a one-time payment product and a great Garmin watch can cost you around $400 to $700 which makes Garmin watches even more expensive than Samsung or Apple watches. It’s a standalone purchase and you don’t have to pay the monthly recurring fee but there are separate charges for accessing more advanced features like maps and LTE.
Whoop has a monthly-subscription model and they charge $30/month the longer plan you buy the less payment you will have to pay like annual plan costs you $24/month but in the long run, Whoop is an expensive option than Garmin even if you get a decent $700 Garmin watch. Keep in mind that you may have to pay separately for other accessories like an extra battery back.
Is there anything better than Whoop?
Garmin gives Whoop tough competition and with Whoop you get the best sleep-tracking data along with other perks like blood oxygen levels, heart rate stats, and a hell lot of other stuff. With Garmin, you get extended battery life, no monthly subscription, body battery monitoring, and contact sports. So both have their perks and pitfalls.
Is Whoop, Apple Watch, or Oura more accurate?
Whoop is much more accurate than the Apple smartwatch or Oura. You also get well-calibrated GPS in Whoop and with Oura, you get high industry-standard measurements with accuracy.
Verdict:
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