I’ve been wearing the Whoop MG since it came out earlier this year, and it’s the best fitness tracker I’ve used. One of my favourite features has to be Healthspan, which gives you an big-picture look at your health with an age estimation. It’s something we’ve seen from other brands before, but Whoop’s implementation is rather compelling.
But, the feature’s been exclusive to the recent MG and 5.0 models – until now. Thanks to a new free update, older Whoop 4.0 bands are getting the Healthspan feature.
For those that haven’t used the new feature, Healthspan tracks nine key metrics to give you a so-called Whoop Age. This includes the usual suspects like sleep and exercise, plus some additional factors such as body mass. It also gives you an insight into how fast (or hopefully slow) you’re ageing. Think of it as a mirror that reflects your habits back at you, but with more graphs and less dread. Well, maybe just a bit less.
There’s a decent bit of coaching involved too. The feature isn’t just telling you off for your bad habits – it actually tries to help you get better. Personalised recommendations nudge you towards healthier habits. For example, I need to be more consistent with my bedtimes to improve my Whoop Age, and getting some extra steps in each day will knock me into a lower age.
Whoop wants to push the metrics you get from wearables into your health conversations in a way that feels less gimmicky and more grounded in actual, usable data. It’s the kind of approach we should be seeing more often. And I’m glad that Whoop is no longer locking useful features behind new hardware, but bringing existing users along for the ride.
If you’re curious, the Healthspan update starts rolling out from today (5 August) to Whoop 4.0 users. At the same time, you can bag a one-month free trial of Whoop 5.0 – including all the perks of a Peak membership – with the option to upgrade once the trial ends. Whoop’s Peak memberships are available from $30/£27 per month.
