I Tested WHOOP, Oura, and Apple Watch — Here’s Which One You Should Spend Your Money On

If you’re someone who is looking to jump into the world of wearables, you would for sure have heard three names over and over again– the WHOOP band, the Oura Ring, and, of course, the Apple Watch. 

Some of these have been on my wrist and fingers for years, while others have recently joined the stack. After putting these through various tests, I’ve got the scoop on which one you should be spending your $$$ on. You can thank me later!

Specifications 

Specifications	WHOOP 4.0	Oura Gen 3	Apple Watch Series 9
Weight	11.3g	4-6g	31.9-51.5g
Sizes	One-Size	8 sizes (6-13)	41mm and 45mm
Sizing kit	No	Yes, free	No
Colors	Multiple bands available	6 colors – Silver, Black, Stealth, Brushed Titanium, Gold, and Rose Gold	Aluminum 5 colors (pink, midnight, starlight, silver, and red). Stainless Steel 3 colors (gold, silver, and graphite)
Customizable	Yes	No	Yes
Dimensions	Sensor– 25.0 mm x 35.97 mm x 10.1 mm Band Length– 24 cm	7.9mm wide, 2.5mm thickness	35mm and 38mm wide, 10.7mm thickness
Memory	Up to 2 weeks of data	16MB	64GB
Battery sizes	638 mAh	15mAh – 22mAh	Li-Ion 308 mAh
Battery life	Up to 5 days	Up to 7 days	18hrs
Charge time	2-2.5 hours	80 mins	75 minutes
Charger	Battery Pack 4.0	Size-specific charger with USB-C cable	Apple Watch Magnetic Fast Charger to USB-C Cable
Vibration	Yes	No	Yes
Material	Band: 52% polyamide, 41% polyester, 7% elastaneClasp: Stainless SteelHook: Stainless SteelFast Link™: Stainless SteelSensor Body: Titanium	Titanium with PVD coating	Aluminum and stainless steel
Water resistance	Yes, up to 10 meters for 2 hours	100 m (IP68)	50 m (IP68)
Operating temperature	15° – 140° Fahrenheit	14° to 125° F (-10° to 52° C)	32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
Compatible OS	iOS 16 or higher and Android 10.0 or higher	iOS 15 and higher or Android 8.0 and higher	iPhone Xs and above or iOS 17 and above
Warranty	Lifetime Warranty	1 – 2 years	2 years
Price	–	Starting $299	$399
Subscription	Yes, $239 (annual) and $399 (24 months)	$5.99 USD/month	No

My First Impressions 

Being a user of the Apple Watch for ages, I can easily say that I love it. But, since I cannot stand wearing a watch to bed, I picked up the Oura Ring for sleep tracking. A few months later, I got fascinated with the WHOOP band, so I threw that into the mix, too, because why stop at two? 

Here are my first impressions of all of these wearables–

WHOOP

• Comfortable to wear throughout the day but makes itself known at night.
• Doesn’t count steps.
• The app is a tad hard to navigate on the first go, with a load of information that can sometimes be daunting.

Oura Ring

• Very pretty and comfortable to wear, even at night.
• App is so easy to navigate, with scores to give a quick glance at my metrics.
• Extremely comfortable to wear throughout the day and night, even in the shower.

Apple Watch

• Customised straps make me never get bored of the watch.
• Great to wear at the gym and tracks all the metrics I need, including steps throughout the day.
• Not the most ideal to wear to bed in order to track sleep.
• Effortless to navigate, thanks to the Apple ecosystem. 

Features 

Features	WHOOP 4.0	Oura Gen 3	Apple Watch Series 9
Heart Rate, HRV & RHR	✅	✅	✅
Blood oxygen levels (SpO2)	✅	✅	✅(not available in models sold after 18th Jan 2024)
ECG	❌	❌	✅
Sleep Tracking	✅	✅	✅
Sleeping Time Recommendations	✅	✅	❌
Sleep Debt	✅	❌	❌
Sleep Latency	❌	✅	❌
Movement During Sleep	❌	✅	❌
Nap Detection	✅	✅	✅
Respiration Rate	✅	✅	✅
Skin Temperature	✅	✅	✅
Steps	❌	✅	✅
Distance Traveled	✅	✅	✅
Active Minutes	❌	❌	✅
Calories	✅	✅	✅
User Logged Metrics	✅	✅	✅
Workouts	✅ (automatically detects)	✅	✅
Menstrual Symptoms & Period Logging	❌	✅	✅
Fertility & Ovulation Prediction	✅	✅	✅
Pregnancy Tracking	✅	✅	✅
Mood and Energy	✅ (to be logged manually)	✅ (to be logged manually)	✅ (via Apple Health, to be logged manually)
VO2 max	❌	✅	✅
User-based insights	✅	✅	✅
Crash and Fall Detection	❌	❌	✅
High and low heart rate alerts	❌	❌	✅
Irregular heart rhythm alerts	❌	❌	✅
Daily Summary	✅	✅	✅
Share Report	✅	✅	✅
Personalized Goals	✅	✅	✅
Spot Check	❌	✅	✅
Physical Strain	✅	❌	❌
Stress Tracking	✅	✅	❌
Resilience	❌	✅	❌
Recovery Score	✅	✅	❌
Find My	❌	✅ (iOS)	✅
Guided meditation and breathing	❌	✅	✅
Haptic Alarm	✅	❌	✅
Behavioral Journal	✅	❌	❌
Caffeine Intake & Hydration	✅	❌	❌
Medications app	❌	❌	✅
Environmental sound level alerts	❌	❌	✅
Headphones’ audio level detection	❌	❌	✅

Design and Comfort

The WHOOP, commonly known as the WHOOP band, is a small square device that is worn on the wrist with a band. The cool thing about this device is that it has up to 74,000 customization options available. I got the black to test out. 

It is pretty comfortable to wear, given the option of various materials of the bands available. It’s not as annoying as my Apple Watch, but it’s also not as comfortable as the Oura Ring to sleep in. 

Additionally, the WHOOP has a clothing line that is designed to hold the device in case you don’t want to wear it as a band on your wrist. But, since I won’t be wearing gym clothes all day, every day, I prefer wearing it as a band.

The Oura Ring, as the name suggests, is a ring with sensors on the inside to measure various health metrics. I have the Silver color in Horizon, which is so easy to style and blends easily with my outfits. Given the placement and the size of the Oura Ring, it is the best out of the three for wearing to bed.

Ah, the Apple Watch. Bought it for the style, stayed for the impeccable features that make it a key part of the Apple ecosystem. I upgraded to the Apple Watch Series 9 in Starlight, which we will be comparing today. 

The sheer variety of straps available officially, as well as in the depths of Amazon, makes this very easy to style and lets me choose the material I’m most comfortable with. Although comfortable to wear throughout the day, I cannot stand wearing a watch to bed. But that’s a personal preference, so you do you girl!

WHOOP: 4/5

Oura Ring: 5/5

Apple Watch: 3.5/5

Battery Life

I’m the queen of letting my devices die before I find the charger and plug them in. So, if I’m using a device for tracking my health metrics, I definitely need it to have an ample amount of charge before I need to plug it in again.

In terms of battery life, the WHOOP falls short of its promise to deliver 5 days of battery life. It had run out of battery at the end of the 4-day mark, still far better than my Apple Watch. However, the WHOOP has a battery that clips on, allowing me to wear it while it charges so that I never lose on my metrics. 

The Oura lasts me 6 days before I need to top it off, which is great, provided I never take it off. Like, apart from when I need to charge it, of course. Then comes my Apple Watch; as much as I love it, if I’m not testing it against other wearables, it’s almost always out of battery. 

The way I normally use my Apple Watch, it can go 2 days without needing a charge, but if I use it to track my sleep as well, which is what I did while pitting it against the other two wearables, I need to charge it every morning. 

WHOOP: 4/5

Oura Ring: 4.5/5

Apple Watch: 3/5

Sleep Tracking

If there’s one reason I can point out that convinced me to buy a wearable, it is sleep tracking. It is because for the years I’ve had my Apple Watch, I never once wore it to track my sleep at night, deliberately, of course.

The WHOOP band stands out in terms of one feature– the sleep debt. It’s surprising how useful this feature has been. It calculates how much sleep I’ve fallen behind on throughout the week and determines the ideal amount of sleep I need based on my current metrics. 

The app also prompts me every morning with a survey about how I slept the night before—if I had caffeine or alcohol before bed and stuff like that. The answers, combined with my heart rate data, reveal my sleep performance percentage, which is essentially the amount of sleep I got vs. the amount of sleep I need. This is similar to Oura’s sleep score. 

I also like the Sleep Coach feature of the WHOOP, wherein it tells me the ideal time for me to go to bed if I can’t catch up on my sleep debt with naps during the day. While this feature is missing from my Apple Watch, it still isn’t enough of a dealbreaker for me not to consider Apple for sleep tracking. 

While all three devices mostly give similar metrics, the Oura gives a sleep score (0-100), which gives me a crown whenever it is >85. This score helps me understand the quality of sleep I’ve had at a single glance, even without diving into the measurements. 

The sleep metrics are also pretty accurate to how I feel, especially the time of sleep and waking up. Barring a couple of times where the Oura detected sleep when I was fully awake, this device has been my go-to for sleep tracking.

Apart from tracking my total sleep and sleep stages almost perfectly, the nap detection is a little off on the Apple Watch. It only detected my nap once; I think this, being a fairly new feature, will take a few updates to get up to speed, but apart from that, the metrics are very close to how I felt my sleep to be.

It gives me my sleep stages, total time of sleep, a pretty accurate time of sleep and waking up, and a few more parameters related to heart rate and breathing.

One thing I loved about wearing my Apple Watch to bed was the Wake Up alarm, which vibrates in a rhythmic tone, waking me up ever so gently, unlike the alarm on my phone, which blares like a foghorn that jerks me out of sleep. The same goes for my WHOOP band with its haptic alarm.

But is it enough to convert me to a person who wears a smartwatch to bed? Ahh, no. Sorry, Apple. As much as I am a loyal user, the bands and watches are not my personal preference. 

Performance-wise, all three devices hold their own, but for me, comfort is key, which is why Oura wins the sleep-tracking battle. 

WHOOP: 3/5

Oura Ring: 5/5

Apple Watch: 4/5

Activity Tracking

Okay, my Apple Watch may have received a lower rating from me in terms of comfort while wearing it to bed, but this is where it truly shines—think Serena Williams at Wimbeldon. I’ve been using my Apple Watch to track my workouts for so long that nothing has come close. 

I can track my workouts automatically without fail and manually enter a variety of workouts. Probably the largest library of workouts I’ve seen. From details such as active and total calories, avg. Heart Rate, workout time, average pace, route, and more, the activity rings closing, is what gives me the most satisfaction. 

I can set the goals for each ring – move, stand, and exercise, as per my own preference. I usually set them to a slightly higher limit than I know I can achieve in order to push myself. This is what gives me the satisfaction of being truly productive during the day.

This is also true for the Oura Ring, wherein I can change certain goals but not the standing goal. It does, however, just like my Apple Watch, give me reminders to stand up and move around (an embarrassing amount of times) if I have been inactive and sitting in a spot for too long.

The edge Oura has over my watch, or my WHOOP band, is that I don’t need to take it off at all. So therefore, I feel it never misses my steps. Although it overcalculates my steps because of the hand movement, it is the easiest to wear 24×7.

Look, the Oura Ring is a great sleep-tracking device, even calculating steps, activity and health metrics throughout the day, but it is not a fitness tracker. I often take off the Oura ring at the gym because weightlifting is not comfortable with a chunky ring on my finger. 

For yoga, pilates, and walking/running, Oura is great. It tracks distance, route, and total calories burned. For strength training, not only is it not comfortable, I didn’t find it very accurate with heat rate when there’s a lot of movement involved. The watch always recognizes my activities accurately, but the Oura Ring, while mostly accurate at recognizing activities, has recorded my anxiety and breakdown as a workout (I don’t blame it, though).

As for the WHOOP band, I was very disappointed to find out that it doesn’t count steps. For that reason alone, I deduct points for WHOOP. I figured since it has been a favorite amongst so many athletes, it must be onto something. So I kept my disappointment aside and went to the gym with the Whoop band on my wrist.

Automatic tracking is better than the Oura ring on the WHOOP, but Apple still takes the cake with the Apple Watch. The metrics calculated on the WHOOP are still great, at par with the Apple Watch, solidifying its reputation as an athlete’s favorite. 

There is one more feature of the WHOOP that really caught my attention– the Strain. Essentially, the amount of stress I’m putting my body through. WHOOP categorizes these as –

• 0 – 9.9 – Light
• 10 – 13.9 – Moderate 
• 14 – 17.9 – High
• 18 – 21 – All Out

This score can be a combination of workouts and activities. WHOOP also combines activities into a day strain score at the end of the day. It’s a great option for a health and fitness tracker, but bear in mind that you would need a separate wearable to track your steps. And since I am not very consistent with working out, I want my fitness tracker to be able to count my steps.

The WHOOP also doesn’t integrate with any other fitness apps, such as Strava, MyFitnessPal, Nike Run Club, etc., which was another disappointing reveal. 

The ideal combo for me is Oura for sleep tracking and Apple Watch for activity and working out. 

WHOOP: 3.5/5

Oura Ring: 3.5/5

Apple Watch: 5/5

Cycle Tracking

All of these three devices measure and predict my period, some better than others. The Apple Watch takes temperature readings from my wrist and notices the ever-so-slight changes, that predict my period dates and ovulation.

Of course, I have to log the dates in manually, along with any symptoms and pregnancy (if any). The app, however, does not predict my menstrual phases. To be honest, the cycle tracking on the Apple Watch is pretty basic, and they don’t advise their predictions to be used for medical purposes either.

The Oura Ring, on the other hand, notes my temperature reading over the night and uses these changes to predict menstrual phases, period dates, and ovulation dates. Obviously, I have to log my period manually, but the predictions on my Oura Ring are scary accurate. 

They also partnered with Natural Cycles, just like the Apple Watch, to take temperature readings every morning the minute I wake up. For people trying to dodge pregnancies without the use of hormonal birth control or the complete opposite, trying to conceive, this is a pretty dope feature. 

The WHOOP also has a cycle tracking feature, which works the same way as the Oura and the Apple Watch do, with a journal to log various symptoms and behaviors. However, I found the app to be more focused on my journal inputs rather than the temperature it was recording. 

The cycle tracking feature on the WHOOP band feels half-baked. More like it was thrown in after the product was done developing just to be in the race with its competition. Sadly, that reflects. 

The Oura Ring is hands down my go-to for period tracking.

WHOOP: 3/5

Oura Ring: 5/5

Apple Watch: 4/5

Additional Features

• The Apple Watch, being a device with a screen and functioning as a mini phone on my wrist, has many more features that I can’t compare to these wearables. The on-spot blood oxygen check, ECG, AFib detection, notifications, and reminders for taking my supplements and medicines are a few. It also allows me to find my phone, a feature I shamelessly use (and abuse) all the time.
• The WHOOP offers me an option to create teams with my friends and family, who have the band, and keep track of our progress in a (not so) subtle way. I also get a month’s subscription free for every referral I give.
• The Oura Ring focuses on sleep and recovery and gives me a Readiness Score every morning, just like the Recovery Score on WHOOP. This allows me to set the tone for my day and squeeze in a quick HIIT session, along with my workout, if I’m feeling up for it. Oura also picks up on potential sickness; luckily, I haven’t had the chance to experience it yet.

Price and Availability

The Apple Watch Series 9 starts at $399 for aluminum finish and $699 for stainless steel. The cool thing is we can customize the look with additional straps. The great thing is, no subscription. 

The Oura Ring starts at $299 and goes up to $549, depending on the variant and color you choose. An additional subscription is required to access basically all data (except for the scores) at $5.99/month. The subscription kicks in after the first free month. 

The WHOOP band has membership-based pricing. It comes with a black band (no additional cost) with a free subscription for the first month then, $30/month or $239/ year. Any additional customization or bands will cost you anywhere from $0-$99.

Apple Watch is available worldwide officially and via authorized retailers. Oura ships to 46 countries and is also sold via authorized retailers. WHOOP ships directly to 59 countries, with additional availability through authorized retailers.

Final Verdict

Ok, this is a tricky one. I think all devices are pretty great on their own and would make for a great investment, depending on the personal goals you have. If you’re looking for a sleep and wellness tracker, Oura is a great choice overall. It has decent step tracking and an excellent sleep and cycle tracking. 

Ideally, if you have the budget, I prefer the Oura Ring for tracking every metric, day to night, and the Apple Watch during the day, especially for workouts.

What makes WHOOP take the third place for me, though, is that if I need a separate tracker for my “activity”, it should at least have a damn good step calculator. Because knowing myself, I’m not training every day. 

But if you only have the budget to invest in one, the Oura ring is great for focusing on sleep and general health. Go for the Apple Watch if you want to focus more on activity and workouts. And if you don’t mind wearing a watch to bed, you get the best of both worlds. 

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