Whoop Vs. Fitbit – Which One Is Better For Cyclists?

Whoop vs Fitbit - which one is best for you

Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned cyclist, keeping track of your cycling training is always a good idea.

It helps you keep track of and adhere to your routine. It also offers helpful information and insights to help you improve your results.

Wearable fitness trackers are an incredible way to monitor your cycling sessions. These innovative health devices range from basic heart rate trackers to feature-loaded wearables.

You may also use a bike computer or a phone app to log your cycling sessions. However, a wearable fitness tracker makes the process simpler and more enjoyable

You don’t need to fit it on your bike and constantly worry about it falling off on a ride. You can also wear it even when you’re not riding. This helps you track other fitness activities such as running, hitting the gym, and swimming.

A wearable fitness tracker can also track your sleep and stress levels. This makes it an all-around health and wellness device.

Whoop and Fitbit are two popular wearable fitness trackers with their own cult followings. If you have been curious about trying Whoop vs. Fitbit for your fitness tracking, here we review them to help you decide which one is best for you.

Contents

What Is Whoop?

About Whoop Tracker

Whoop is a wearable fitness tracker that you can wear on your wrist. It syncs with an app on your smartphone and tracks your activity levels, sleep, stress, and other health stats.

It aims to help you train smarter, sleep better, recover faster, and feel healthier overall.

You can wear your Whoop device 24/7, even in the shower, so it can constantly collect your health data to provide helpful insights.

Pros

  • Balances training with rest and recovery
  • 24/7 tracking
  • Tracks heart rate, calories, strain, sleep, and more
  • Automatically detects and tracks workouts
  • Heart rate broadcasting
  • Provides a sleep quality score
  • Allows you to export data in PDF format to share with healthcare professionals
  • Has an optional vibrating alarm clock
  • Waterproof
  • Has a portable battery charger
  • Strava integration
  • Enables community interactions

Cons

  • Does not count steps or distance
  • Lacks smartwatch capability
  • No interactive screen on the device
  • Requires you to use the app to see data
  • No built-in GPS
  • Short battery life
  • Requires a monthly subscription
  • Minimum commitment of 12 months

What Is Fitbit?

About Fitbit

Fitbit is an advanced health tracker that tracks activity, sleep, stress levels, and more. Its goal is to help users make smarter lifestyle choices and improve their health and well-being.

Like Whoop, Fitbit is waterproof. So, you can wear it 24/7—even in wet riding conditions—and track your health data.

Pros

  • 24/7 tracking
  • Tracks steps, distance, heart rate, calories, sleep, and more
  • Automatic workout detection and tracking
  • Sleep quality score
  • Smartwatch capabilities
  • Color touchscreen display
  • Waterproof
  • Has a built-in GPS for outdoor cycling and other workouts
  • Long battery life
  • Has a vibrating alarm feature
  • No minimum commitment with a membership
  • Compatible ECG app
  • Enables easy integration with Paceline
  • Spotify connectivity

Cons

  • Lacks heart rate broadcasting
  • Lacks strain tracking
  • Does not come with a portable battery charger
  • Pricey

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Features

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Features

Let’s take a look at the features of both Whoop and Fitbit.

Whoop

The Whoop app offers different scores, taking into account your day-to-day activity and rest levels. The Recovery Score factors in your heart rate variability, resting heart rate, respiratory rate, and sleep.

It displays a new recovery score every day between 0% and 100%. This lets you know if your body is ready to perform or needs more rest.

During the day, the tracker measures your Whoop Strain, which is the amount of strain on your body. The scale ranges from 0 to 21.

Exercises like cycling or running increase the strain on your body. Stress, traveling, running errands, and other daily activities can also increase the strain.

Whoop combines your Recovery Score and your Strain Score to help you determine when you need to rest and when you can push your body more. This enables you to achieve the right balance between training and recovery and optimize your fitness levels.

Whoop also tracks different stages of your sleep pattern, your respiratory rate, and the amount of time you actually sleep. Based on this data, you will get a Sleep Score between 0 and 100%.

Whoop uses the different scores to recommend personalized bed and wake times. You can also optionally turn on its built-in vibrating alarm clock to help you wake up at the most optimal time in your sleep cycle.

The Behavioral Journal that Whoop offers allows you to track your daily habits, such as your moods, stress levels, caffeine intake, nutritional supplements, and so on.

Whoop’s latest feature, the Health Monitor, monitors your heart rate, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, blood oxygen levels, and skin temperature. These health stats help you understand your overall health status.

You can also export 30-day or 180-day health data trends into a PDF and share it with your healthcare team.

Fitbit

The Fitbit mobile app gathers information about your health from the wearable device to offer personalized recommendations.

It uses the sensor on your wrist to detect electrodermal activity that may be linked to your body’s stress levels and provides a Stress Management Score. You can also record your mood and use that data to further evaluate your Stress Management Score.

Fitbit tracks various health metrics, like your body temperature, oxygen saturation, and data from the compatible Fitbit ECG app. It helps you measure potential heart rate irregularities and alerts you of low or high heart rate readings.

Fitbit’s sleep features keep track of your sleep quantity and quality. The device also detects snoring and noises that you make in your sleep.

You can also use the vibrating alarm feature to wake you up with a silent vibration at the right time when you’re feeling most refreshed.

Like Whoop, Fitbit gives you a Daily Readiness Score. This score indicates your body’s recovery level and whether it feels ready for the day or needs a little more rest.

Fitbit is waterproof, so you can use it in rainy or snowy riding conditions without worrying about damaging it. The device also has GPS capabilities for outdoor cycling and outdoor workouts.

It shows you key health stats such as your heart rate, heart rate zones, pace, and more while riding or working out. This can help you optimize your ride or workout and maximize your fitness.

You can also use Fitbit for other functions like calling, texting, playing music with Bluetooth headphones, and paying with Fitbit Pay.

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Data Tracked

Data Tracking Capacity - Fitbit vs Whoop

Let’s see how both perform when it comes to data tracking.

Whoop

Whoop tracks the following data:

  • Typical heart rate
  • Resting heart rate
  • Heart rate variability
  • Respiratory rate
  • Blood oxygen levels
  • Skin temperature
  • Body strain
  • Moods
  • Stress levels
  • Different stages of sleep, light, REM, and deep sleep
  • Caffeine intake
  • Nutritional supplement intake

With this data, Whoop provides tailored recommendations to help you improve your overall health, performance, and recovery.

Fitbit

Fitbit records the following data:

  • Steps
  • Distance
  • Calories
  • Pace
  • Weight
  • Heart rate
  • Heart rate zones
  • Body temperature
  • Oxygen saturation
  • Electrodermal activity related to your body’s stress levels
  • Mood
  • Sleep stages
  • Snoring and other sleep noises
  • Water and food intake
  • Blood glucose
  • Menstrual health

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Ease of Use

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Ease of Use

Below we compare the ease of use of both Whoop and Fitbit.

Whoop

Whoop is easy to use. But initially, you may face a few issues while connecting your new Whoop tracker to the app on your smartphone.

The app has three colors for the Recovery Score that shows up when you wake up. A green score tells you that your body is ready to perform.

Yellow means you need an active recovery day. Meanwhile, a red score means you need more rest. These colors make it easy for you to quickly understand whether you can go biking or must rest more.

Charging the Whoop device is a breeze, especially since its charger is portable. So you never have to take off the tracker from your hand to charge it. This allows you to keep tracking your activity and charging the device on the go.

Its five-day battery life ensures you have enough juice to keep you going for days. This makes it great for professional cyclists or beginners looking to up their game.

Keep in mind that Whoop does not have smartwatch capabilities or an interactive screen. So, you have to keep checking the app to see your health data. The device also cannot replace your wristwatch due to the lack of a watch face.

Fitbit

Like Whoop, Fitbit is also easy to set up and use. It has smart features like call, text, voice assistant, app notifications, music control, GPS, and Fitbit Pay.

You can also change the watch face to improve visibility in different light conditions. It also allows you to add mobile apps to the smartwatch and use them without touching your phone.

However, the range of features means a longer learning curve as you’ll have to spend some time figuring out all of them. The daily stats dashboard takes a while to load. The GPS syncing also takes time. The device can also be slightly tricky to wear by yourself.

Nonetheless, Fitbit’s bands are easy to swap out. You can easily change them to suit your preference or your outfit for the day.

Fitbit typically has long battery life. However, it lacks a portable charger. So, you have to charge it at home, the office, or any charging outlet before using it.

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Comfort

Pro cyclist with Fitbit tracker

When it comes to comfort both Whoop and Fitbit perform quite well. Let’s go into more detail.

Whoop

Whoop is thin, lightweight, and comfortable to wear all the time. It is also waterproof. So you don’t have to keep removing it every time you ride in wet conditions or step into the shower.

Fitbit

Fitbit’s fitness trackers are highly comfortable to wear all day and night and have a sleek and dynamic appearance. If you’re looking for something more opulent, the Fitbit Luxe feels and looks like jewelry instead of a smartwatch or fitness tracker.

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Durability

What about durability?

Below we compare which one will last longer – Whoop or Fitbit.

Whoop

Whoop’s band is highly durable. It is also dust-proof and waterproof. So, you can ride or work out in all weather conditions without worrying about damaging the device.

Fitbit

Fitbit is less durable than Whoop. Although it lasts for a couple of years on average, you can’t expect it to last beyond that.

Its screen can also crack on heavy impact. So, you should be careful not to drop it. Meanwhile, its waterproof feature means you can use it in the rain and snow.

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Pricing

Pricing comparison

Let’s find out which is more affordable – Whoop or Fitbit.

Whoop

Whoop offers different membership plans:

  • Monthly membership plan for $30 per month with a 12-month commitment
  • Annual membership plan for $288 upfront
  • 24-month membership plan for $480 upfront

All the subscription plans come with the Whoop 4.0 device, the app, and progress assessments.

Fitbit

Fitbit offers a range of different trackers. They include the Ace 3 at $79.95, Inspire 3 at $99.95, Luxe at $129.95, Charge 5 at $149.95, and Sense 2 at $299.95.

You can choose the one you like and use it with the basic version of the Fitbit app. The basic version is free and gives you access to health and fitness stats and basic insights.

But if you want more features, you will have to get the Premium plan. It gives you access to the following features:

  • Daily Readiness Score
  • Stress Management Score breakdown
  • Sleep Score breakdown
  • Wellness Report
  • 90-day health metrics
  • Blood glucose trends
  • Advanced skin temperature details
  • More than 200 workouts
  • Over 200 mindfulness sessions
  • Premium challenges

Fitbit’s Premium monthly membership costs $9.99 per month. The annual membership plan costs $79.99 per year. New customers also get a free six-month subscription to the popular meditation app, Calm, for a limited time.

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Which One Is Better Suited For Cyclists?

Whoop Vs. Fitbit: Which One Is Better Suited For Cyclists?

Whoop is great for beginners and professional cyclists who need reminders to rest and recover or need to track their recovery.

Whoop’s focus on striking a balance between training and recovery means you’ll face fewer sore days, as you will only cycle on days your body is truly ready.

Its inexpensive membership plans make buying and using the device easier.

Meanwhile, Fitbit is ideal for cyclists who want the combined benefits of fitness trackers and smartwatches. You can track your fitness, check the time, make calls, text, play music, use mobile apps, and more.

Fitbit also does not have any minimum membership commitment. So, you can choose a plan that suits your needs and budget. However, its higher costs can put off many users.

Conclusion

Making the Whoop vs. Fitbit decision can be tough, as both have unique and impressive features. But their key differences make it easier to pick one that meets your fitness goals and needs. 

Think about which one suits your needs more, and go with it to track your cycling routine and other workouts.

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Last Updated on June 7, 2023 by Danijel Cakalic

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