Rise of the Whoop dupes

0:02Hello and welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Whoop Doops. I'm your friend David Pierce, and today on the show, we're going to talk about wearables. But not the kind of wearables we normally talk about, which traditionally have screens and are probably smartwatches and have more and more features all the time and are trying to replace your phone and all kinds of everything. There's this new thing happening, though, where instead of all of that, we're getting devices like Whoop and new things from Fitbit and new things from Garmin that are pointed in a very different direction. They still have lots of technology.

0:32They still have lots of features. They still connect to your phone. But importantly, they don't have screens and they seem to communicate something different about what we want from our wearables and how things are supposed to feel when we put them on our body. I asked the Virgis V song to come on and explain what's happening here, both technically and culturally, because I think there's a real shift happening here. And I think she might agree with me. We're going to get to that in just a second, but first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today. This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, August 3rd, 2026.

1:05Movie fans, I have good news and bad news. The good news, Spider-Man Brand New Day is great and is a huge hit, actually the second biggest opening weekend ever. And along with The Odyssey, it made this weekend the biggest weekend in box office history. Movies are so back, you guys. Now, the bad news. If you want to see either of those movies in IMAX, good luck. As of this week, Spidey and Odysseus will be sharing IMAX locations around the U.S., which means that the already hard-to-get tickets will be even harder to get for both movies. Personally, I've given up and I will just be streaming them via bootleg TikToks as the directors intended.

1:40Meanwhile, Truth Social just started selling access to a new API that gives paid subscribers early access to posts from influential accounts on the platform. And by that I mean the only Truth Social account anyone is even aware of, President Trump. If you're thinking, gosh, that sounds like corruption, giving anyone who pays a huge amount to the Trump Organization access to obviously market-moving information from an administration that basically governs by true social posts. All I'll say is that that is a very reasonable and very popular takeaway. Finally, Google leaks are coming fast and hot ahead of the Pixel launch scheduled for next week.

2:12It looks like the Pixel 11, unfortunately, will be more expensive than last year, starting at$899, and some of the models will have less RAM than before. None of this is surprising, given the incredible rising price of memory everywhere, but it continues to be a bummer. We also might have gotten our first look at a Google book, the Gemini first laptops expected to ship later this year. I can describe them to you in six words, pretty much just a Microsoft Surface. I'm kind of into it now. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That is 90 Seconds on the Verge for Monday, August 3rd.

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3:50podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. All right, let's talk fitness trackers. The Virgis V song is here. Hi, V.

3:59Victoria Song:Hi. V, three is a trend. This is literally the pitch I made to you for come do this show with me is three is a trend. We have the Whoop, which I think gets probably a lot of credit. I want to know exactly how much credit for starting this whole particular new kind of fitness tracker trend. Then you have the Google Fitbit Air, which we've talked a bunch about on the show. And now you have this new one from Garmin that is just, it's just exactly the same thing. I want to get into these devices in particular, but tell me about, tell me about this new thing that Garmin launched and whether it's exciting or not.

4:33Victoria Song:Garmin launched the Garmin Circa, which I have on my arm right now. And it's basically a whoop doop in the sense that, you know, this, like the whoop, can also be worn on your bicep. So, you know, it can be worn on a different part of your body. Garmin is more kind of appealing to the same crowd as the whoop crowd is. But when I was talking to Garmin, they're basically like, this is kind of a lifestyle device for them. And they're like, think the same vein as Garmin Venue 4. I understand what that means. But for everyone else who's not extremely well-versed in Garmin. Did I just Google those exact words as you said?

5:11Maybe.

5:12Victoria Song:Yeah, the Garmin, like the 4 ,000 Garmin devices that are on the market. The Venue line is their smartwatch line. It's mostly for people who are a bit more casual, a bit more lifestyle, but still want some kind of in-depth tracking. So that's kind of the same user base that they're targeting with the Circa. It was an interesting concept because they were also like, you know, Phoenix users just might want a Circa for when they're sleeping because it's a little more comfortable than, you know, kind of acknowledging that the Phoenix can be a heck and chonker of a device. There's a lot of buttons.

5:47Victoria Song:So they're kind of targeting entry-level people who, like the Fitbit Air, might be your grandparents who don't need the bells and whistles that carbon provide, a little bit more of a streamlined feature set. So it's not like, you know, like the endurance metric where you can watch your energy levels fluctuate during an endurance long run. It's more of like basic tracking. Like if you hit the button, it can auto track one type of activity. You're going to need your phone with this device. There's no built in GPS on this. It's connected GPS, which makes sense because there ain't no screen. So it's the ain't no screen that I want to talk about, because I think you're right that all of these things poke at kind of different kinds of people.

6:36But holy God, do they look the same. I mean, they are just structurally the exact same hardware, right? Little pill fitness tracker inside of a very similar looking Velcro band. I mean, that's the thing. And I think this makes me think we should talk about Whoop just for a minute because Whoop Doop is a thing and these look like Whoops in very real ways. What is it that Whoop figured out in this space that everyone is still catching up to? Like there are a lot of fitness trackers out there. A lot of people have a lot of different ideas. But Whoop seems to have solved something specific that I've never been able to put my finger on that folks are chasing after even now.

7:17What do you think it is?

7:18Victoria Song:I'm going to also lump Aura into that. What Whoop and Aura have figured out is some people just don't want another screen on their body. They want all the metrics and they want the in-depth fitness or they want some degree of the fitness. They're just not trying to be bothered. I think it's just that they happen to be screenless devices at a time where a lot of people are having a certain degree of tech fatigue, where they don't want to be looking at another screen, possibly right in front of their eyes and glasses. and they want a little bit less distraction, a little bit more intentionality.

7:58Victoria Song:And the market that Whoop has basically catered to, which are hardcore fitness people, elite athletes, weekend warriors, people who are very kind of into the wellness space naturally, those people have been kind of banging on the intention and intentionality drum for a long time. And for those people, screens are a destruction a lot of the time. But I've heard it from my readers, too, who are just like, you know, there's just so much to look at on my phone. I'm just fatigued every day. The screen is small on the wrist. The battery life is not what I want. A whoop will last you like a month on a charge because they have a little battery pack that you just stick on the thing.

8:42Victoria Song:The Garmin Circa is 10 days. The Fitbit Air is about 7. So you don't really have to think about it. It's on your wrist. You don't have to think about looking at it. It's there. I have the Oura Ring on here. It's also just there. And I think that's really kind of the thing that Whoop tapped into, which is you can get all the data, same data. Maybe the GPS is not quite as good, but you don't really have to look about it or think about it. It's just there in the background. And it turns out that's what a lot of people want. Well, what's so interesting to me about that is that my confusion about Whoop has always been that all of the things you just described, all of those upsides seem like they would make a lot of sense for casual people, right?

9:26I don't need constant feedback on my fitness as I sit here at my desk in my basement for 17 hours a day. What I need is sort of a rough overall sense of how I'm doing. And so something like this that doesn't have a screen, that doesn't offer feedback, that doesn't buzz my wrist all the time, useful. And WHOOP appeals to people at the very top of the, I want to know how I'm like, WHOOP invented new scores for people and has come up with new metrics and is very much geared toward peak athletes doing peak athlete kind of stuff. So the fact that those people, A, wanted that device, not just for the stuff that it offered, but for the actual physical object in the way that it worked, and that that's a growing trend among even sort of elite athletes, people who really care about this stuff, is really fascinating and frankly kind of surprising.

10:17Because everything else has been running towards bigger screens with more features that do more stuff. So the fact that next to that is this new thing rising, even among those same people, strikes me as a big change in this space.

10:28Victoria Song:It's actually, if you think about how the athlete brain works, I actually think it makes sense because it's about focus, right? So when you have the screens, part of the reason why you have screens is engagement. So a smartwatch on a run is going to be telling you data mid-run. It's going to be like, this is whatever. Now, like, you have Workout Buddy and the Apple Watch will interrupt if you choose. Like, some people like this, some people don't. But it'll interrupt a thing being like, great workout. You just hit your 10th whatever this month on an incline of whatever. And, you know, for some people, it really takes them out.

11:06Victoria Song:It's going to kind of distract them from their focus. So not having a screen, not having those metrics to look at, you can just be completely zoned in. Like when I'm running and I'm just like, I want to stop. I don't like this. It's humid. Why am I doing this to myself? My mental trick and go-to is to just focus on my breathing. So I'll be like one breath in, two out. And I'll play little games with my surroundings. And that's how you kind of lock into your body. And then your watch goes, you did it. You ran two miles. And yeah. Yeah. And so like the watch you have, I've noticed in myself, I'll be like, oh my God, how much is fucking left on this run?

11:44Victoria Song:Oh God, I've only gone 0.05. And then, you know, I have to focus. Whereas if you don't have that screen, there's nothing for you to do but to focus on what's going on at the moment. It kind of makes sense for an athlete whose main priority is performance, focus and recovery to not have a screen. Because the last thing you want, and I think truly I think this is a reason why professional sports leagues have not been into wearables on the court, is that they don't want any distraction. They don't want any unfair advantage. And what is a screen going to do? other than give you an unfair advantage, whereas something that's screenless is just recording data.

12:26So the last question I have on these devices in particular is, is there a technical tradeoff in there? You're describing what I would call big interface changes, right? That this is a complete shift in how we think about using and looking at and interacting with these devices. and I'm for now resisting the urge to connect that to much bigger stories about our relationship with technology that I'm going to get to in a minute but I am curious purely from a what can you do with these trackers kinds of trade-off is the circa or the fitbit air sort of definitionally less powerful because of what it is than some of the other things like can can you do all of the things in one of these, you know, pill in a strap devices that you can in the biggest, fanciest smartwatches out there?

13:14Victoria Song:No, just because they are so the tradeoff is that you are in some ways relying on your phone more. So you get these to not look at your phone or look at screens quite as much. But conversely, you are relying on your phone more because that's the only way you're going to view data. That's the only way you're going to be able to manage the settings. So it's a little weird in that. It's counterintuitive, right? Because you can't do anything on this. Everything has to be done on the handy dandy phone, which is like these are paired together. If you want to leave your phone at home while you're working out, sorry, buddy, you're not going to be able to do that.

13:54Victoria Song:You have to take your phone with you because they don't have integrated GPS. So that's going to be out there. You cannot call from your screened thing. So if you're in an emergency, I hope you have your phone on you and it doesn't go like falling down the mountain because like the Circa does have live tracking. So, you know, that's the feature that Garmin has so that you can notify your loved ones if something happens to you. Well, you best have your phone on you because otherwise it's just a fitness band. And, you know, smartwatch, it can do more than just track your fitness. This is just fitness.

14:29Victoria Song:So it's in a way, it's like a return to the dedicated instead of the multi-use wearable. Okay. And that makes me think that maybe the case Garmin made to you that this is a device existing Garmin owners might also want maybe makes some sense because my instinct was to be like, well, okay, if I own a really expensive smartwatch, why would I also want one of these cheaper, simpler things? But maybe it's for the reason you just described that there are there are times where the one is useful and there are times where the other is useful. And actually, ultimately, they occupy really different spaces for sort of particularly like athletes who want this kind of data all the time.

15:08Victoria Song:Yeah. And I mean, I say this primarily about the aura ring because a lot of people ask me, like, can I get rid of my smart watch and just use an aura ring? I think some people could, but there's a lot of people who are going to find that the best experience is to have a smart watch and an aura ring. Or like, you know, I find that to be the most holistic use case. Again, I'm wearing five wearables today. So not necessarily the best judge about streamlining the number of devices I'm tracking on. But that is, it does give you kind of a perfect feedback loop. The aura into the watch gives you sort of in and output information all the time in a way that is really useful.

15:51Victoria Song:And I don't have to worry about battery so much. So the positive tradeoff with like you're not having standalone capability, you do have to rely on your phone more. The positive tradeoff is that the actual recording and the tracking, the battery life is massively increased. This guy, especially if you're running beta software on it, does not last as long as these guys do. So like we can measure battery life in like at least a week is the baseline for a screenless tracker. And this one is days. I'm charging this Fitbit Air like every eight or nine days. And I have to say it is wonderful. It's great.

16:27Yeah. And it's such, I don't know if this is the experience you have with all of these. You've obviously tested many more of these than I have. But the Fitbit Air is such a bully when its battery is dying. It's so funny. I feel like I get a notification like every hour when it's under 24 hours of battery life being like, your Fitbit's about to die. Hey, David, your Fitbit's about to die. Charge your Fitbit. It's about to die. We don't have 24 hours left. And it's like, honestly, on the one hand, it's great because it makes me remember to charge my Fitbit before it dies. But on the other hand, it is so aggressive in reminding me.

16:58It's like if you don't worry, if your Fitbit dies, you'll die, David. You have to charge it now. Do it.

17:03Victoria Song:It is pretty aggressive on the Fitbit Air, but less so on the other ones. But hey, at least you only have to deal with that like once every 10 days. Right. Huge improvement. Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

17:40That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

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19:22I do want to know how subscriptions factor into this, because every one of these that comes out, the accusation is it's a whoop-doop. And they're like, OK, sure, but no subscription. And this is, I mean, I think it's still true that the main issue people have with whoop and aura, the two you mentioned, is that they're very expensive, right? The hardware is often very subsidized, but these things cost a lot and they are not simple purchases to make. The Fitbit Air has a subscription if you want some of the AI stuff, but you don't have to have a subscription. The Circa, I think, doesn't have a subscription at all.

19:58How big a deal is that in these new devices?

20:02Victoria Song:So it's really interesting because I think we have to talk about like premium and lux status markers when we talk about the subscription, because what Whoop and Aura do is that they market their devices as sort of like a lux premium. Yes. Aura in particular is very good. And, you know, it's a little bolstered by that because it's jewelry, right? So it's technically jewelry, especially with the five. I predict that this will be wedding bands for people in Silicon Valley. That's just how it's going to be. You're right, yeah. Because they're thinner now. They look pretty good. But so, you know, these are marketed as premiums.

20:41Victoria Song:And everything useful is paywalled. So with Aura, if you don't, technically the subscription is optional, but if you don't. It's not. Let's just be honest. It's really not. It's not optional. It's really, let me say like. You'd be ridiculous to buy an Aura and not get the subscription. Technically. You'll get three scores, not that useful. Literally everything else is paywalled. Yeah. Whoop, they don't charge you for the hardware. You just pay a monthly slash yearly subscription. And those are, there's like three tiers of Whoop subscriptions now. And they're expensive. They just are. And you pay that every year.

21:18Victoria Song:So, like, I've mathed it out in various reviews as to, like, how far your bang for your buck is going to go. At least with the Aura, you're kind of paying into a hardware price and then a very low monthly subscription, which is$6. People still very upset about that. Now, they market those as premium, status, lux. Celebrities wear them. You want to feel like a celebrity. That's kind of how they've marketed those. So the Garmin Connect subscription is around$7 a month. And the Fitbit, you're going to pay around a$10 subscription on a monthly basis. I believe it's$99 for a year. Relatively cheap.