For a long time now, if you wanted a screenless fitness tracker that could properly dig into your health and recovery, there was really only one name worth talking about: Whoop.
The wearable brand has carved out a loyal following with pro athletes and data obsessives alike, offering the kind of in-depth insights that most mainstream wearables simply can’t match.
But that could finally be about to change.
With the Fitbit Air, Google looks to have taken the core appeal of Whoop – comfortable 24/7 tracking, sleep and recovery insights, and a distraction-free design – and wrapped it in something that feels much more accessible to everyday users. And, crucially, at a much lower price.
The Whoop band offers plenty of insights
I’m a big fan of Whoop bands; I used the Whoop 4 for over a year before transitioning to the newer Whoop MG when it was released last May, and carried on using the screenless fitness tracker for months afterwards.
It is an impressive bit of kit despite looking rather underwhelming; hidden in the strap is an advanced heart rate sensor that can track metrics like your heart rate constantly, meaning even if you forget to track a workout in the moment, you can go back, tell the Whoop app what you did and when, and it’ll retroactively analyse your data.
Key to the Whoop experience is the strain score, a novel way to track the effort of your workouts rather than relying on metrics like heart rate or distance. It not only makes it easier to get an idea of how much effort you’ve put into a workout at a glance, but it also means that workouts of different kinds – say hiking and cycling – are broadly comparable despite different metrics being tracked.
It also lets you drill down into your data quite deeply, with a myriad of charts and graphs you can use to track your most important vitals over time, along with sleep suggestions that actually mirror my sleep patterns rather than generic guidance to try to get to sleep earlier.
You can go through all that data yourself, or you can use the ChatGPT-powered health assistant to make sense of your data, ask about trends and get advice on health and fitness, all personalised to your own results.
There are also features like Whoop Age that essentially combine all your data – from health metrics like HRV to your Sp02, movement levels, sleep performance and more – to give you what it calls an accurate representation of your body’s age. And if you plump for the MG model, you’ll also get ECG and blood pressure monitoring, though the latter is only an estimate rather than clinical-grade.
And, despite offering 24/7 monitoring, the wearable can last for up to two weeks on a single charge. It’s safe to say there are very few gaps in my data.
These all add up to an impressively holistic overview of your health and fitness, with levels of data depth that are very rarely offered by the mainstream competition. It explains why you’ll often see Whoop bands on the wrists of pro-level athletes.
Whoop has had a monopoly on the screenless tracker market for years now, with competing options like the Polar Loop and Amazfit Helio Strap not quite offering the same level of depth or performance as Whoop’s wearable – but the Fitbit Air could change that.
In a nutshell, the Air offers broadly the same experience as the Whoop 5; it’s a smart little ‘pod’ that sits in a wristband, holding all the smarts like the battery and heart rate monitor.
However, while I sometimes struggled to sleep with the Whoop MG – its thickness meant it would snag on pillows and the like – Google has designed the Fitbit Air specifically for sleep, claiming that users rated it more comfortable than “leading competitors”. I think we know exactly what Google is referring to there.
And, like the Whoop alternative, the Fitbit Air also offers 24/7 heart rate tracking along with all the key metrics – irregular notifications for signs of AFib, SpO2 monitoring, sleep tracking and smart wake alarms – you’ll also find in the Pixel Watch 4, a wearable that costs a whole lot more.
This all ties directly into the Fitbit app, which is soon to become the Google Health app, and it’s a bigger deal than it sounds. The redesigned interface is not only much easier to use, but with the Fitbit Premium subscription, you’ll also get Gemini-powered coaching insights throughout the day, along with the ability to customise your workout plans in natural language.
While I’ve not yet used the Fitbit Air, I have tried the Public Preview of the Fitbit app redesign, and I must admit, it’s the slickest, most genuinely easy-to-use interface of any fitness app I’ve used to date – Whoop included.
It just makes sense; everything is split into helpful tabs, and you can talk to the AI-powered coach at any point to not only log things like food not measured by the Air, but to ask about your data or even change your workout plans on the fly. Those workout plans, by the way, come with fully structured exercises with videos to show you how to perform the moves if you’re unsure.
It’ll also work with more platforms than the existing Fitbit app once the rebrand rolls out in a few weeks, complete with Apple Health support for iOS users.
Google has even thought of the little things with the Air, like the ability to use it in tandem with the Pixel Watch 4.
They both have different focuses – the Watch 4 is ideal for checking notifications, tracking workouts and getting map directions, while the Air is better for tracking sleep and recovery – so being able to swap and choose depending on what you’re up to without the risk of duplicate or missing data is wholly welcomed by me.
Sure, it misses out on some of the more advanced features of the Whoop MG – like ECG and blood pressure monitoring – and battery life is ‘only’ seven days compared to Whoop’s 14, but that likely won’t matter to a lot of people.
Whoop’s subscription looks less tempting than ever
I think the real kicker here is the pricing model for the Whoop 5 and Whoop MG; rather than buying the product outright and paying a cheap monthly subscription for more advanced features like a growing number of wearables – Oura and Fitbit included – Whoop relies on a subscription-only plan. And let’s just say, it’s definitely not cheap.
The Whoop 5 will set you back either £169/$199 or £229/$239 depending on the subscription you opt for – but not outright, per year, with prices rising to as much as £349/$359 per year for the top-end Whoop MG with its blood pressure and ECG capabilities. That’s more than most other wearables outright, on a yearly basis. Safe to say that it’s a lot of money for the vast majority of us that just want reliable 24/7 health tracking.
That’s where the Fitbit Air really comes into its own; the hardware costs just £84.99/$99, with an optional £7.99/$9.99 per month Fitbit Premium subscription if you want to access advanced features like the Gemini-powered Fitness Coach tech. At that price, you’d have to buy the Air and use the Premium subscription for a few years before you’d hit the cost of just one year of Whoop.
And, with the Whoop 5 and Whoop MG celebrating their first birthday right now, there are going to be a lot of users hitting the end of their first-year subscription, considering whether they really want to pay all that money for another year – especially when the Fitbit Air offers most of the same tech in a really consumer-friendly package.
Sure, there are areas where the Whoop will still excel, especially with its advanced metrics tailored to pro-level athletes, but for the vast majority of us who simply want a convenient, comfortable, and non-distracting way to track our health and fitness, it looks like the Fitbit Air is the one to go for. I certainly can’t wait to get it on my wrist in the coming weeks to see how it performs.
