Backed by high-profile endorsements from celebrities and elite athletes like Diplo and Patrick Mahomes, Whoop has become a familiar name. The Whoop 5.0 delivers meaningful improvements over its predecessor, including significantly longer battery life, more accurate heart-rate tracking, and a noticeably more comfortable design. It also introduces new tools, including long-term health trend analysis and women’s hormonal insights. At $239 per year, the Whoop 5.0 is among the priciest fitness trackers we’ve tested, though it’s still considerably cheaper than the premium Whoop MG ($359 per year). Most users won’t miss the MG’s exclusive features—such as ECG and blood-pressure insights, which are still in beta—making the Whoop 5.0 the better choice for anyone set on the brand. Even so, the far more affordable Fitbit Charge 6 ($159.95) remains our Editors’ Choice, while the Oura Ring 4 ($349) is a strong alternative for those who prefer a screen-free wearable.

Pricing and Plans: Three Tiers, One Costly Commitment

You can’t just buy a Whoop 5.0 like a traditional fitness tracker. Instead, you subscribe to the Whoop service, and the band is included. While I could understand the appeal of this structure if the subscription offered an affordable way to obtain an expensive device, that's not the case here. Whoop subscriptions cost more than most fitness trackers for just the first year of service, and then you have to keep paying that price annually. Assuming you own your device for three to four years before looking for an upgrade, you’ll pay exponentially more in total for Whoop than for any of its competitors.

Whoop offers three different subscription tiers, up from just one when we reviewed the Whoop 4.0 in 2022. The Whoop 5.0 is included with the middle tier, called Whoop Peak, priced at $239 per year, which breaks down to roughly $20 per month. It's a little more affordable than the Whoop 4.0 was at launch ($288 per year).

(Credit: Whoop)

As a cheaper option, the company offers a $199 annual plan called Whoop One that comes with a refurbished Whoop 4.0 instead of a Whoop 5.0. The Whoop 4.0 has significantly less battery life, and we encountered accuracy issues and skin irritation during our testing, so we do not recommend it.

The most expensive plan, called Whoop Life, costs $359 annually and includes the Whoop MG (which stands for Medical Grade). The Whoop MG debuted alongside the Whoop 5.0 and has the same battery life, but the company claims its sensors are more accurate. The MG also adds a conductive clasp that enables ECG recording.

Otherwise, all three plans include a wireless power pack that lets you recharge the tracker while it's still on your wrist. The Whoop 5.0 and Whoop 4.0 come with a comfortable and durable SuperKnit band, while the Whoop MG uses a SuperKnit Luxe band with a conductive clasp for ECG readings.

The other differences between the plans boil down to what’s available on the software side through the Whoop app (available for Android and iOS). The Whoop One plan offers sleep, strain, and recovery insights, along with personalized coaching to improve each. This tier also includes VO2 Max measurements of your cardiovascular fitness, heart rate zone data for workouts, and a new feature offering women’s hormonal insights.

The Peak plan adds long-term wellness assessments via a feature called Healthspan. It tracks your physiological age compared with your chronological age, as well as your pace of aging, indicating how your metrics are changing over time. The Peak plan also monitors your stress and other metrics, such as blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), heart rate variability, respiratory rate, resting heart rate, and skin temperature, and compares them to a baseline to notify you when something is off.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

The Whoop Life plan adds atrial fibrillation screening, ECG measurements, and a beta feature called Blood Pressure Insights, which asks you to take a baseline reading with a traditional cuff and then estimates your blood pressure on subsequent days. The feature is in the midst of some controversy over FDA regulations, and I didn’t find it very useful when I tested the Whoop MG.

The Peak plan with the Whoop 5.0 is clearly the Goldilocks pick of the bunch, but it's still expensive. For comparison, the Fitbit Charge 6 offers all of your key health metrics, including ECG, skin temperature variation, and SpO2 measurements, without a subscription fee. An optional Fitbit Premium membership costs $9.99 per month (half the price of Whoop Peak) and adds a library of video and audio workouts with tailored recommendations.

The Oura Ring 4 costs more than Whoop up-front at $349 plus a $69.99 annual membership fee. However, over two years, you'd pay roughly the same for the Oura as you would for the Whoop 5.0. Over three years or more, you’d pay much less for the Oura than the Whoop 5.0.

Design: Comfortable, Durable, and Unapologetically Plain

The Whoop 5.0 tracking module measures 1.37 by 0.94 by 0.42 inches (LWD). The screenless tracker connects to a thick fabric wristband. It’s durable, with an IP68 weather resistance rating. It dried quickly after I rinsed it post-workout and never irritated my skin, unlike the Whoop 4.0.

The underside of the Whoop tracker houses the lights and sensors, specifically a built-in accelerometer for movement tracking, a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor for heart rate tracking, and a skin temperature sensor.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

The portable power pack slides onto the tracker and pleasingly clicks into place, letting you wirelessly recharge the wearable without ever taking it off. It has the same durability rating as the tracker itself, so you can wear both safely in inclement weather. The power pack has a small LED on the front showing its charge status; when it runs low on juice, you can plug it in via a USB-C port.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

At a glance, the Whoop 5.0 matches the Whoop MG exactly, with the same dimensions, sensors, and durability rating. The Whoop MG distinguishes itself with small indents on the sides of the clasp where you can put your fingers to take an ECG. The sides of the Whoop 5.0 are smooth and rounded.

The utilitarian look of the Whoop 5.0 felt appropriate when I wore it to the gym. That said, the appeal of Whoop comes from its holistic tracking, so you’re supposed to wear it 24/7. The device doesn’t fit in nearly as well with the look of nicer outfits, and I’d have preferred wearing any number of recent smartwatches for a night on the town. In that context, the Whoop looks bland and unassuming at best, and vaguely resembles an ankle monitor at worst.

Whoop sells other band styles, along with a line of apparel that lets you slip the sensor into a pouch instead of wearing it on your wrist, but that’s obviously a more cumbersome and costly solution than wearing something that looks elegant to begin with. The screen-free aspect is nice for minimizing distractions, but the Oura Ring 4 offers the same benefit with a much more appealing design that works for more occasions.

Battery Life: Two Weeks on a Charge

Both the Whoop 5.0 and the Whoop MG are rated to last 14 days on a charge. In my testing, the Whoop MG lasted 15.5 days, and the Whoop 5.0 lasted 16.5. I did fewer workouts with the latter because I tested it over the holidays, so both have functionally the same longevity.

Thanks to the battery pack, you never need to take the tracker off if you don’t want to. The battery pack holds one extra charge, so you can theoretically go a month without plugging anything in. That said, the battery pack didn’t seem to retain its charge that well during my testing. It didn’t have enough juice to get my tracker back to 100% battery after my holiday travels, despite having charged it before I left.

Nevertheless, by powering through two weeks on its own, the Whoop 5.0 outperforms both the Fitbit Charge 6 and the Oura Ring 4, both of which lasted a week in testing and need to be taken off to charge.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

You can quickly check the battery life on the device itself without opening the app. Double-tapping the clasp turns on a small LED in the upper left corner. It shines green when the battery has 50% or more charge, yellow when it has less than 50% remaining, or red when it drops below 25%.

Setup and App: Data-Rich, Opinionated, and Occasionally Overbearing

Since the Whoop is a screenless device, you primarily interact with it through the app. The initial setup process is simple and takes only a few minutes, but you’ll need to wear the Whoop for a few days to start seeing all your data and health trends.

To start, slide the battery pack onto the Whoop to wake it up, then create an account in the app if you don’t have one. The app will ask to find nearby devices, confirm the serial number of your tracker, then start asking for information about you, such as your height, weight, and gender (with woman, man, non-binary, and 'I prefer not to specify' listed as options). It also asks for permission to sync information with your phone’s first-party health app, then prompts you to enable permissions such as location tracking and notifications.

During setup, it helps you create a customizable journal of habits you want to track (such as caffeine or alcohol consumption, meditation, or even reading in bed), and subsequently prompts you to fill out an entry each day you open the app. Finally, it walks you through setting a sleep schedule and an alarm.

(Credit: Andrew Gebhart)

With setup complete, you’ll need to fit the band snugly on your wrist, which can be a bit fiddly. You loosen or tighten the strap by pulling the band through the clasp while it's off your wrist, so getting it just right takes some guesswork. I ended up pulling it too tight on a couple of occasions and then pinching my skin when snapping the clasp closed. Once you find the right fit, though, you can just leave it there, as the clasp opens and closes without affecting the strap.

You can use the app to check shorter-term stats like sleep after just a day, though some assessments take a few days, while others, like Healthspan, don't populate for a couple of weeks.

After a few days, the top of the Home tab shows your sleep score (an assessment of how well you sleep), strain score (which combines activity and stress), and recovery score (which compares your strain, sleep, and resting heart rate). Tap any of these metrics for details on how the score was calculated, or scroll down the page for a dynamic list of your stats, activities, and journal. Scroll further for a customizable dashboard listing metrics such as heart rate variability, resting heart rate, and steps. Further down are charts showing stress over time, and your strain compared with recovery over time.

(Credit: Whoop/PCMag)

The crowded interface makes finding specific information, like stats from a workout, a little tricky, but the dynamic Home tab surfaces the information it thinks you should see, such as your journal if you haven’t filled it out for the day yet or updates on your strain or sleep debt.

The Health tab shows your individual stats and whether they’re within your usual range. After a couple of weeks, it shows your Whoop Age, which compares your physiological data with baseline values. It also shows your pace of aging compared with a baseline rate. You can tap these numbers to see the full Healthspan breakdown, indicating how your fitness, sleep, and strain contributed to Whoop's assessments. Further down on the Health tab is a stress monitor, which you can tap for a more detailed breakdown of your stress and activity over time.

In the Community tab, you can share stats with friends by creating groups, and the More tab lets you manage your account and shop for accessories. To access device settings, tap the battery life indicator in the upper-right corner of the Home tab. This menu also lets you broadcast your heart rate from the Whoop 5.0 to compatible apps and devices.

In the lower-right corner of the app, you can tap the W button to pull up an AI assistant and chat about any of your stats or assessments, and get advice based on your habits.

Activity and Recovery Tracking: Reliable Metrics That Hold Up Under Stress

I tested the Whoop 5.0 over the course of a month, alongside the screenless Polar Loop tracker ($199.99) on my other wrist for part of the time. For the rest of the time, I tested the Whoop 5.0 against the $799 Apple Watch Ultra 3, my benchmark device for fitness metric accuracy.

During testing, the Whoop 5.0 automatically tracked several high-intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions more reliably than either the Polar Loop or the Apple Watch Ultra 3. Whoop takes longer to show post-workout stats than Polar, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. HIIT workouts occasionally include rest periods, and Polar sometimes thought I had finished working out and didn’t properly register the second half of my efforts. Whoop always correctly reported the span of my workout.

The heart rate numbers from Whoop matched those of both Apple and Polar. After a workout, the Whoop app graphs your heart rate over time and shows the duration you spent in each zone. It gives the activity a strain score, and shows calories burned and average heart rate. Both Polar and Apple showed similar stats. Whoop can get more detailed and assess the amount of strength built if you fill out each activity completed during the session, and the app prompts you to do so after it registers the workouts.

Whoop offers a wide range of tracked activities and exercises, including sports like badminton, basketball, football, and golf, as well as household activities like cleaning and even dedicated parenting. You can also manually log sleep, naps, and recovery activities like acupuncture or meditation. The options in the strength trainer program are plentiful as well, with four different types of back squats and ten types of bench presses, and that's just for exercises that start with the letter B.

For the most part, using the Whoop 5.0 is functionally the same as using the Whoop MG. As I discovered while testing the MG, Whoop trackers offer fewer details than the Apple Watch Ultra 3 for certain exercise types, like running. For instance, the Apple Watch provides useful running form metrics like ground contact time and vertical oscillation that Whoop doesn't support. The Whoop 5.0 tracks heart rate in addition to average pace, distance covered, and elevation gained, a similar set of stats as the Oura 4.

(Credit: Whoop/PCMag)

While testing the Whoop 5.0, I came down with the flu, and the tracker detected some symptoms. It didn’t exactly register that I was sick or call it out specifically, but the pattern in the data was clear, as my stress levels spiked and my scores like recovery plummeted.

Overall, Whoop’s stress tracking matched my anecdotal experience, though I prefer Oura for this metric. Oura graphs your stress level against activity, making it easy to see the potential cause of spikes. Despite the company’s claims, I didn’t notice a difference in accuracy between the Whoop 5.0 and the Whoop MG—both accurately track activity, exercise, and stress.

Sleep Features: Insightful Tracking, Frustrating Alarms

When tracking sleep, the Whoop 5.0 scores your rest based on the duration, consistency, and efficiency of your shut-eye, as well as stress during the night. The app shows a line graph of your sleep over time, and a bar graph of time spent in each sleep phase. Scrolling down the sleep page provides detailed breakdowns of the criteria used to calculate your sleep score.

Whoop also measures your sleep debt and tracks it over time. It reliably detected the naps I took and deducted them from my sleep debt accordingly. It usually recommended earlier bedtimes than my norm, and docked my sleep score when I broke my consistency by sleeping in on weekends. Still, its tracking is accurate, as its sleep duration and phase data matched that of my Ultra 3.

Whoop's tendency to be more prescriptive than descriptive is most pronounced in the sleep section. It doesn’t show individual values for your overnight respiration, skin temperature, or even your average heart rate on its sleep page. It monitors all three, but it highlights its own assessments of your sleep, and makes it tough to find granular overnight health metric details you might be interested in. The Oura Ring 4 and the Fitbit Charge 6 are both better devices if you want to check your metrics on your own, as they show much more detail for individual stats.

(Credit: Whoop/PCMag)

The Whoop 5.0 has a haptic alarm to wake you up in the morning, but I don't like how it’s implemented. Whoop vibrates to wake you at a certain time, once you’ve hit a recovery goal, or once you’re in the green zone for recovery. I went with the latter option when setting up a scheduled alarm in the Whoop app, then it prompted me to select a time frame. I try to wake up between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m., but you have to set an hour-long range, which I thought was too long. I set it from 6:45 to 7:45, and used my bedside alarm as a backup. I’d be running behind if I didn’t get out of bed until 7:45, but I really didn’t want it to start buzzing me awake before 6:45.

Since I sleep less than Whoop recommends, it would usually start buzzing right at 7:45, when I was already up, brushing my teeth, or feeding my cats. It's not smart enough to sense that you’re awake and turn off the alarm. Once it’s buzzing, you silence the alarm by double-tapping the side of the clasp, but it usually takes quite a few tries before it recognizes the command and stops buzzing. Whoop also doesn’t offer a snooze option if you need a few more minutes to sleep in.

During testing, I forgot to turn off my alarm when I first got sick, and I was tempted to smash the Whoop into pieces when, after a night of fitful sleep of fever dreams, it went off at 7:45 a.m., and I couldn’t get it to stop buzzing despite numerous frantic taps. I then discovered that you can’t pause your alarm for a night. You can set up a schedule to have it wake you up at different times during the weekdays and weekend, but your alarm schedule is either on or off; you can't pause it.

If you’re looking for a sleep tracker that delivers more guidance than details, the Whoop 5.0 is capable and accurate, but even so, I recommend using something else to wake you up in the morning.