I wore Whoop for 90 days—here’s what I learned

Tags: Review | Smart

10.11.2025

Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Michael Phelps, Charles LeClerc, Virgil van Dijk, Chris Williamson, Steve-O (yes, that one from Jackass)… So many celebrities have been linked to the Whoop fitness band that I had to find out for myself whether Whoop is really that good, or if it’s just riding on a massive marketing budget.

This article boils down to one simple question I’ll answer at the end—Is Whoop really worth it?

What is Whoop?

Whoop is a fitness band that you might not even recognize as a smart device at first glance. It doesn’t have a display, so you need a phone to see anything Whoop measures.

If you’re used to standard smartwatches, that might feel like a step back, but distraction-free devices are increasingly in demand. We get bombarded with stimuli all day—most of us don’t need any more. That’s part of why bands like this, as well as smart rings, earbuds and other minimalist devices, are growing in popularity.

What puts a lot of people off Whoop is the price. It’s not a one-time purchase—it’s a monthly or annual subscription. The most expensive one (the one I chose) comes out to just under 7500 Kč per year. And let’s be honest—that’s not exactly pocket change. The frugal part of me can’t help thinking that for that money, I could buy a new smartwatch every year, while with Whoop I’m wearing the same device.

Yes, if Whoop releases a new feature or a new device type, you’ll get a new model. But while new features arrive fairly often, it took almost four years from Whoop 4.0 to Whoop 5.0. And whether anyone will keep paying a Whoop subscription that long—I honestly don’t know.

You’ll never feel out of place wearing Whoop

Let’s be real—Whoop looks great. As I said up top, plenty of people wouldn’t even realize it’s a smart device. And more than that, many would probably assume it’s a stylish band worn purely as an aesthetic accessory.

That’s arguably Whoop’s biggest advantage. You can wear it anywhere—even somewhere dressy, with a traditional watch on your left wrist and Whoop on your right. No one will bat an eye, and its clean look blends into more formal settings without any trouble.

I’ve been reviewing smartwatches for over five years, and honestly—sometimes I just need a break, a little “watch detox.” I’ll go a while wearing nothing. I’m a numbers fan though—especially resting heart rate, HRV and sleep. I can even work out without a watch. So what if a few miles don’t make it to Strava? I get that for some people that kills the point of the activity, but that’s definitely not me. :)

And for that, Whoop is perfect. It measures everything I need and doesn’t distract me at all. Sure, I could turn off notifications and disable the display on a smartwatch, but we all know how that goes… I could do the same with my phone, and I’d still keep looking at it. With Whoop, I simply don’t have a choice.

What time is it?

The only thing I really missed was the time. Yes, I’m that person who checks the time on a watch. I know lots of people who wear a watch but still check their phone for the time—that’s not me. So yes, I often stared blankly at Whoop, waiting for the time to appear… And as I said—it never did.

That one’s on me—Whoop isn’t to blame for that.

What Whoop is responsible for is the adjustment system. Imagine a narrow backpack buckle you tighten by pulling one side out and then cinching the other—you know the drill. That’s exactly how you tighten Whoop, except the mechanism is on the inside. So every time you want to snug it up, you have to take it off your wrist.

On the other hand, I get that not everyone is as sensitive to this as I am. The strap is fairly elastic, so most people set it once and forget it. My wrist, however, “changes” a lot—by evening Whoop slowly spins around, and by morning it’s too tight.

Speaking of evenings, there’s one more thing that can be a bit annoying—the heart rate sensor and how it’s implemented. At certain angles in the dark, it turns into a tiny flashlight. And when you’re sleeping, bring your hand near your face and suddenly you’re shining a light in your eyes—not exactly pleasant.

Whoop makes up for that with a very clever charging system: you just charge a small power bank, slide it onto the device, and you don’t miss any heart rate or other measurements.

Generation to generation, Whoop nearly tripled its battery life

The nice thing about Whoop is there’s nothing in it that needlessly drains the battery. And the specs are accurate. Credit where it’s due: Whoop 4.0 lasted 5 days, and Whoop 5.0 pushes that to 14 days. The slight downside is that it’s hard to tell when Whoop is dead. More than once I realized after two days that it had stopped working.

That’s partly on me—Whoop does regularly notify you when the battery drops below a certain level, or when the device hasn’t synced with your phone for a while (more than three hours).

What’s the first thing Whoop shows you?

It’s probably easiest to walk you through Whoop step by step. When you open the app, you’ll see three numbers first—Sleep, Recovery and Strain. The first scores your sleep as a percentage, the second your recovery, and the third is your overall load.

In the sleep section you’ll find the usual stats like duration and stage breakdown, but what I enjoy most are the sleep need and how well you meet it, sleep consistency, and sleep efficiency.

Based on stress, activity and recent sleep, Whoop calculates how much sleep you actually need. It also tracks consistency in bedtimes and wake times, because keeping a regular rhythm matters a lot to your body. And of course it scores efficiency, which combines sleep duration with the amount of REM and deep sleep.

Whoop arguably has the best AI of any lifestyle wearable

What might be the most interesting part is the AI-driven insights. That’s true across the app. You can ask the AI for explanations or details anywhere. Open Whoop Coach in the sleep section and it will break down your results; if you logged journal entries the day before—like caffeine, a workout or a late meal—it factors those in and offers personalized tips.

What bugs me a bit is the time it takes to process sleep. I have a morning ritual—check my results right after waking up. With Whoop, I open the app, try to sync twenty times and… nothing. No analysis. I get annoyed, close it, and fifteen minutes later I get a notification that sleep has been processed. By then I usually don’t care.

Yes, maybe the fact that I turn off Bluetooth at night plays a role, so the app doesn’t have time to transfer everything. But honestly—if ChatGPT can write a bachelor’s thesis in five minutes, Whoop could probably speed this up too.

Recovery on a 0–100% scale speaks for itself. As for Strain, it can indicate both overtraining and overall fitness and health. To be truly healthy, you need a certain dose of load—both cardio and strength training. That’s why Whoop tracks time in heart rate zones, time spent strength training, and step count.

Beyond that, Whoop measures calories burned, heart rate variability, daytime and nighttime stress, resting heart rate, blood oxygen, skin temperature and respiratory rate.

The best part is you don’t have to monitor any of it manually. Whoop has a Health Monitor that continuously checks whether everything’s on track. And a Heart Screener that performs regular ECGs and looks for abnormalities.

You don’t have to be your chronological age

My favorite feature is Health Span. Many manufacturers have tried to implement fitness age calculations, but honestly—they mostly just mirrored your physical age against your real age. Open Health Span and you get concrete reasons why you might be aging slower—or faster.

Sleeping too little? Bam—add a few years. Not enough time in zones 1–3? Bam. Not enough in zones 4–5? Bam. Low VO₂ Max? High resting heart rate? Too few strength sessions? Inconsistent sleep schedule? Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam! Suddenly you’re 27 going on 80, there’s a photographer standing over you to shoot a cigarette pack warning label that says “Smoking can kill,” and you’re wondering why you didn’t get Whoop earlier.

As I’m writing this, I’m coming back from a serious injury that sidelined me for almost three months, and according to Whoop I’m currently aging about 1.5× faster—simply because I’m not doing any activities in any zone. Right now I’ve got neither zones nor form.

Someone might argue that this is all obvious—exercise and good sleep are foundational. I don’t need Whoop for that. But let’s admit it—until we see something in black and white, we often don’t care, even when we know it isn’t good. Think about fatty foods—everyone knows they raise cholesterol, but until you see bad bloodwork, you probably won’t act. Whoop is your personal “blood test.” It shows you directly—something’s off, and you know exactly what.

When you train with Whoop, you’re un(pause)able

I started with health monitoring on purpose, because I don’t think Whoop is the ideal sports companion. The fact that it doesn’t have GPS says a lot. If you spend hours training outdoors, Whoop starts to make less sense. There are several reasons—safety-wise you should always have a charged phone, but GPS drains it fast. On all-day rides, your phone simply won’t last. Perhaps even more importantly, you can’t pause an activity in Whoop.

I had Whoop on day one and went for a run. Suddenly I needed to pee, so I hunted for a pause button in the app with tracking running. No luck. I started tapping Whoop from every angle (a double-tap otherwise shows battery status) and… nothing. I was doing intervals and didn’t want skewed data, so I kept running with a full bladder and started Googling whether I was being dumb or if it really wasn’t possible. Here’s your answer—you can’t pause an activity.

I keep asking the simple question—who thought this was a good idea? I get that someone at Whoop figured pause time can also matter for training (watching heart rate recovery, etc.), but ask anyone who really trains and they’ll tell you the key is the actual moving part of the session. Plus it looks bad on Strava. In the weight room I could let it slide, but for endurance workouts where pace and average heart rate are crucial, definitely not.

What Whoop really does well is activity detection. In the app you’ll see accumulated strain, heart rate zones, calories burned, activity time and more. You’ll get a bit more detail for activities you start manually. If you go for a run and start tracking in the app, you’ll also see distance, pace and other metrics. In that case you’ll even get a VO₂ Max estimate, because Whoop knows your pace.

Is Whoop worth it?

Whoop undoubtedly has a lot going for it. It’s one of the best-looking devices on the market, its health monitoring is close to flawless, and its AI could be a model for many other systems. Long term, though, I see an issue with its utility—it lacks GPS and its sports tracking is fairly basic. And when it comes to lifestyle tracking, I’m not sure Whoop offers enough extra to truly justify its price.

If you paid for the highest subscription for five years, you’d spend almost 40,000 Kč. I like myself, but I’m not sure I’d want to invest that much in this direction. To be clear—I’d happily invest more in my health, but I’m not sure this is the right investment.

If we’re talking about understanding your daily rhythm and tracking the factors that help or hurt you, Whoop does a great job. But you can often reach similar conclusions without it—with a bit of self-awareness and a few weeks of observation.

I don’t want this to come off wrong—I’m genuinely excited about Whoop. But I have the advantage of not paying for it and being able to test it in peace. If it were my money, honestly, I wouldn’t pull the trigger. One of my main reasons for wearing a smartwatch is to reduce my phone dependence—and Whoop does the opposite.

There’s even a whole Reddit thread dissecting the Whoop hype. You’ll find people who love it—precisely because it has no display and they can wear it with a traditional watch. And plenty who are convinced Whoop just isn’t worth it.

Enough talk?

Is Whoop worth it?

No.

But!

It’s not worth it at the current price. If it were half the cost, I might consider it. But I’d still end up missing a full-fledged sport watch. I know myself.

Another issue is that Whoop is a bit of a scam. Even if you choose a monthly subscription, you’re still committing to at least 12 months. I understand why—they give you the device up front, and if you left after a month, they’d be stuck with used hardware. But that less-than-clear messaging has turned off a lot of customers.

So… I like Whoop. I don’t like the price and the lack of GPS. There’s the article in one sentence.

To add a bit more, I’ve actually grown fond of Whoop. The features, the app, the lack of nagging, the great algorithms… It just works. But of course, they make you pay for it. :)

Photo credits:

• official Whoop photos
• Hodinky 365 photographers