The Best Fitness Trackers

It pains me to have to award the best not-a-watch title to the Whoop band, when I myself am a dedicated Oura ring user, but the Oura just cannot fill the job description of a fitness tracker. The Oura ring isn’t great at tracking exercise, and you’ll need to take it off when lifting weights. By contrast, the Whoop can be worn off-wrist with a bicep band or in a variety of specially designed clothing items (including underwear). The bicep band keeps the device off your wrist and is comfortable enough you’ll quickly forget you’re wearing it.

The Whoop device measures your activity throughout the day, without showing you anything on a screen. (We have a breakdown here of the pros and cons of a Whoop versus a smartwatch.) You can open up the Whoop app on your phone, though, and see how things are going—or even start a workout and monitor how it’s going from your phone. Keep the device on at night, and it will measure your sleep. Whoop’s strength is in balancing your exercise and sleep, and it can give you advice on how much sleep to get based on your “strain” (exercise and stress) and vice versa.

The other important thing to know about Whoop is that it’s subscription-based. And I don’t mean that you can pay extra for a premium tier, but literally to use the Whoop at all you’ll need to pay $30/month (or go for a package, like the $239 annual membership). Technically, the device itself is free.