Whoop 4.0: Quick New Features Overview

Today, Whoop announced their new 4.0 sensor/device. Whoop is part-device, part-platform. The device is a small pod that doesn’t display any metrics itself, but rather has sensors to collect those metrics and transmit them to your phone and the larger Whoop cloud platform. Historically that’s been heart-rate driven data, but the new 4.0 pod includes blood oxygen levels and skin temperature. Once in the Whoop platform the company provides boatloads of data around what they dub ‘strain’ and ‘recovery. In other words, how much/hard have you been working out, and how well are you recovering.

Here’s the new Whoop 4.0-specific features (all of which are hardware-driven):

– New sensor: This now has 5 LED’s (3xGreen, 1xRed, 1xInfared) compared to the previous 2xGreen. Still has 4 photodiodes
– Added Skin Temperature: We’ve seen this on a few wearables over the years, and is often used with sleep data
– Added Bloody Oxygen monitoring: Measures SpO2w, which is often used in both sleep-related data and high altitude data
– Added Sleep Coach with on-device alerts: This will wake you up based on optimal sleep cycles
– Added haptic motor (vibrations): This means the band can now alert you to things, starting with waking you up via Sleep Coach
– Added “Health Monitor”: This is more of an app dashboard thing, which shows live HR/skin temperature/blood oxygen/resting HR/HRV/respiratory Rate
– Added PDF Export of Health Monitor: This allows you to export out your Health Monitor dashboard metrics in a PDF for doctors/sports staff/etc in 30-180 day chunks.
– New Battery Design: Whoop says that they’re the “first product in the world” to use Sila’s new Silicone anode battery, which has 17% higher energy density and longer cycle life.
– 5-day battery life: The unit maintains the previous 5-day battery life claim, despite the unit being much smaller
– New Whoop Battery Pack: This new pack is waterproof (woot!) and allows a double-tap for battery level
– Smaller size: Whoop says it’s now 33% smaller than prior

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#Whoop #Whoop4.0 Whoop4

[ChaseTheSummit]

Fingers crossed that the new sensor is better! I was always confused why I saw so many positive reviews when in my testing the data coming out of the 3.0 band was WAY off in just about every situation. Looking forward to testing this puppy out!

[chriskennedy]

Cautiously optimistic they can get it right this time. Can’t wait for your review Ray. Good stuff as always!

[mlegrand]

I have that same shirt from SmartBikeTrainers. I always get great comments on it! 🙌 I'm not all onboard on the Whoop wagon but the people that have it seem to love it. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Just having a single number for recovery is really appealing for people. It'd be great if they worked on accuracy. Hopefully you're recovering from that trip. It looked amazing 👌

[simondobbins]

The fact your honest is the sole reason I have not got a whoop yet. So many people on youtube pushing whoop for a pay cheque knowing its not great. Looking forward to seeing if the 4.0 will be the one to buy!

[seegee]

Heres my take on all this stuff. You can get really obsessive with data, steps, resting HR, etc. I was so obsessed with steps and step streaks when i was running 90 mile weeks which makes no sense. I finally turned off all sensors on my watch, no steps, no HR. The only time I can see my HR is when I go for a run or ride and wear a strap, I would obsess if my HR was too high or too low. I haven’t looked at my resting HR or sleep data in two months and guess what, still running great and more peace in my life.

[sylvainmichaud]

Apparently an accessory for those in need of "motivation" to keep a high pace in a workout is coming soon.
The Whoop High Intensity Pacer accessory aka the WHIP !

[hdev]

That is some extreme dish washing, need to create an activity profile for that lol

[ryandowney]

Being able to edit faulty heart rate data should be a standard feature on a unitasker device.

[theandrewheuss]

I take a second take every time you said “whup” vs “whoop” lol the world may never know which it is

[AnthonyDeLorenzo]

In addition to the wildly inaccurate heart rate readings (wearing on the bicep helped) the biggest reason I returned my Whoop was the limited 4-day data storage. I do trips in the backcountry where I can be out of cell range for a week+ and the strap can only sync when connected to the cloud. I wonder if this is any better in the new version? Would love it if you could answer this in your main review.

[JeffRElliott]

I truly hope that at some point they will allow us to use other devices at a reduced rate, and maybe even limited functionality, so that we don't have to have two wearables.

[anders]

Really looking forward for the full review, this might be very interesting!

[chrisvanbuggenum]

I was so excited for whoop, probably the first person in Australia to have one as i had to create a USA address and get it sent to me, but i had such a bad experience with it. Never again.

[kanyeeast]

So it basically does exactly what my iPhone already does? Cool.

[DennisBishop]

Thanks for this. I always appreciate your reviews! I've been on the fence about getting a fitness tracker (other than my Apple Watch) and wondered what you thought about the Oura ring? I looked on your website and didn't see a review so maybe it would be useful to see a shootout between Whoop 4.0 and Oura.

[matthewbingham]

Keen too see the review when you get your hands on it! I don’t have a whoop but I really like the idea and platform!

[maxiemassengale]

dudes anxiety is so high doing dishes. LOL

[tylerdowling]

Would have liked to see blood glucose and sweat analysis sensors added. Hopefully on v5

[SuperJimic]

My six month period is up soon and I may cancel whoop and just invest in a good HR strap for my activity. I get what I need to do in order recover properly now. Its basically down to sleep time consistency to allow your circadian rhythm to stay at a constant and enough of it and common sense really.
Its strange because I had a hard ride Sunday with a day strain of 20.2 and went to sleep at the regular time to have a 90% recovery the following morning! 😅
Now, either my body is becoming super efficient at recovering or the accuracy is lacking.
What’s your take @DC? 😁

[nwarby]

I understand the issue with accuracy - and having that sorted is the first step forward - but for me the biggest turn off is the subscription model. At least if I invest in a Garmin or Suunto - even with no connection to any apps at least I get to have a watch I can keep and use - if they gave the choice of 'free device' but XX€ / month OR buy the device upfront and then have the app for free - then I'd be much more interested....oh and put a damn clock on the thing!