Earlier this year, I picked up a WHOOP for the very first time. As a longtime Apple Watch user I was looking forward to having a new way of tracking my health stats in a cleaner interface that the Apple Watch wasn’t offering. Now, with Apple Watch Series 12, I’m very convinced to switch back to the Apple Watch. Here’s why.
First things first, it’s worth noting that the Apple Watch Series 12 isn’t the only factor. There’s also the new Apple Health app in iOS 27.
The new Apple Health app has a much better interface. It offers your stats in a much cleaner manner. It’s very easy to understand all the data, which for me was the main thing breaking the Apple Watch.
Apple Health isn’t the only reason why I didn’t use the Apple Watch, though. It was also the fact that the Apple Watch didn’t collect data as frequently as the WHOOP did. The Apple Watch Series 12 now collects your heart rate once every 5 seconds, compared to every 5 minutes on previous models. This is still less than the WHOOP’s every 1 second, but so long as you’re not an athlete, I think every 5 seconds is fine.
Series 12 also introduced the new Readiness app on the Apple Watch, which gives you a 1-to-10 health score based on your HRV and other factors. This is akin to the recovery score the WHOOP calculated, which is one of the things that I like tracking, because even though Apple Watch always offered a sleep score, it wasn’t always the most useful piece of data. If you slept for a long time, you’d generally get a high score, regardless of whether other sleep factors weren’t quite great.
Wrap up
Only time will tell whether or not Apple Watch Series 12 is actually a game changer for health. As someone who’s used the WHOOP for the past half a year or so, I’m definitely looking forward to potentially going all in on the Apple Watch again.
Top comment by OliveBlowdryer
The problem with Apple Watch is that more frequent tracking of HR & HRV aren't what is needed to replace a Whoop. Whoop's algorithm tracks HRV in a specific way during the last deep phase of sleep only. That is used to dictate your recovery. Apple tracks HRV all day and with all of the added noise, the metric isn't useful. You might have 75ms and then 120ms and then 19ms in the same day, not useful. Whoop is less obtrusive both in size, no light emissions, and a 2 week+ battery life.
Even though I’ve been a WHOOP user, I never ditched my Apple Watch, purely because having a screen offers a lot of utility. I don’t want to always pull my phone out.
What do you think of the Apple Watch Series 12? Will you be upgrading for the new features or will you be sticking with your current Apple Watch? Let us know in the comments below.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
- Anker Ultra-Slim MagSafe Battery Pack
- AirPods Pro 3 (2x ANC vs AirPods Pro 2!)
- Anker Nano 45W Fast Charger with Smart Display
- Anker Prime 3-in-1 25W Compact MagSafe Charger
- Logitech MX Master 4 Mouse for Mac
- AirTag 2 4-pack (50% improved Precision Finding!)
- Belkin MagSafe 3-in-1 Charging Stand for iPhone
- MOFT MagSafe Kickstand Wallet for iPhone
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