Review: Whoop MG Watch - Whoop's Luxury Option Fails on Price

The Whoop MG watch is a device with two conflicting faces; while it features an excellent app for fitness and recovery tracking, accurate sensors, and an innovative charging mechanism that allows for continuous wear, its price is exorbitant, being the most expensive option in the Whoop lineup. Its additional features and mediocre build quality do not offer good value for anyone except professional athletes looking for high-level, distraction-free fitness tracking.

Quick Look

Whoop MG offers a unique experience; it's a great fitness tool with an interface that is both simple and profound, providing comprehensive metrics. The app includes a workout builder tool that rivals the best specialized software, and an intuitive journaling mechanism that smartly links your data with recovery and strain information. It's easy to use due to its screenless design, meaning you rarely interact with it except to perform an ECG check or stop a vibration alarm. Instead, all interaction occurs via the app, which sends notifications and alerts.

Despite its limited interface, Whoop MG is a sophisticated tool, featuring several heart health features including an ECG for atrial fibrillation testing (the letters MG in its name refer to Medical Grade) and blood pressure estimation, which requires calibration with an external blood pressure monitor. The new Healthspan tool gives you a "Whoop Age" metric, similar to the "Fitness Age" in premium Apple Watch models or "Metabolic Age" in continuous glucose monitors.

Whoop MG indeed offers features for assessing heart health, where the letters "MG" stand for "Medical Grade". This means the device is capable of providing accurate health data that can be useful for clinical purposes or for precise personal monitoring, especially in the field of heart health.

In contrast, some aspects of the tracker prevent me from recommending it to everyone. For example, the price of Whoop MG – available only with the premium Life subscription that includes medical heart screening features – is extremely high. The less expensive option, Whoop 5.0, starts at a much more reasonable price, while metrics like stress and "Whoop Age" are locked behind a paywall in lower subscriptions. Higher subscriptions (Peak and Life) include luxury straps, wireless chargers, and additional software features. If you stop paying at any level, the Whoop device reverts to a dormant piece of plastic.

Design

The Whoop MG features a screenless design, being just a plastic fitness tracker with a sensor array on the underside, wrapped in a Superknit or Coreknit strap. A Coreknit arm band is also available. The screenless design is comfortable and distraction-free. However, its metal clasp frequently detaches when unfastening the strap, indicating mediocre build quality for a device marketed as luxury.

In contrast, the app's design is excellent; it's one of the most user-friendly software I've experienced, relying on colors and circular graphs to provide clear data context. Its workout building and journal functions are also intuitive and integrate with other metrics.

Features

Whoop MG includes advanced features for automatic activity detection, where the device learns and accurately records the types of exercises you do most often. The workout builder tool is also intuitive and great for use as a "diary" to track strength training and a way to determine how much strain an exercise puts on your body. You can create workouts powered by AI in advance and adjust them during your workout.

The Whoop Coach chatbot, powered by AI, is surprisingly useful, putting your personal statistics into context with its library of scientific advice. Whoop MG has an ECG feature and exports an ECG report you can share with your doctor. Blood pressure detection requires prior calibration with a blood pressure monitor, then estimates blood pressure fluctuations based on other metrics. Step count, calorie burn, heart rate, and sleep duration are integrated into three main metrics, each scored out of 100: Sleep (sleep quality), Recovery (body's recovery percentage from stress), and Strain (amount of stress on the body during the day). A "strain threshold" is calculated based on recovery and activity levels, indicating how hard your day can be before it becomes detrimental. Detailed graphs of stress, the relationship between strain and recovery, daily heart rate, and more are displayed.

Whoop MG features also include advanced measurements such as Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and respiratory rate, which are important indicators of overall health and recovery. This data contributes to a comprehensive analysis of the body's daily state. Source: Whoop

Performance

The Whoop MG's battery life is excellent, averaging about nine days in tests. Heart rate and sleep tracking were also accurate, closely matching other devices like the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Its metrics are not only detailed but actionable, providing a lot of context instead of just showing unhelpful numbers. It doesn't just tell you your sleep score but also how to improve it. However, I don't seem to be the target audience for this device; it's aimed at optimization enthusiasts who can afford its exorbitant annual costs, not athletes who rely on GPS for running or cycling workouts, as the device lacks this feature.

Should You Buy It?

• Buy it if:
• You are obsessed with optimizing your performance.
• You want distraction-free fitness technology (screenless).
• Money is no object (Whoop MG's highest subscription is extremely expensive).
• Don't buy it if:
• You are an endurance athlete (no GPS feature for running or cycling).
• You have a limited budget.