While I think this video is very good in concept, I think you make a lot of assumption errors about what these metrics are supposed to represent according to WHOOP themselves. The assumption that strain and recovery should be a negative correlation makes sense on the surface for example, but is most certainly an improper understanding of the metrics themselves. Recovery is based off of how well you actually recovered from the strain, more specifically it's really just a measure of how well you slept as it records its key metrics during sleep, not wake (a potential problem IMO, but not the one you address). You can heavily exceed your strain goal in a day and also have an extremely high recovery score if you get good, effective sleep; the two variables are not inherently correlated. WHOOP even clearly states in their strain section that it is ok and even good to exceed your strain goals as long as you have good recovery habits after. Every individual's recovery habits are going to be different, so making broad assumptions based on a sample size of 1 person is also already problematic in this context. Your body may simply recover very well because you have good sleep habits or sleep longer after a high strain day for example. I personally have an issue with WHOOP in that I think the names for some of the things they track can be confusing, but I think your key assumptions about these metrics are quite problematic. While I appreciate the effort of this video as I've been interested about WHOOP myself for a bit now and equally curious about their claims, I think this video definitely missed the mark in a lot of ways and I wish you would have done a bit more research. As anyone who deals with data knows, anyone can analyze some data and make some charts, it's the interpretation that is the most crucial and difficult aspect. You also don't seem to state how long you wore the strap for and what range you're including data from? Or at least I can't find it in the video. Since most of the metrics are inherently based upon your own personal baselines, I would have pretty major concerns if you included data from within the first two weeks of wearing the device in these charts. Once again, I appreciate the effort here, but as a researcher, I found it pretty difficult and at times frustrating to watch this video and have it be presented as an objective dismantling of WHOOP when you are making some pretty large errors in basic experimental design and analysis through most of the video. I'm not trying to be rude here, but I think you can do a lot better if your goal is to try to teach people about how to properly analyze and interpret data. As it is now, this video is not much better than most of these styles of "analytic" RUclips videos that often underwhelm in the actual analysis and interpretation of the subject and lack much needed nuance. Once again, parts of the video were great and I loved the concept and effort you put into it, I just think there's some key things you overlooked that are worth considering in future content, especially when the average person watching these videos likely doesn't have a good grasp of how to properly interpret an r-coefficient or an effect size.
Fantastic points and everyone who watches the video should also read your caveats here. For reference, I wore the WHOOP for ~120 days and the 90 days I included in my analysis did not include the baseline measurement period.
You should also check out Quantified Scientist (RUclips). He does much more in depth metric focused research over longer periods of time. Lately he has been uploading a lot about WHOOP.
As someone that deals with large SQL data sets, you explained the problems with this science perfectly. A ton of effort went into this, and when I heard "data scientist" I got pretty excited. I made it 3:24 in and I was like "uhhhh, lets see if someone beat me to it." To really dig into their metric, you would have to know the logic they came to to even know what your extrapolations mean. to much antidotal inference for this to be anything other than interesting for the first three minutes for someone that knows. Interesting nonetheless.
Same here...I returned and got my money back! I was testing my heart rate with my chest strap through my Peloton and my apple watch and manual pulse check and these 3 were very close. The Whoop on the other hand was way out to lunch not to mention the crazy spikes up and down. Thanks for the RUclips Video...confirms what I experienced!
I love the idea of WHOOP. Being a data nerd myself I love the idea of being able to see what's going on in my body and how that changes over time and what's affecting it. But these sorts of insights mean nothing if the data being collected isn't even accurate or consistent. I think I'll hold out for 5.0 and wait to see what the accuracy is like on that and I'll just stick to my pixel watch and fitbit insights for now
Hey, recently Whoop updated their software that improved their heartrate precision significantly, hence it may also improved sleep precision by the same margin. Will be nice to see that remark somewhere in the pinned comment and see a retest from your side :)
When WHOOP was first described to me, I had the exact same conclusion as you and your friend. Sorry you were out all that $, but thanks for giving us the data. Great break down!
Thanks for this. Yesterday I got this huge urge, again, to buy a Whoop, but decided to watch a couple of videos that aren't sponsored and seem to be more on the objective and rational side of things. I knew before watching these videos that these trackers aren't accurate enough with most of what they do, and that for me personally it's mostly useless data, but I still get that damn urge...probably due to all the influencers and ads out there promising something life changing or that you have to track sleep and whatnot. Really hard to shake that one off for me. For now I'll use my Polar H10 and for sleep I simply track average HR once a quarter to see if there's a tendency and/or what happens after certain changes in diet and such.
First, I'll say what was my expectation and need. Im an elite powerlifter, who takes lower heart rate walks as cardio. I have an extremely stressful job that is possible to adapt in different ways due to my privelage of planning my days pretty freely. My interest was maximizing recovery, sleep and keeping track of stress points that I wasnt aware of. How exactly correct it measures I cant say, but I can say it was extremely consistent in telling me the same things depending on doing many things differently, meaning many many small changes, showed me how they added up or down depending on what I did, which blew me away of how well it quickly taught me what was good and what was not. Calories and so on, how many steps Ive done in a day, metabolism and so on, those things I already rely completely on my own knowledge. But for recovery, absolutely amazing.
Think the real value of Whoop is in the community aspects. Guess could be worth it for groups, local clubs, etc if helps improve socialization. I cancelled also, as maybe its worth $5/month for me. Using Apple Watch and Athyletic instead. Also didn’t auto track my naps, and workouts
My whoop tracks my heart rate really, really well. I do wear it fairly tight, though, so maybe that is a difference. I wear a chest strap when I am on the bike, and it tracks within 1-2 bpm of the chest strap. Same with a soccer workout.
I suspect this is the primary reason for all these different reviews. Some say the heart rate is really accurate and some (like this reviewer) report that i'ts tracking very inaccurate. Either some reviewers are simply paid off to give a positive review, the Whoop is very sensitive to different body make ups (Wider wrist, slighly differnt blood vessels or mor/less fat/muscle in the wrist area) or - and this is my guess - the whoop has to be worn really tight to be accurate and if it's slightly looser and can moove during work outs, it spits out nonsense in term sof heart rate data. I have no idea though, this is just a guess to explain why the feedback on the heart rate data is so inaccurate. Some people also report more accurate numbers when using the biceps strap.
totally agree! what is even more crazy is the amount of money they're asking for it, if you use it for 3 years u will be paying like $1000. A huawei band 8 will give you more for less than $100
Thanks for that! I find all reviews are so LOVE MY WHOOP but don't show proper data. It's an expensive thing to be giving the same data most watch can.
What are your thoughts on the Fitbit Sense 2 in terms of heartbeat sensor accuracy? also it has an cEDV sensor (continuous electrodermal activity) to measure stress via micro-sweating and such.
there is a channel call the Qualified Scientist, you should check it out if you are trying to compare different smart watch. He uses multiple devices and compare the results with a pretty accurate device simultaneously to rate the devices.
Truly amasing video bravo for standing out about this problem i am an software engineer, a tech guy passionate about healt and more importantly startup founder in which the key technology are smartwaches for detection emotional responses and i learned about HRV,Respitory rate,EEG,PPG and so on.So actualluy i have encountered that most smartwatches eeg which is presented into the app use different methods and assumpitons or may present you the data in a way easy for you but not relevant.Most smartwatches cant detect real HR they detect blood flow and make assumptions.Those who can,cant detect HRV in most cases and calculate it without all mediacal data needed the other 4 heart waves that the EEG big machine can detect but the smartwatch can't .Important to mention that your HRV is the most important data which is controles by your autonomic neuro system which is made by sympatic and parasympatic one so .HRV tells you what your system does and the system does it trough the hrv like sweating,breathing (the respiratory rate),REM sleep and stress most importantly so bassicly your hrv contorls all of the things and is influenced by them so yeah im not a data scientist but i think its normal to have these data problems also HRV patterns up and down are the exact opposite of your heart rate one and the respiratory rate so the confounding variables problem may not exist if its looked deeper into the data.Still amasing content and some vibe from Bulgaria!
great review and really interesting to hear your experience. As a garmin user, I really was looking forward to the deeper insights. Initially it seemed really impressive but then I noticed that some activites strain score simply didn't make sense. A slow jog was recorded as a near max-heart rate effort. this was clearly wrong and my garmin epix was reporting a way lower heart rate. The final straw was when walks with my dog were repeatedly registering as a high strain activity. I simply couldn't trust the data and thats where it fell down - all the sophisticated modelling is based on questionable data, which then skews the recommended recovery. I've gone back to just using the garmin epix and taking more notice of the overnight HRV, which seems to be the main factor the whoop uses in determining recovery. Garmin have just added a new sleep coach feature as well which is more realistic in my opinion. It never recommends more than 9 hours sleep. Having tried to get a recommended near 10 hours the whoop recommended once, unless you are a sloth it is never going to happen.
Yeah, this was exactly my experience with the sleep recommendations too. at one point it was recommending like 11 hours of sleep and I would routinely wake up after 7-9 hours of sleep feeling incredibly well rested and recovered. I have a Garmin Fenix which is equally awful at estimating my heart rate (without the heart rate strap) but I find it too big and clunky to sleep with, so I’m just not tracking my sleep now.
@trent_would I have found the Epix heart rate accuracy pretty good in general, but saying that I haven't tested it extensively and mainly use for steady state cardio. I have paired my epix with a garmin heart rate strap previously for the best accuracy (I don't usually bother with it though as found the Epix wrist measurement good enough for me). I know Whoop does offer the bicep band which is supposed to be better than wrist placement for accuracy, and maybe that would have improved things but I havent tested it. If Whoop offered compatibility with external heart rate straps too that would definitely keep users happy that want the best possible accuracy, not sure why they don't allow this as an option.
Pretty important review, the heart rate during workout session was a pretty big flag... Sometimes the best things are a forcing function that help with a behavioral change and it looks like their general UI/approach helps with that. But if you already have a few products (I have Garmin, Oura, Apple Watch) then it seems overkill
Very interessant post! I would love to see a test from you about the bevel app with the Apple Watch. Or in other words: do you think there is any device which can provide “somewhat good” data to see recovery and sleep?
I don't know.. you've got the data guy as far as heart rate goes, my suggestion would be to analyze it rather than give a subjective view? It looks like they correlated quite well just based on the data you gave. As far as the correlation of perceived effort vs actual, yes that is going to differ quite a bit between individual and individual, at a macro level there is no way that that measure is going to be completely precise. Personally, I feel that it tracks quite well, with the extremes being a better than the middle.
there's no way your sensor isnt defective or improperly mounted, that weight lifting hr graph is all over the place as you said, mine looks exactly like your garmin, and the HR also matches my apple watch 9 almost always during workouts
Like I said at the very end, I think the best you can do to get accurate heart rate data at a reasonable cost is getting a heart rate monitor and wearing that during your workouts. I'll try some experiments with other wearables this year and see if I can find one that I truly recommend though.
About the accuracy of the Whoop, I have used Whoop for almost 3 years now. Also, I always used a Garmin Fenix Next to it, and have the HRM Pro from Garmin. Garmin on the Wrist, and Whoop on the wrist are both off. But when I put the Whoop into the Pants or on the upper Arm, the measurements of Whoop and the HRM Pro only differ by around 3bmp on average and are simular to each other. So when I don't feel like wanting to wear the HRM Pro, for example on MTB tours, I connect the Fenix to the Whoop which I have usually in the Pants and trust the results. To be honest, I have used whoop so long now, that I can predict when I gone have a green, yellow or red recovery. I only just use it, since I still have credits until end of 2026 and hoping for some cooler Updates until then. The Strength trainer is useless as it is, the breathing stuff hidden away in the app, and I actually like the new Garmin since the Update way more than the Whoop app.
Hi You are making nice videos on RUclips. I have watched your video about whoop 4.0 because I am trying to find best solution to estimate my daily calories at least with 10-15% error. I know you have garmin watches and belt. how do you think wearing watches daily and wearing belt at trainings will give good enough results? if no, then maybe I will buy VO2 Master, or I will try to estimate my calories by my self with experiments of detecting level of O2 and CO2 in real time using gas analysers , finding ways to measure volume of breath in real time (maybe Spirometer). And then collecting data and finding relationships with HR level to make estimation formula of metabolism by HR that is based on statistics collected from my own body.
Eu consigo ver pelo vídeo, que a pulseira não está 2,5cm acima do pulso, como eles recomendam. Talvez seja por isso que as medições estejam todas erradas.
I disagree with your experience. Whoop has been a god send for me over the past 6 months. In terms of your recovery and strain correlation have you considered that there could be other variables?
You disagree but don't say why it's a godsend, have you checked your heart rate with a known method that's accurate and compared? Here we have two people who are both into fitness and healthy and have experience of multiple devices and have said it's inaccurate and why
1. I only read or listen to audiobooks for an hour before I sleep. 2. I sleep with a fan in the summer to keep my sleep environment cool. 3. I sleep in a room with now windows. a blackout curtain would have the same effect. 4. I don’t drink coffee past 11AM. 5. I sleep with an eye mask, for when my wife is watching stuff on her iPad. 6. I go to bed and wake up around the same time every day. Sleep consistency helps improve sleep quality.
It would be cool if scams weren’t so acceptable. I got one a few days ago because I liked the idea of it and want to improve my health. Now I’m watching a data scientist tell me it’s garbage and it likely is. I thought it actually tracked my heart rate because it’s a heart rate monitor. Mine says my highest sustained stress times are whenever it says I’m in deep sleep. A chatbot in the app says it could be because I need to change my lifestyle 🥴. I need to stop buying things.
I just got the Whoop, and it's almost dead on with my Garmin FR935. It's interesting you said the Garmin chest strap is the good standard, I've never heard that. It's usually the Polar H10, and i can 100% agree the polar is more accurate; the Garmin was the worst I've ever used. It constantly stopped or would say my hr was over 200 when i was walking. I think all this shows that these devices seem to work better for some than others.
I think its very very common the whoop starts off extremly inaccurate and useless then levels off. Really the only thing it offers is sleep tracker. Too much inaccuracies make the data almost useless.. the sad thing is you dont know exactly how and when its innacurete.
i've had Whoop about six months and I just couldn't believe how it measured my heartbeat during any activity. I run, strength training and bike ride and couldn't believe the garbage heart data i was getting. Whoop's strain is totally useless and forget about using chest strap. Sorry Whoop is a total garbage. The only nice thing about Whoop is that it has awesome app, but totally useless optical sensor to but in quality hr data. And pay for this every month is totally throwing the money out of the window.
Interesting. I compared the Garmin heart rate monitor to my WHOOP strap in the video. But I've compared my Garmin watch (without the heart rate strap) to the WHOOP and I found that they were super dissimilar in my heart rate trends (both were about equally inaccurate).
I'm using Whoop for a month free trial and once it arrived they got me with the whole 'the first month is for calibration', so I decides I'd use it for a couple of months, mainly because as said in this good video, it's fun to look at stats. But it's common sense to take it all with a pinch of salt. We are not in an information age sci-fi movie, wristwatch technology for measuring physical recovery performance is crude at best, at worst total snake-tech. Common sense, checking in, mindfulness, fatigue, performance. Whoop outsources all of that.
Why does it cost $30 a month if it’s not the ultimate measurement tool and you’re supposed to trust your own feelings over the watch? My own feeling is free and if it’s more accurate, why do I need the Whoop to tell me something completely wrong “in conjunction”?
Good video but I hear alot about "feelings". That's not a bad thing but the point of all of these tools is to give a baseline of some sort to build motivation from. I'm sure we can all agree that nothing worn on the wrist or the finger is going to be lab accurate.
did you test wearing the whoop on different parts of your body? if yes, was there any difference? they suggest wearing it around your arm for more accurate measurements.
I wear my whoop 24/7 I find it fun to track the metrics and gamify my recovery/sleep. strain is the least of my worries the only effect it has on my lifestyle is if I don’t strain much I eat a little less which is actually very helpful for me. I stopped watching this video 2 minutes in because it just seems boring. Give me some personal insight some opinions and some pros and cons give me a story about how it helped you and how it confused you, don’t give me a bunch of data which means nothing to my personal use case. I’ll check out your other videos though 👍
You talk about variables yet try to disprove the whole device by attempting to show the lack of correlation between Strain Target & Recovery and attempt to suggest that the only variable in the Recovery number is how far you were from the optimal Strain Target
The correlation between Strain Target and Recovery is one of multiple attributes of the WHOOP that I look at in this video and not at all my primary reason for distrusting WHOOP. This lack of correlation is a downstream effect of the root cause of WHOOP's uselessness: the hardware's measurement of heart rate is so inaccurate, that any recommendations coming from this are as good as garbage. That's why I recommend switching to a heart rate strap at the end of the video.
Your whoop is loose … it’s not suppose to be 100% accurate … it’s a gauge for people that actually need it n have very little to no clue about the fitness parameters… question… does this not help in anything ?
I think the WHOOP could be useful for someone who is primarily interested in improving their sleep and wants to track improvements over time. The sleep recommendations can be inaccurate (see Johannesburg100’s comment) but, as far as I can tell, their sleep measurements are fairly accurate.
A lot of health assumptions made that have nothing to do with Whoop- great example of what I mean is calorie consumption. Review assumes that a)weight loss is as easy as calories in and calories out, and b)calories are accurately reported on labels, and /or food is weighed appropriately. Reviewing may be over or under estimating calorie burn of workouts, as it has been universally an issue since calorie burn was understood at all that those trying to measure exercise expenditure grossly over estimate, in all great intentions, their expenditure. Furthermore, while adding up 100 calories here and there over time works great for some stats guy, in real life, 100ish calorie discrepancy in meaningless. I felt like this reviewer has never worn another tracker and has no idea that this science is meant to get it pretty right, but that it will never get it fully right. HR on a wrist, for example, is more user friendly and desired by the consumer, yet it does not produce the best results. It's a limitation one must be willing to accept. Also, a data guy should understand user fails. If your tracker is falling off at night, the user needs to do better.
Yeah the heart rate can be gamed in my experience (4 year user). I can stand and do a running/upward punching motion with my arms for 2 min and my heart rate will get to 180. 5 min and I can get to 200. I stop and barely feel like I've done anything, not out of breath at all. BUT I do love it for sleeping and overall accountability. Any other wearable recommendations would be appreciated!!
While I think this video is very good in concept, I think you make a lot of assumption errors about what these metrics are supposed to represent according to WHOOP themselves. The assumption that strain and recovery should be a negative correlation makes sense on the surface for example, but is most certainly an improper understanding of the metrics themselves. Recovery is based off of how well you actually recovered from the strain, more specifically it's really just a measure of how well you slept as it records its key metrics during sleep, not wake (a potential problem IMO, but not the one you address). You can heavily exceed your strain goal in a day and also have an extremely high recovery score if you get good, effective sleep; the two variables are not inherently correlated. WHOOP even clearly states in their strain section that it is ok and even good to exceed your strain goals as long as you have good recovery habits after. Every individual's recovery habits are going to be different, so making broad assumptions based on a sample size of 1 person is also already problematic in this context. Your body may simply recover very well because you have good sleep habits or sleep longer after a high strain day for example. I personally have an issue with WHOOP in that I think the names for some of the things they track can be confusing, but I think your key assumptions about these metrics are quite problematic. While I appreciate the effort of this video as I've been interested about WHOOP myself for a bit now and equally curious about their claims, I think this video definitely missed the mark in a lot of ways and I wish you would have done a bit more research. As anyone who deals with data knows, anyone can analyze some data and make some charts, it's the interpretation that is the most crucial and difficult aspect.
You also don't seem to state how long you wore the strap for and what range you're including data from? Or at least I can't find it in the video. Since most of the metrics are inherently based upon your own personal baselines, I would have pretty major concerns if you included data from within the first two weeks of wearing the device in these charts. Once again, I appreciate the effort here, but as a researcher, I found it pretty difficult and at times frustrating to watch this video and have it be presented as an objective dismantling of WHOOP when you are making some pretty large errors in basic experimental design and analysis through most of the video. I'm not trying to be rude here, but I think you can do a lot better if your goal is to try to teach people about how to properly analyze and interpret data. As it is now, this video is not much better than most of these styles of "analytic" RUclips videos that often underwhelm in the actual analysis and interpretation of the subject and lack much needed nuance. Once again, parts of the video were great and I loved the concept and effort you put into it, I just think there's some key things you overlooked that are worth considering in future content, especially when the average person watching these videos likely doesn't have a good grasp of how to properly interpret an r-coefficient or an effect size.
Fantastic points and everyone who watches the video should also read your caveats here.
For reference, I wore the WHOOP for ~120 days and the 90 days I included in my analysis did not include the baseline measurement period.
You should also check out Quantified Scientist (RUclips). He does much more in depth metric focused research over longer periods of time. Lately he has been uploading a lot about WHOOP.
As someone that deals with large SQL data sets, you explained the problems with this science perfectly. A ton of effort went into this, and when I heard "data scientist" I got pretty excited. I made it 3:24 in and I was like "uhhhh, lets see if someone beat me to it." To really dig into their metric, you would have to know the logic they came to to even know what your extrapolations mean. to much antidotal inference for this to be anything other than interesting for the first three minutes for someone that knows. Interesting nonetheless.
Whoop Fanboy with a ton of time on your hands lol.
Same here...I returned and got my money back! I was testing my heart rate with my chest strap through my Peloton and my apple watch and manual pulse check and these 3 were very close. The Whoop on the other hand was way out to lunch not to mention the crazy spikes up and down. Thanks for the RUclips Video...confirms what I experienced!
Polar H10 is the gold standard for heart rate measurement
WHOOPs, you earned a new sub! Thanks for not hyping it up like other youtubers!
So you’re thanking him for having a different opinion than others?
@@cristobalbalenciaga7295he is showing data, this is not an opinion
@@cristobalbalenciaga7295shut up
I love the idea of WHOOP. Being a data nerd myself I love the idea of being able to see what's going on in my body and how that changes over time and what's affecting it. But these sorts of insights mean nothing if the data being collected isn't even accurate or consistent.
I think I'll hold out for 5.0 and wait to see what the accuracy is like on that and I'll just stick to my pixel watch and fitbit insights for now
How did you pull the data?
You should do a video on Apple Watch! Just curious if it also has the same issues with its health and fitness features
absolutely underrated video, thank you so much for this video !!
Same experience with the inconsistent feedback and inconsistent hr data. Thanks for the video.
Can you do a video on the oura ring!
Hey, recently Whoop updated their software that improved their heartrate precision significantly, hence it may also improved sleep precision by the same margin.
Will be nice to see that remark somewhere in the pinned comment and see a retest from your side :)
When WHOOP was first described to me, I had the exact same conclusion as you and your friend. Sorry you were out all that $, but thanks for giving us the data. Great break down!
Thanks for this. Yesterday I got this huge urge, again, to buy a Whoop, but decided to watch a couple of videos that aren't sponsored and seem to be more on the objective and rational side of things. I knew before watching these videos that these trackers aren't accurate enough with most of what they do, and that for me personally it's mostly useless data, but I still get that damn urge...probably due to all the influencers and ads out there promising something life changing or that you have to track sleep and whatnot. Really hard to shake that one off for me. For now I'll use my Polar H10 and for sleep I simply track average HR once a quarter to see if there's a tendency and/or what happens after certain changes in diet and such.
Wow, so much work has gone into this video. Thank you
First, I'll say what was my expectation and need. Im an elite powerlifter, who takes lower heart rate walks as cardio. I have an extremely stressful job that is possible to adapt in different ways due to my privelage of planning my days pretty freely.
My interest was maximizing recovery, sleep and keeping track of stress points that I wasnt aware of. How exactly correct it measures I cant say, but I can say it was extremely consistent in telling me the same things depending on doing many things differently, meaning many many small changes, showed me how they added up or down depending on what I did, which blew me away of how well it quickly taught me what was good and what was not.
Calories and so on, how many steps Ive done in a day, metabolism and so on, those things I already rely completely on my own knowledge.
But for recovery, absolutely amazing.
Think the real value of Whoop is in the community aspects. Guess could be worth it for groups, local clubs, etc if helps improve socialization. I cancelled also, as maybe its worth $5/month for me. Using Apple Watch and Athyletic instead. Also didn’t auto track my naps, and workouts
Excellent analysis, gained a subscriber 👍
My whoop tracks my heart rate really, really well. I do wear it fairly tight, though, so maybe that is a difference. I wear a chest strap when I am on the bike, and it tracks within 1-2 bpm of the chest strap. Same with a soccer workout.
I suspect this is the primary reason for all these different reviews. Some say the heart rate is really accurate and some (like this reviewer) report that i'ts tracking very inaccurate. Either some reviewers are simply paid off to give a positive review, the Whoop is very sensitive to different body make ups (Wider wrist, slighly differnt blood vessels or mor/less fat/muscle in the wrist area) or - and this is my guess - the whoop has to be worn really tight to be accurate and if it's slightly looser and can moove during work outs, it spits out nonsense in term sof heart rate data.
I have no idea though, this is just a guess to explain why the feedback on the heart rate data is so inaccurate. Some people also report more accurate numbers when using the biceps strap.
@@floz9718 I think you're 100% spot on here.
totally agree! what is even more crazy is the amount of money they're asking for it, if you use it for 3 years u will be paying like $1000. A huawei band 8 will give you more for less than $100
5:22 what city is this? kinda envious of this nice wide sidewalk and view.
incredible review, you deserve 100x your subs.
Please do one for any ring like oura or ring con!
Just like how business stakeholders get hyped on data visualization rather than how caveats underneath.
I got a Whoop ad on this video
Thanks for that! I find all reviews are so LOVE MY WHOOP but don't show proper data. It's an expensive thing to be giving the same data most watch can.
More data in this video - ?v=rlEsoMy-l4w
What are your thoughts on the Fitbit Sense 2 in terms of heartbeat sensor accuracy? also it has an cEDV sensor (continuous electrodermal activity) to measure stress via micro-sweating and such.
there is a channel call the Qualified Scientist, you should check it out if you are trying to compare different smart watch. He uses multiple devices and compare the results with a pretty accurate device simultaneously to rate the devices.
Kill myself lifting weights: "You had low strain today"
Mild cardio for 20 minutes: "WOW take a rest tomorrow, your strain is through the roof!".
Truly amasing video bravo for standing out about this problem i am an software engineer, a tech guy passionate about healt and more importantly startup founder in which the key technology are smartwaches for detection emotional responses and i learned about HRV,Respitory rate,EEG,PPG and so on.So actualluy i have encountered that most smartwatches eeg which is presented into the app use different methods and assumpitons or may present you the data in a way easy for you but not relevant.Most smartwatches cant detect real HR they detect blood flow and make assumptions.Those who can,cant detect HRV in most cases and calculate it without all mediacal data needed the other 4 heart waves that the EEG big machine can detect but the smartwatch can't .Important to mention that your HRV is the most important data which is controles by your autonomic neuro system which is made by sympatic and parasympatic one so .HRV tells you what your system does and the system does it trough the hrv like sweating,breathing (the respiratory rate),REM sleep and stress most importantly so bassicly your hrv contorls all of the things and is influenced by them so yeah im not a data scientist but i think its normal to have these data problems also HRV patterns up and down are the exact opposite of your heart rate one and the respiratory rate so the confounding variables problem may not exist if its looked deeper into the data.Still amasing content and some vibe from Bulgaria!
If there is a team that can make something better ? can you be their scientist for the app
we are working on, all data scientists (we all worked at NIH)
how you have extracted the woops data?
great review and really interesting to hear your experience. As a garmin user, I really was looking forward to the deeper insights. Initially it seemed really impressive but then I noticed that some activites strain score simply didn't make sense. A slow jog was recorded as a near max-heart rate effort. this was clearly wrong and my garmin epix was reporting a way lower heart rate. The final straw was when walks with my dog were repeatedly registering as a high strain activity. I simply couldn't trust the data and thats where it fell down - all the sophisticated modelling is based on questionable data, which then skews the recommended recovery. I've gone back to just using the garmin epix and taking more notice of the overnight HRV, which seems to be the main factor the whoop uses in determining recovery. Garmin have just added a new sleep coach feature as well which is more realistic in my opinion. It never recommends more than 9 hours sleep. Having tried to get a recommended near 10 hours the whoop recommended once, unless you are a sloth it is never going to happen.
Yeah, this was exactly my experience with the sleep recommendations too. at one point it was recommending like 11 hours of sleep and I would routinely wake up after 7-9 hours of sleep feeling incredibly well rested and recovered.
I have a Garmin Fenix which is equally awful at estimating my heart rate (without the heart rate strap) but I find it too big and clunky to sleep with, so I’m just not tracking my sleep now.
have you found the the Epix heart rate measurements are accurate across a wide range of activities?
@trent_would I have found the Epix heart rate accuracy pretty good in general, but saying that I haven't tested it extensively and mainly use for steady state cardio. I have paired my epix with a garmin heart rate strap previously for the best accuracy (I don't usually bother with it though as found the Epix wrist measurement good enough for me). I know Whoop does offer the bicep band which is supposed to be better than wrist placement for accuracy, and maybe that would have improved things but I havent tested it. If Whoop offered compatibility with external heart rate straps too that would definitely keep users happy that want the best possible accuracy, not sure why they don't allow this as an option.
Pretty important review, the heart rate during workout session was a pretty big flag... Sometimes the best things are a forcing function that help with a behavioral change and it looks like their general UI/approach helps with that. But if you already have a few products (I have Garmin, Oura, Apple Watch) then it seems overkill
Very interessant post! I would love to see a test from you about the bevel app with the Apple Watch. Or in other words: do you think there is any device which can provide “somewhat good” data to see recovery and sleep?
…and do you already saw the last update on the algorithm of whoop?
Would it be possible to share the analysis as templates? I’d love to analyse my data to see if it has the same results.
I don't know.. you've got the data guy as far as heart rate goes, my suggestion would be to analyze it rather than give a subjective view? It looks like they correlated quite well just based on the data you gave.
As far as the correlation of perceived effort vs actual, yes that is going to differ quite a bit between individual and individual, at a macro level there is no way that that measure is going to be completely precise. Personally, I feel that it tracks quite well, with the extremes being a better than the middle.
there's no way your sensor isnt defective or improperly mounted, that weight lifting hr graph is all over the place as you said, mine looks exactly like your garmin, and the HR also matches my apple watch 9 almost always during workouts
Great video. Was looking for a synopsis from some educated people. Plus that monthly sub is a scammmmmm. Thanks man!
Also do you have a recommendation of a wearable that’s better than woop?
Like I said at the very end, I think the best you can do to get accurate heart rate data at a reasonable cost is getting a heart rate monitor and wearing that during your workouts.
I'll try some experiments with other wearables this year and see if I can find one that I truly recommend though.
Whoop is a marketing company
When you spend all your money on marketing notning gets left for yojr product. The software looks pretty though, amd the data graphs look pretty.
All companies sell ideas and feelings first, products second.
Gold standard in HR measurement is Polar H9/10 but I'm just nit-picking.
Also thumbs up for the good video :)
About the accuracy of the Whoop, I have used Whoop for almost 3 years now. Also, I always used a Garmin Fenix Next to it, and have the HRM Pro from Garmin. Garmin on the Wrist, and Whoop on the wrist are both off. But when I put the Whoop into the Pants or on the upper Arm, the measurements of Whoop and the HRM Pro only differ by around 3bmp on average and are simular to each other. So when I don't feel like wanting to wear the HRM Pro, for example on MTB tours, I connect the Fenix to the Whoop which I have usually in the Pants and trust the results. To be honest, I have used whoop so long now, that I can predict when I gone have a green, yellow or red recovery. I only just use it, since I still have credits until end of 2026 and hoping for some cooler Updates until then. The Strength trainer is useless as it is, the breathing stuff hidden away in the app, and I actually like the new Garmin since the Update way more than the Whoop app.
Thank you, thank you, and one more time: thank you! For more videos that are not sponsored and marketing our minds.
Yeah its a bit weird that its giving turmeric such a negative impact score
Hi
You are making nice videos on RUclips.
I have watched your video about whoop 4.0 because I am trying to find best solution to estimate my daily calories at least with 10-15% error.
I know you have garmin watches and belt. how do you think wearing watches daily and wearing belt at trainings will give good enough results?
if no, then maybe I will buy VO2 Master, or I will try to estimate my calories by my self with experiments of detecting level of O2 and CO2 in real time using gas analysers , finding ways to measure volume of breath in real time (maybe Spirometer).
And then collecting data and finding relationships with HR level to make estimation formula of metabolism by HR that is based on statistics collected from my own body.
Eu consigo ver pelo vídeo, que a pulseira não está 2,5cm acima do pulso, como eles recomendam. Talvez seja por isso que as medições estejam todas erradas.
I disagree with your experience. Whoop has been a god send for me over the past 6 months.
In terms of your recovery and strain correlation have you considered that there could be other variables?
You disagree but don't say why it's a godsend, have you checked your heart rate with a known method that's accurate and compared? Here we have two people who are both into fitness and healthy and have experience of multiple devices and have said it's inaccurate and why
How do you optimize your sleep environment? Bro I suck at sleeping and medical school is killing it…
1. I only read or listen to audiobooks for an hour before I sleep.
2. I sleep with a fan in the summer to keep my sleep environment cool.
3. I sleep in a room with now windows. a blackout curtain would have the same effect.
4. I don’t drink coffee past 11AM.
5. I sleep with an eye mask, for when my wife is watching stuff on her iPad.
6. I go to bed and wake up around the same time every day. Sleep consistency helps improve sleep quality.
It would be cool if scams weren’t so acceptable. I got one a few days ago because I liked the idea of it and want to improve my health. Now I’m watching a data scientist tell me it’s garbage and it likely is. I thought it actually tracked my heart rate because it’s a heart rate monitor. Mine says my highest sustained stress times are whenever it says I’m in deep sleep. A chatbot in the app says it could be because I need to change my lifestyle 🥴. I need to stop buying things.
Whoop! There goes your money... 💸
I just got the Whoop, and it's almost dead on with my Garmin FR935. It's interesting you said the Garmin chest strap is the good standard, I've never heard that. It's usually the Polar H10, and i can 100% agree the polar is more accurate; the Garmin was the worst I've ever used. It constantly stopped or would say my hr was over 200 when i was walking. I think all this shows that these devices seem to work better for some than others.
I've had one for 3 years now. Never once had blank areas of data. Yes, of course a wrist tracker is going to be much less accurate than a chest strap.
Garmin and wahoo tikr are the 2 best HR chest straps...
I think its very very common the whoop starts off extremly inaccurate and useless then levels off. Really the only thing it offers is sleep tracker. Too much inaccuracies make the data almost useless.. the sad thing is you dont know exactly how and when its innacurete.
i've had Whoop about six months and I just couldn't believe how it measured my heartbeat during any activity. I run, strength training and bike ride and couldn't believe the garbage heart data i was getting. Whoop's strain is totally useless and forget about using chest strap. Sorry Whoop is a total garbage. The only nice thing about Whoop is that it has awesome app, but totally useless optical sensor to but in quality hr data. And pay for this every month is totally throwing the money out of the window.
Thank you for diving into the data
Awesome content Trent, keep it up!
Don’t think this is fair I’ve used a garmin on left hand and whoop on right and there basically identical
Interesting. I compared the Garmin heart rate monitor to my WHOOP strap in the video. But I've compared my Garmin watch (without the heart rate strap) to the WHOOP and I found that they were super dissimilar in my heart rate trends (both were about equally inaccurate).
I'm using Whoop for a month free trial and once it arrived they got me with the whole 'the first month is for calibration', so I decides I'd use it for a couple of months, mainly because as said in this good video, it's fun to look at stats. But it's common sense to take it all with a pinch of salt. We are not in an information age sci-fi movie, wristwatch technology for measuring physical recovery performance is crude at best, at worst total snake-tech.
Common sense, checking in, mindfulness, fatigue, performance. Whoop outsources all of that.
whoop is meant to be used in conjunction with your own subjective feeling of the day and your body. its not the holy grail of body measurment
Why does it cost $30 a month if it’s not the ultimate measurement tool and you’re supposed to trust your own feelings over the watch? My own feeling is free and if it’s more accurate, why do I need the Whoop to tell me something completely wrong “in conjunction”?
Good video but I hear alot about "feelings". That's not a bad thing but the point of all of these tools is to give a baseline of some sort to build motivation from. I'm sure we can all agree that nothing worn on the wrist or the finger is going to be lab accurate.
love the beginning of the video :D
So people would look Whoop mesures for years still trying to decipher what they mean.
Great video, immediately on seeing the ad for it i thought that there was no conceivable way it would work the way they want it to / advertised
Wow, what an awesome (data) science based video!
Comparing a chest strap to a wrist band for HR is wild.
People need to see this video. I almost purchased lol. Glad that I saw this video before I decided.
Problem is, you forgot to measure your poop. That's the main metric to watch out for
Great video!
I had exactly the same, it was ideal for me but was way too inaccurate
did you test wearing the whoop on different parts of your body? if yes, was there any difference?
they suggest wearing it around your arm for more accurate measurements.
I didn’t. The reason for that is that you have to buy the straps to go around your arm or chest separately and they’re quite expensive.
So we can assume it's a subscription model for inaccurate data? Great:/
Awesome video. Don't understand, why you only have 911 Subs. Anyway, its 912 now. 👍
I have NEVER had any of the technical issues that he is experiencing. Probably have a defective tracker or user error or both.
Thank you! I keep my Apple watch ❤
The absolute numbers don’t really matter as long as this thing makes you more attentive towards your health related habits
Why pay so much for a placebo? Lol!
@@Slippinjimmy12 not your money to count, buddy
@@starcevda Shove the whoop up yo ass buddy.
maybe it doesn’t matter what you did but it’s about your sleep
Whoop heart rate tracking is garbage, i can wave my arms and hit 150 bpm while sitting at my desk.
Saved me buying one!
Thank you!
Thank you for this video!
Thanks for the video 👍 very interesting 😮
I wear my whoop 24/7 I find it fun to track the metrics and gamify my recovery/sleep. strain is the least of my worries the only effect it has on my lifestyle is if I don’t strain much I eat a little less which is actually very helpful for me. I stopped watching this video 2 minutes in because it just seems boring. Give me some personal insight some opinions and some pros and cons give me a story about how it helped you and how it confused you, don’t give me a bunch of data which means nothing to my personal use case. I’ll check out your other videos though 👍
Good video bro
Whoop whoop, another Trent video! 🎉
Today 3,4k views and only 97 likes (with mine). I guess people already subscribed to Whoop or are willing to believe the commercial joke
You talk about variables yet try to disprove the whole device by attempting to show the lack of correlation between Strain Target & Recovery and attempt to suggest that the only variable in the Recovery number is how far you were from the optimal Strain Target
The correlation between Strain Target and Recovery is one of multiple attributes of the WHOOP that I look at in this video and not at all my primary reason for distrusting WHOOP.
This lack of correlation is a downstream effect of the root cause of WHOOP's uselessness: the hardware's measurement of heart rate is so inaccurate, that any recommendations coming from this are as good as garbage.
That's why I recommend switching to a heart rate strap at the end of the video.
Great video, but this isn’t how HRV data works
You familiar with HRV?
@@KochKocak very
Why is he saying "wup" tho 😢😂
Your whoop is loose … it’s not suppose to be 100% accurate … it’s a gauge for people that actually need it n have very little to no clue about the fitness parameters… question… does this not help in anything ?
I think the WHOOP could be useful for someone who is primarily interested in improving their sleep and wants to track improvements over time. The sleep recommendations can be inaccurate (see Johannesburg100’s comment) but, as far as I can tell, their sleep measurements are fairly accurate.
You're just wearing it too low and too lose.
The sleep tracking, calories and hr are worth it alone. Wish it was wasn’t a subscription
A lot of health assumptions made that have nothing to do with Whoop- great example of what I mean is calorie consumption. Review assumes that a)weight loss is as easy as calories in and calories out, and b)calories are accurately reported on labels, and /or food is weighed appropriately. Reviewing may be over or under estimating calorie burn of workouts, as it has been universally an issue since calorie burn was understood at all that those trying to measure exercise expenditure grossly over estimate, in all great intentions, their expenditure. Furthermore, while adding up 100 calories here and there over time works great for some stats guy, in real life, 100ish calorie discrepancy in meaningless. I felt like this reviewer has never worn another tracker and has no idea that this science is meant to get it pretty right, but that it will never get it fully right. HR on a wrist, for example, is more user friendly and desired by the consumer, yet it does not produce the best results. It's a limitation one must be willing to accept. Also, a data guy should understand user fails. If your tracker is falling off at night, the user needs to do better.
Yet, Apple Watch gives you outrageous HR which you know CANNOT be correct, Whoop is definitely elite!!!
>>4:37
Whoop changes my life. Things spot on as far as my experience. Matched to a chest hr strap and a garmin. They are all pretty close measures.
An example of bad data science
Wups
Yeah the heart rate can be gamed in my experience (4 year user). I can stand and do a running/upward punching motion with my arms for 2 min and my heart rate will get to 180. 5 min and I can get to 200. I stop and barely feel like I've done anything, not out of breath at all. BUT I do love it for sleeping and overall accountability. Any other wearable recommendations would be appreciated!!