Whoop is set for a major overhaul of its platform - one that will bring a host of new features.
The news was confirmed by Whoop founder Will Ahmed in an interview with Wareable.
While Ahmed was tight-lipped on the exact details of features that were landing, he confirmed that a large overhaul of the app was incoming, with a focus on the journal and the benefits of all-day wear.
“We are working on an additional feature that will make day wear more compelling and more dynamic,” Ahmed said.
A focus on all-day wear
In our review of Whoop 4.0, we were frustrated by the lack of incentive for keeping Whoop on our wrists all day.
If you simply wear the device to bed, you’ll still get 90% of the insights, as the metrics that Whoop bases its stats around are collected during sleep.
And while Whoop has found a niche in the elite sports world, it offers little insight into workout tracking that’s not available on basic wearables.
“The primary thing to say [about the forthcoming update] is it will give you more reason to wear Whoop throughout the day,” Ahmed said.
The journal as an insights 'engine'
Ahmed also outlined that the journal feature would be a more central focus going forward.
As Whoop users, we’ve become disillusioned with the existing journal, which plays a minimal part in the monthly performance update. It doesn’t feel enough, given the daily data entry that sometimes felt like a chore.
Ahmed said that the “Journal will be an engine for generating insights, via new features we’re releasing in the next quarter or so.”
And Ahmed said this would be delivered by new sections of the app - ones that will go beyond the existing Sleep/Strain/Recovery menus.
This will be exciting to any Whoop users who use the wearable to track daily readiness and rely on the Health Monitor feature.
Ahmed said that while Whoop had originally started with athletes and elite sports professionals, the product and user base were evolving.
“In the last two years, Whoop has become a more general mass-market product. Our origins are with professional athletes. However, Whoop members are aspirational in nature, but not necessarily fit or athletes,” he said.
And that’s been driven by the excellent Health Monitor feature, which is one of our favorite elements of the app.
“The Health Monitor feature is one of our most used features,” he said.
Bringing medical grade stats to Whoop
However, there doesn’t seem to be new hardware coming.
“We recently launched the Whoop 4.0 and that’s the technology for the foreseeable future,” Ahmed said.
“Our perspective today is to keep adding more and more value over time, and true health monitoring is a bit misunderstood. It’s become a race to the bottom, but the consumer is not getting more value.
“We’re focused on providing value that’s better than $20/$20 a month, and when you look at what people spend on coffee or a gym pass, compared to something you wear every day, which is tracking your body and you can show your doctor, it’s a pretty powerful service.”
So, what’s next for Whoop? Like most wearables companies we’ve spoken to over the last year, it’s about bringing core medical metrics, such as blood pressure, to the wrist.
“There’s a variety of metrics that are considered medical grade. People get them at the doctor’s office, but we’re working to bring them to a 24/7 continuous wearable,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed, however, also sounded a warning to wearables companies that are pursuing new sensors and new metrics.
"There’s a graveyard of failed wearables companies because it’s hard to get someone to wear something. And even if you do that, it’s hard to explain the data and do it in an actionable way.
"I think the biggest differentiator between Whoop and others is that it will change your behavior and health - you will have better sleep and a lower resting heart rate.
"It’s a lot of layers of technology - it’s the battery life, charger, it’s the scores we’ve invested in, it’s simplifying the data in the app and explaining it to you," he said.
As ever, watch this space.
How we test
James is the co-founder of Wareable, and he has been a technology journalist for 15 years.
He started his career at Future Publishing, James became the features editor of T3 Magazine and T3.com and was a regular contributor to TechRadar – before leaving Future Publishing to found Wareable in 2014.
James has been at the helm of Wareable since 2014 and has become one of the leading experts in wearable technologies globally. He has reviewed, tested, and covered pretty much every wearable on the market, and is passionate about the evolving industry, and wearables helping people achieve healthier and happier lives.