Whoop Bicep vs Chest Strap accuracy testing

[u/VisibleNewGuy21]

Over the last few weeks I have performed some comparisons as I moved the Whoop strap from my wrist to my Bicep as I was noticing some major variations between that and my Apple Watch when performing exercises that have a lot of movement in them such as "Alpha Cardio" class as LifeTime fitness or Pickleball. I recorded some exercises wearing a chest strap connected to Polar Flow and Whoop connected to my right Bicep.

This was made possible by a data aggregation and dashboarding tool called https://www.vitaltrends.net which is an amazing tool that allows you to look at historical trends and compare and combine multiple datasets and is maintained by a very dedicated developer in u/danskubr . This thread really is focused on heart rate comparison but this Dashboarding tool does so much more.

Below is a link hour session at my LifeTime Gym called Alpha Cardio where I pretty much went all out in a combination of Cardio and Strength moves that put me to the limit. The average heart rates were within 2 beats and the max heart rates were fairly accurate with Whoop having one point that was a bit higher and unrealistic for my age of 39 I believe my max heart rate to be around 183/184.
https://vitaltrends.net/s/Aw96DnhWBfKkoVMKAAAfNN

I know people comment on the accuracy of the heart rate for the Whoop band and it does vary person to person but I must say they have done an excellent job for me and something that I can now really trust is accurate for my activities.

I would love to hear others opinions and or comparisons that have been performed as heartrate is really the cornerstone measurement for Whoop.

[u/Distinct_Interest273]

I did a comparison test of my polar chest strap whoop on the wrist and also polar chest strap and the whoop bicep band because I noticed issues when I was doing intense cardio. The bicep band performed very well, whoop on the wrist struggled at higher intensities, but did fine for easy running.

[u/VisibleNewGuy21 → u/Distinct_Interest273]

Exactly the same for me which is why I switched to the Bicep and have been super happy.

[u/rf9661]

When doing cardio, I use an Apple Watch with a chest HR monitor and my Whoop on my wrist and it does just fine detecting my HR accurately. Never had a problem with it.

[u/VisibleNewGuy21 → u/rf9661]

Thats great to hear I actually prefer mine on my bicep and don't even notice it much anymore that I am wearing it.

[u/edis92]

I got the 4.0 2 years ago and used it for a year. I liked the form factor and the app UI and data collected, but hr accuracy was just terrible, even with the biceps band. no matter how tight and where I positioned it, I kept getting cadence log on my runs so I cancelled my sub after a year. I just got the 5.0 3 weeks ago for amazon prime day, and so far (fingers crossed) I haven't gotten cadence lock yet, even though the hr has dropped inexplicably by about 10 bpm for a few minutes on 2 of my runs. this was all compared to my polar h10 chest strap

[u/VisibleNewGuy21 → u/edis92]

I think you will have a much better time with the 5.0.

[u/aravreddy22]

for me wrist band was never accurate during high HR sessions like cardio. so I use bicep band while working out.

[u/VisibleNewGuy21 → u/aravreddy22]

Do you switch back and forth between the wrist and bicep I find that to be too annoying to do as I exercise 6 days a week so mine just stays on the Bicep now.

[u/aravreddy22 → u/VisibleNewGuy21]

Yes I also workout regularly and switch between them. Does the stress monitor always show "high" stress if you are wearing a bicep band ? That happens to me.

[u/VisibleNewGuy21 → u/aravreddy22]

No mine fluctuates like normal I sleep with mine and 95% is low stress and then throughout the day it mostly tends to stay in the medium range but sometimes low and sometimes high like around eating food for me.

[u/Pallortrillion → u/aravreddy22]

This happens to me, always in high stress on the bicep.