If you're choosing between Whoop and Garmin, there are some big decisions to make.
For those looking for a wearable workout partner, Whoop vs Garmin is one of the toughest choices to make.
Bagging both of these is a legitimate option for those who want the best of both worlds, but this is a fight to the finish, to understand the nuances of these top-tier trackers.
Whoop is all about sleep tracking and recovery – and it takes account of your workouts and adjusts how much sleep and rest you need to be ready to hit your next session. As a workout tracker, it’s fairly basic – and the lack of a screen means no real-time feedback on your workouts, and GPS is handled by a paired smartphone.
On the other hand, Garmin is a brilliant workout tool. Devices such as the Garmin Fenix 8 / Forerunner 265 or 965 have many of Whoop’s recovery tracking features built in. And they offer more guidance on your key fitness metrics and improving performance, making them better suited to many people’s goals.
Here are the key considerations and recommendations.
Whoop 4.0 long-term review | Best Garmin watches compared
Quick verdict:
If you’re all about tracking the performance of your workouts or your increasing fitness, then it’s all about Garmin. Most people will be served better by their Forerunner or Fenix sports watches.
However, Whoop offers the best recovery and sleep tracking out there, and it also excels as a health monitor while Garmin’s tools need work to be as insightful. It’s one of the best devices for looking deep into your habits and health — and laying bare what you need to perform. So if you’re serious about focusing on your performance, and to be more focused on sleep and readiness, then Whoop comes into its own.
Price
The Whoop 4.0 (click to read our review) has a variety of pricing options. While there are up-front costs, it’s best to think of Whoop as a monthly subscription with an up-front payment, rather than a set price.
You can opt to pay $399/£394 up front, which includes 24 months of membership at $16/£16 a month, which then continues after the initial two-year period.
Alternatively, you could choose to pay £234/$239 upfront, which works out to $19/£19 per month for 12 months.
Or you can just pay $30/£27 per month, which works out to £324 for the first year. You can check the best Whoop prices here.
Garmin on the other hand has a myriad of devices at different price points, but there are no ongoing costs. For a true like-for-like comparison with Whoop, you have to choose a device with Training Readiness.
That means you’re looking at the Garmin Fenix 8 or Fenix E, Garmin Epix, or Forerunner 965. All of these are really expensive watches, but there’s no ongoing fee. Remember that Whoop’s monthly cost is ongoing after the contract period. Check out our guide to the latest Garmin Fenix deals.
So it would likely take 3+ years for Whoop to reach the initial cost of premium Garmin devices. But after that, you’re out of pocket.
Winner: Draw
Design
There’s one Whoop 4.0 – and it looks different from any Garmin ever released. The tracker lives in a replaceable, washable fabric band, that’s comfortable, flexible, and can be moved to the upper arm or bicep. It can also be placed in compatible Whoop clothing garments, such as bras and boxers.
There’s no screen, so you don’t get notifications or any real-time feedback. The whole experience is very passive and unobtrusive. That will suit some people perfectly, while others will miss the real-time feedback of a screen. If you do decide to wear a watch/smartwatch/sports watch and Whoop, its fabric band does make things slightly less dorky.
On the other hand, Garmin has a myriad of watches. For Whoop-like insights, you’re looking at the Forerunner or Fenix brands. All share the same design language and are large and sporty. The company has moved towards AMOLED displays too, which make them far more enjoyable to interact with, but are now essentially big smartwatches.
These two are chalk and cheese in terms of their design. It really comes down to what you want to wear on your wrist.
Recovery metrics
Whoop is all about recovery. It tracks your strain and sleep and spits that out into a Recovery percentage based on several factors, but chiefly, heart rate variability. Getting sleep and rest will positively impact your score, but things like drinking alcohol will negatively impact HRV.
The Whoop Recovery score is generated overnight, and presented to you in the morning, once your sleep has been processed. It’s a light touch, and a quick check in the morning will show how recovered you are for the day/training sessions ahead, and you don’t need to interact with the app much after that.
That’s essentially the entire Whoop experience summed up – it’s very focused, simple, and good at what it does. In our testing, we’ve found recovery scores to be very sensitive to lifestyle factors, and good discipline is required to get a green recovery, and it works to promote good choices.
However, it is static and only refreshes after a night of sleep. So if you wake up with low recovery, it won’t reveal if you’re ready to train later in the day — which is something we’ve seen with services such as HRV for Training and Training Today (on Apple Watch.)
Garmin’s had to play catchup with Whoop in terms of its readiness metrics, and it has implemented several new features in the past couple of years.
All Garmins have Body Battery, which is an estimation of your energy levels and acts like a readiness score. It’s a little bit hidden but when used the right way, it can reveal if you’re rested enough to train. It’s also been developed recently to recharge by resting or having a nap, so it’s more reactive than Whoop.
However, it’s not as well-presented or easy to understand as Whoop. And part of the problem is that Whoop’s insights are laser-focused on readiness while Body Battery is just a small feature on the watch, and up to you to interpret or act on.
This may explain why Garmin has launched multiple other features that offer the same kind of insights.
Top-tier Garmin devices (Fenix/Garmin Forerunner 965) now have Training Readiness, which is a version of a recovery score, but geared towards readiness to work out, so is linked heavily to training load data. The score out of 100 will tell you when to push, or when to lay off.
Confusingly, (and this is *so* Garmin) it introduced HRV Status which is available on mid-tier devices and shows when your HRV might be in or out of the zone. HRV Status is an average of your HRV over three days — and it’s just really clunky to understand. It’s not as good as Whoop at factoring in stressors such as alcohol or poor sleep.
Whoop’s Recovery tracking is more user-friendly, accessible, sensitive, and easier to understand than Garmin’s. So it’s a win for Whoop.
Winner: Whoop
Sleep tracking compared
We’ve slept with Garmin and Whoop countless times, with years of accumulated data on both platforms. And we feel that Whoop offers the best quality data round.
Garmin’s sleep tracking has improved greatly over recent years, but will generally estimate significantly longer duration than Whoop, and is less sensitive to restlessness.
Whoop will also produce nightly data on wake-ups per hour, breathing rate, and sleep duration – and display these against your monthly averages, so you can see if something is out of whack.
It also calculates your sleep needs based on the last few weeks of tracked sleep and any extra strain, such as workouts. So it will estimate a greater sleep need after a training session, and suggest an earlier bedtime. It puts a focus on your actual sleep vs sleep need, offering a much closer insight into how much rest you need, rather than simply reporting it.
In short, Whoop’s sleep tracking is more reactive and placed in a better context with your lifestyle and training than Garmin’s.
Winner: Whoop
Workout tracking
It’s been all Whoop so far and for good reason. But when it comes to workout tracking, Garmin comes to the party.
Whoop can track workouts such as running or cycling, and borrow your phone’s GPS for accurate distance. It works, and the autodetection of workouts is also very good, including for quite obscure activities, such as golf or yoga. It can also spit those workouts into Strava, so as long as you take your phone out, Whoop can be a perfect passable workout tracking device.
But as there’s no screen, there’s no real-time feedback on distance/time/pace data.
What’s more, the post-workout data is quite basic.
For Garmin, workout tracking is its bread and butter, with plenty of workout profiles, most of which offer metrics that go way beyond simple time/distance/HR data.
Even mid-range Garmins will present data like running power, but also metrics such as VO2 Max, Race Predictor, Fitness Age, and other metrics, on which it bases plenty of fitness estimates.
And that’s what we love about Garmin and the reason we’ve stuck with the platform. It is certainly far more powerful at analyzing your workout performance, and crucially, your current fitness.
While Whoop is aimed at prosumer athletes, there’s no provision for actually telling you how fit you are. And that’s more motivating for your training, and getting out of the door and getting sweaty.
Winner: Garmin
Wellness and health
Whoop has taken a big step towards health tracking, with its Health Monitor. After establishing your baselines over two weeks, it will alert you if your breathing rate, heart rate variability, resting heart rate, skin temperature, or blood oxygen level becomes abnormal.
It uses an excellent traffic light system, and again, it’s easy to check in with this data and get an overview of your health. We’ve found it effective, with infections like COVID sending the green traffic light system into disarray, and even the effects of hay fever or a few beers showing up in the results.
Whoop has added a real-time stress monitor as well, and this works best with its daily analysis of your time spent in high-stress zones. It also has some decent guided breathing workouts.
Garmin also has a strong line-up of wellness features, but they’re not as simple or personal as Whoop.
The Stress Score will analyze stress levels, but we’ve always been irked by the lack of actionable information. Unless you’re focused on stress, it’s a forgettable data point.
Health data such as resting heart rate and respiration rate is all tracked in the Health Stats section of Garmin Connect. But the data isn’t presented proactively, and it’s difficult to make sense of – so there’s no content here in terms of core vitals.
Garmin has also added ECG to its Venu 2 Plus and Venu 3 – which is a level above what you’ll find on Whoop. But is very much an occasional health feature, not a daily wellness one.
Whoop vs Garmin: Verdict
There’s a strong argument for getting both of these. A Whoop 4.0 band, used with a cheaper Garmin sports watch (such as a Forerunner 165) is a seriously powerful combo. You get a superb fitness watch and a personalized wellness tracker.
But that’s a cop-out answer.
It’s best to think about it this way: A Garmin watch will supercharge your workouts, but the Whoop will get you into bed earlier, promote better habits, and tell you more about your body, your habits and your life.
Most people will be served better by a Garmin, for fantastic workout tracking, excellent fitness data, and all those smartwatch style features too. And if you choose the right Garmin (Fenix/Forerunner 965), you’ll get all the data a Whoop can offer anyway. You’ll just need to work a little bit harder to interpret the data yourself.
But Whoop is truly an excellent device that drives better habits, makes you more accountable for your choices, and is the best sleep tracker out there. It offers real insight into your sleep patterns, habits, and the quality of your rest. The problem is that while it’s brilliant in its niche, runners and cyclists will still need a sports watch to go with it.
