Review: Whoop MG

In a sea of nearly identical fitness trackers, Whoop stands apart. Since it started in 2012, the company has understood that the hardware was secondary to software. For a pricey monthly membership, you get access to a (theoretically) never-ending series of new features in the Whoop app, and the company throws in the small, screenless sensor for free.

This was once a pretty good bargain, but for the past several years, Whoop hasn’t done much. In 2023, the company released its OpenAI-powered personalized fitness service, Whoop Coach. As with most other AI-enabled fitness services, you had to think really hard about how to frame your questions to get useful advice. I didn’t find it particularly helpful.

This year, the company finally released an updated Whoop that comes with a bevy of new features that make it a much more versatile tracker for people who don’t post their gains every day. Most notably, it has a proprietary algorithm for blood pressure tracking. I’ve been testing the new Whoop MG for a few weeks now, and it reminded me why people like this tracker so much.

Screen-Free Solution

Photograph: Adrienne So

If you’re not familiar with a Whoop tracker, it's a small wearable with photoplethysmography (PPG) sensors to measure heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV); accelerometers to measure movement, strain, and activity; and skin temperature sensors to capture variations during sleep or recovery. The new Whoop units are smaller and purportedly more power-efficient than the last one, although I’m not getting anywhere near the claimed 14-plus days of battery life. In 21 days, I’ve had to charge it twice.

It doesn’t have onboard GPS. It’s not super-annoying, given that, you know, it doesn’t even have a screen, so I’m not exactly using the Whoop to clock my pace on a run. But you do have to use GPS on your phone to unlock certain features within the Whoop app, like a more accurate VO₂ max. (Just toggle “Track Route” in the app when starting to log a run.) You can also insert the Whoop into Whoop Body garments.

Whoop sent the new MG training bra ($59) and training shorts ($54), which captured my data while I was running and rowing, but if you’re a returning Whoop customer, you do need the new Whoop Body clothes because the MG is smaller than the last iteration, the Whoop 4.0.

It’s also important to note that Whoop changed its membership structure. You used to pay a blanket $30 per month membership fee for everything Whoop had to offer, but now features are paywalled behind a tiered subscription plan. Whoop One ($199/year) gets you the regular Whoop 5.0, which is the upgrade from the Whoop 4.0, Whoop Coach, and sleep, strain, and recovery tracking. Whoop Peak ($239/year) gets you the Whoop 5.0 with the new Healthspan and Pace of Aging features, and Whoop Life ($359/year) gets you the new Whoop MG, which unlocks the new cardiac features like ECGs, heart screeners, blood pressure monitoring, and AFib detection.

Photograph: Adrienne So

Paywalling features sucks. But I must point out that at $359 per year, the highest tier costs exactly what Whoop subscribers were paying before the change, which was $30/month. That’s not exactly cheap, especially compared to an Oura subscription at $6 per month, but Oura doesn’t include a ring in the subscription, either.

No Strain, No Gain

The most significant difference between Whoop and almost every fitness tracker is a proprietary algorithm called Strain. It’s a measure of the stress on your body, on a scale from 1 to 21 based on the Borg rating of perceived exertion. Strain takes into account your previous day’s recovery, so the Strain score you earn day to day, even from the same activities, will be different. It’s also not linear, so getting your Strain score from 16 to 17 is much harder than getting your score from 4 to 5.

Courtesy of Whoop

Courtesy of Whoop

Most fitness trackers are meant to encourage you to, you know, get moving and gamify any movement at all. In contrast, Whoop gives you zero brownie points for getting up and moving every hour. One Friday, I walked my kids to and from school, walked to lunch, walked my dog, biked to my kids' school, set up yard games, walked around playing yard games, then biked home. It was a 17,000-step day. Guess how much Strain I accumulated? Not nearly enough, says Whoop. A mere 10.1 Strain score. It was not optimal and did not put me on the path to future gains. Not even rock climbing for 1.5 hours in the gym gave me a noticeable Strain increase.

It can be frustrating, especially if you're someone who is used to thinking of themselves as pretty active. Thankfully, Whoop has introduced many more features that make the Whoop more useful for regular fit people and not people trying to win the Masters age group in a road race. The most significant new features are Healthspan, Pace of Aging, and a slew of cardiac features only available with the Whoop MG and the Whoop Life membership. It’s the first tracker that made the distinction that while I’m currently younger than my chronological age, my Pace of Aging is sadly accelerated due to my poor sleep habits and intermittent strength training.

The cardiac features are anchored by the blood pressure measurement. A few important factors to note: The blood pressure measurements are done via a proprietary algorithm that uses your heart rate, heart rate variability, and blood flow patterns to estimate your systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The Whoop does not take blood pressure measurements from the wrist. The feature is still in beta, is not yet FDA-cleared, and requires calibration with a separate blood pressure monitor.

I used a Withings BPM Vision to calibrate the Whoop, and my manual measurements did not find anomalies. Right now, I think blood pressure monitoring on the Whoop is useful as a canary in a coal mine. If you have hypertension and were hoping that a Whoop meant you didn’t have to take your blood pressure daily, you will need a separate blood pressure cuff.

Photograph: Adrienne So

I compared the stats measured on the Whoop to my Oura ring and found that the sleep stats were astoundingly similar—the amount of sleep measured, for example, differed by only a minute or two. The Whoop now counts steps, which it did not do before, but the steps are hilariously inaccurate when compared to the Garmin Forerunner 970, either swinging wildly too many or too few. GPS tracking helps the Garmin to be more accurate, and Whoop is continuously updating the algorithm, but I would take step tracking with a grain of salt for now.

Whoop Coach has seen significant improvements since I last tried it several years ago. Instead of just sitting there, a blank space waiting to be filled with your personal health neuroses, it now gives you a Daily Outlook with the weather, a few select health insights, and some suggested activities for the day. It also offers some personalized prompts. For me, these weren't always helpful—yes, I'm trying to improve my sleep consistency by going to bed at the same time, but it doesn't always work out that way. But at least now, Whoop Coach offers a starting point.

Finally, the Whoop has a haptic alarm that you’re supposed to turn off by tapping the top of the device. This did not work for me—I tapped and tapped, to no avail. I turned this off and used my phone’s alarm, like usual.

If you’re considering the Whoop, you should ball out and get the Whoop MG with the Whoop Life membership. Even years after it debuted, it’s still a niche tracker, but still unique. You never have to take it off or look at a screen or worry about notifications. You can layer it with bracelets or stick it in your bra or underwear. The Whoop Life membership has health insights that no other tracker has right now, particularly when it comes to cardiac health, and Whoop Life costs the same as a regular Whoop membership has for years.

I like being able to check, you know, what time it is with a Garmin or how fast I’m running with a tracker that has a screen, but if I were a lifter, I could see the appeal. Now, off to try and find an activity that will give me a decent amount of Strain.