Whoop vs Garmin for Jiu-Jitsu & Strength Training: Honest Review

I had an Apple Watch. Uh I had the Microsoft Band actually before that. So I've had these fitness trackers for forever. Fitness, health, whatever you call them, trackers. I absolutely despised the Apple Watch. It had crashing issues. Now remember, this is gen one and gen two of the Apple Watch. So, I got both of those and then decided on binning this thing and never using it again. And that's when I switched over. I think I switched over to Garmin from that. Uh, no, I switched over to some random Android thing that took pictures, which was really cool, but huge. So, oh, that's another note on the Whoop. So, all of the Whoop reviewers who say that the Whoop who spout the company narrative that the Whoop 5 is smaller, let me make it crystal clear. This device is not smaller than the Whoop. Let me see if you can actually Let me bring it up up up. So, this device is not smaller than the Whoop 4. Let me make it clear. It is not smaller than the last generation device. And you're thinking, what do you mean? They say it's smaller. Yes, they do say it's smaller. And you know what they do to say it's smaller? They have made it. So, if you look at this device, I wish I had the the four to show you, but there are some people who put them next to each other. And the one thing that they any reviewer who does it right will will tell you immediately is if they put the device next to each other this way, this device is thicker, right? So it has massively improved battery life from the 4. And but what they did is they made it narrower and a little bit like thinner this way, right? both metrics that don't matter. Like the the length actually matters for people with small wrists, but I don't have like I don't have big wrists, [snorts] but I don't have small wrists. So, like you could have gone out an extra inch on this like, you know, across my wrist and it would have still been fine. And I think the Whoop was like slightly big. Like you're talking about like just enough that the bands don't work. That's the other thing. They made it so that none of the previous bands work from the last generation and it feels intentional. There was no need. They could have made it the exact same form factor with the new thickness, which would have been thicker, but then they couldn't say it's smaller. So, I think their trade-off was actually not as malicious as it feels as a Whoop customer. Like that none of their stuff works. I have to put a spacer in the underwear to make it match the size because like this thing is not as wide like or not as like long this way. So you put a little spacer in there and it fits perfectly in there. Um I just took like tape, wrapped it up a little bit and stuck it, you know, up against the edge of it. I'm like that's dumb that I have to do that. And they made it they made it smaller in ways that are not meaningful and larger in the only way that's meaningful, right? The only way that's meaningful is the height off your wrist. That's the only thing that matters. And if you look at these next to each other, this thing is as high as the Garmin with a screen. So if you look at the height off the wrist, their wrist, they're actually the same height. meaning in terms of comfortability of wear, they are equal com. Now realize this is the 265S, right? So I have the smaller one and you're thinking why would he get the smaller one he's got? So I before I had the Phoenix brand and and the bigger Phoenix's, right? And I bought this because of the lightness and the ability to sleep with it on because I knew I would want to use those daily workouts which require you to sleep with the device on. And I knew if I'm going to be sleeping with the device on, I want it to be the lightest, most comfortable one. So instead of going with the most features, I went with the one that I could get, the smallest, lightest one. That's why I have the 265S. You might be thinking like that's, you know what I mean? But that's a very specific niche reason. And also, it's pretty cheap, too, for for a Garmin device. like it it was relatively cheap, has a massive feature set, and I don't use any of the maps stuff. So, I should say I, you know, I just don't use the hiking trail stuff. If I'm going to do that, I'm going to load it onto my phone. I'm never going to use the device for that. I'm never going to be device free hiking. Uh, so just realize that's not a thing. I'll just load maps onto my phone. And and so it's really used for running for me. And uh so that that was the whole reason I wanted the lightest device possible. And the Phoenix's are heavy. I have a I have an old I have two I have a old Phoenix and the bigger 4Runner from the last from a from the 45 series maybe. But uh I have a bigger Phoenix which obviously that thing's really really heavy. By the way, all of these garments still work. So, you want to talk about device uh longevity. If you want the longest lasting devices out out there, there is no substitute for garments. My original Phoenix still works. Like, I could put that on tomorrow and run with the thing. I'm never going to because it's heavy and old, but you could do that. and and the the last generation that I replaced this with, I only replaced this because I wanted a much lighter device. So, and and I know it's like not that. And I wanted some of the features that came in this. I forget which feature was not in the previous generation, but there was one or two that came with this device that I actually downgraded because that was the the highest end foreigner and this is the lower-end one. And the lower-end one actually had more features than the higherend one from the 245. So I have the two I have the 945 and now I have the 265s. Oh my gosh, these naming structures are are brutal. But in the in the Garmin world, but that's where with Whoop, you you only have your choice of one one well two devices, the MG or the five. And they're basically the same device. Uh just, you know, a couple extra sensors thrown on the MG. And with Garmin, there's like a massive array of devices. I do prefer these. I don't like the Apple Watch. I don't like anything that's going to send notifications to me. So, I really don't want notifications. I'm uh really not a fan of having things notify me. Uh so, like that's kind of out. So, the settings and then what would happen is you'd update your Apple Watch and then it would lose some of those settings that you turned off. My buddy's like, "Oh, just turn off the settings." And it's like, I swear every time you update these devices, it resets those settings to be on because it doesn't want you to not get a million notifications. And I don't think that's actually the case. Maybe they've fixed it in newer generations, but it seemed to be nagwear to me. Uh, and even like the stand notifications and all the other dumb stuff that they had, uh, you know, I just didn't like any of it to be honest with you. I I I don't want, you know, a whole bunch of nagging of me by my device. So, this thing I leave it on and I only check the body battery if it's relevant because I'm about to do their daily suggested workout. And uh and I I have to wear it to sleep because I want the daily suggested workouts. So, and I and I actually think there's a whole bunch of data that eventually I'll have they have like this health uh they have all the health tracking of the Whoop now, but mine still says calibrating inside of Garmin Connect. I was checking that today to see if I could give you guys some kind of a reading of how that works, but it still says calibrating. So, once that is done calibrating, maybe I'll give an update to say, is this thing even close to what Woop can do? I know Garmin has to come out with something that can be worn on your bicep if they're going to actually compete with it because a chest strap during jiu-jitsu sucks. You know, I've tried it, too. It It's just bad before I decided to go with the Whoop. And uh yeah, so that's that's kind of this video. It's a little bit about devices and a little bit about uh training. You know, if you have any questions about how I train, how I used to train, that kind of stuff, uh, you can leave them in a comment down below. Thank you for your time. This is Toby on Fitness Tech. I'll catch you guys later.