Ah, cross post 
I was just coming back to add the link!
I am a 2 year user of Whoop, and I donāt mean to demean it in any way, it just doesnāt have great accuracy/precision for high-intensity activities in high heat. It is far, far more valuable as a recovery tool and sleep monitor, for which I use it and very much appreciate it. The strain scores are generally in the right ballpark for predicting sleep/recovery need, they just may not be super accurate if you are basing workouts off of real-time Whoop HR data. Whoop actually acknowledges this difficulty with predicting daily strain tolerance by giving a fairly large spread of acceptable recommended strain. Using Whoop for workout intensity monitoring misses the point entirely IMHO.
If you are looking for an accurate HRM, there are a lot of better options, but none of them combine it with the recovery scores, sleep phase timers, sleep need scales, and general convenience of the Whoop product.
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Always believe Ray. Always!
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I find the numbers are spot on for everything other and outside intense exercise. However this is not really what whoop is about. Itās a recovery tool and the numbers it reads for hrv at rest are accurate. I also find that the sleep feels very accurate for me.
Seeing as the meaningful part of it (hrv and recovery scores) donāt take the daily strain into account for that Iām not really bothered about the accuracy of the workouts as thatās not what itās all about. The numbers it reads while sleeping and resting are the only meaningful ones.
I just wish that whoop would stop marketing the strain side of it as itās (mostly) not good enough to be of any use
How do you know the numbers are spot on for non exercise work? I find it hard to believe that whoop can actually measure heartrate accurately enough to get HRV numbers based on the accuracy error compared to chest strap.
Close enough doesnāt cut it for HRV as that requires interval to interval accurate timing. It whoop is 5bpm off for the macro heartrate how can it be accurate for HRV? If you are measure HR intervals accurately then you have the data to output heartrate and heartrate change.
I know because Iāve compared the numbers with my polar chest strap for everything and itās all spot on for resting and sleeping. Iāve also been taking hrv measurements for a couple of years with some well known hrv apps and the polar strap and the hrv readings seem consistent to me.
Also compared to how Iāve felt day by day and also that the whoop sensor is an hrv sensor and has been used in many studies.
Iāve no reason not to trust it.
Also forgot to mention in my last post about a guy on YouTube called the āquantified scientistā who does in depth analysis and testing on all sorts of health tech including the whoop. Worth checking out.
I did an 3 hour gravel ride today and numbers between Garmin and Whoop are almost the same. Garmin 152 avg and 184 max, and Whoop 153 avg and 184 max.
But it looks like whoop overestimates calories (garmin/TP 2019 and whoop 2811). Note that I have power meter so that is the difference probably, I didnāt do a big numbers but my heart rate was elevated because it was brutal hot (35+ C)ā¦
Outside of workout I have a feeling that whoop underestimate calories, it gives me around 1500 and Iām M33, 180cm and 69kg but yes, working from home and not too much active most od the dayā¦
Everyone I know who used a whoop for HR had the most awful looking graphs, random spikes, random flat lines, etc. similar to what Iāve seen from Apple watches. Optical HR sensors as a whole seem to be inferior to traditional straps. I say used because both guys I know who had them cancelled their subscriptions