New Leak: Garmin *IS* making a Whoop competitor
Source: @JohnW, thank you
Within approximately two months, Garmin will release its first Whoop-like armband. I don’t know the exact name, but part of the source document indicates that it is called “Garmin Sleep Band”, “Index Sleep Band”, “Garmin Sleep monitor”, or a similar term, which strongly implies its intended use and suggests a closely related focus to Whoop.
Let’s review the information I have and what is known about the product’s features. I will also discuss recent developments in the Garmin ecosystem and how they potentially relate to this product, suggesting that it will incorporate at least some of Whoop’s core capabilities.
1. A Sleep Band with a Comfortable and Adjustable Strap
- The sleep band is stated to provide comfort during use. Wearers are instructed to get a snug and comfortable fit to ensure the heart rate sensor works optimally (I assume an Hr sensor is part of it – see later). However, a buckle mechanism and overlapping adjustable strap material must be considered when wearing.
2. Vibration Alarm
- The sleep band features a vibration alarm that activates to wake the wearer but not anyone else sharing the bed with them.
3. Tap Gestures for Alarm Control
- The device uses tap gestures to snooze or dismiss the alarm:
4. Tap Gesture for Battery Status Check
- The Sleep Band also has a status LED (no screen), and tap gestures show the battery status.
5. LED Indicators for Charge Status
- The band features LED lights to display battery status, including a Green LED and a Red LED to indicate when it’s time to recharge.
6. Sleep Tracking
- The band is specifically stated to be a SMART device.
- The band has a smart wake-up alarm. From that, I would deduce it can only be smart if it knows your sleep stage status, and to know your sleep stage status, it must have an optical sensor. Ideally, it would be an Elevate Gen 5 sensor with temperature and SpO2 abilities, making sleep stage determination more accurate.
- I assume you would set an approximate target wake time or a ‘wake no later than’ time, and then, given that constraint, the smart band would wake you at the most optimal point according to your sleep stage.
8. Bluetooth Connectivity and App Integration
- It’s reasonable to deduce that the sleep band connects to Garmin Connect via Bluetooth, or possibly to the subscription service, Connect+, for the smart alarm feature of the product. This would allow users to set alarms, configure settings, and view sleep data, as is typical for similar devices.
9. Screenless Design
- The reliance on tap gestures, vibrations, and LED lights for interaction and feedback suggests the band has no screen. This keeps the design lightweight and comfortable for overnight wear.
Additional Notes
- Wearing Instructions: Garmin recommends placing the band on the biceps, a suitable location for both a sleep tracker and a heart rate capture device. Furthermore, it is stated to work better if you do not lie on the device (for side sleepers)
Recent Developments By Garmin
The recently announced Garmin HRM 600 chest strap can cache data and link directly to Garmin Connect. It is the first Garmin accessory that can record activities without a Garmin watch.
Purpose and fit into the Garmin ecosystem
The band is intended for use as a sleep aid. This suggests that Garmin has listened to numerous watch customers who dislike wearing a watch due to its bulk, discomfort, or other personal reasons.
A sleep band also allows Garmin cyclists to capture sleep and recovery data that was previously unavailable unless they also purchased a Garmin watch.
An electrical device (ECG) or arm-based PPG device will collect more accurate data than a PPG device on the wrist (i.e., a smartwatch).
So, is this a Whoop competitor?
A: It looks like it is.
What would stop this band from being a Whoop competitor would be if Garmin somehow restricted it to sleep-only uses.
It would be odd for the band to include an optical heart rate sensor and then for Garmin to limit the OHR to working only at resting heart rate levels.
Alternatively, it might not contain an optical HRM and instead use accelerometers and other sensors to justify its ‘smart’ status. That would also be very unusual in the current marketplace. Unusual, mainly because it would decrease accuracy by omitting an OHR sensor.
Furthermore, adding a suite of sensors and capabilities enhances the value and flexibility of the product. This means that Garmin can sell it at good margins (high prices). That is Garmin’s business model, with the company regularly reporting margins of almost 60% in its published financial statements.
Q: Can you imagine any other scenario where a biceps-worn smart sleep strap could not also be a sports-grade heart rate monitor? (ie Whoop-like) Specifically, a scenario that would work for Garmin
When/What will happen?
I’m 100% sure this is happening. I’m unsure of the exact timing, but it’s soon, with August at the latest, and more likely by the end of July.
According to my information, Garmin will not be marketing it as a direct competitor to Whoop and will focus more heavily on sleep monitoring.
Take Out
This appears to be an excellent commercial proposition by Garmin. It addresses the sleep management and recording needs of individuals who prefer not to wear a watch at night and those who seek more accurate data from a device worn on the upper arm. It makes sense that this would also include the ability to record HR to a sporting level of accuracy outside of sleep.
Speculation: Once you’ve an Elevate OHR sensor on your upper arm, it can be used for sports, and, as we’ve seen with the HRM 600, Garmin can use an HRM directly with Garmin Connect without a watch. That starts to sound rather a lot like Whoop.
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Nighttime only band sounds completely mismatched with what such device should be capable of… Maybe the materials you got only cover the sleep mode, but there’s more to it? It’d be another flop from Garmin if it couldn’t replace the watch for usage during worktime for example
there could well be much more to it than what i have so far.
i dont think it would be a flop though, a sleep only tool would have demand.
i take your point that there are other uses too, like during worktime.
And probably a Connect+ subscription required?
if i were garmin and being greedy i would give the hr stuff for free but the smart alarm would be a connect+ feature.
Need to be workout HR too, whoop is just a fancy coros HR band with smo2 sensor and storage.
This is what Garmin is missing and not £150 HR monitor
Shut up and take my money Garmin.
ha ha – in all seriousness, this is something I (and many others) have been asking for for years now. I’m cautiously optimistic I’ll be able to ditch wearing my 965 soon.
I immediately thought of this when I realized the new HRM 600 was capable of roughly 60 hours of continuous activity tracking, since they mention the rechargeable battery last 2 months with 1 hour daily use.
Even if that’s a rough estimation, it can clearly last at least 2 days with high fidelity HR and HRV tracking. For sleeping you don’t need a high refresh rate, and can measure other things (oxygen lvl, etc), and don’t measure other things (eg. Cadence, ground time, etc), to keep the battery drain under control.
i immediately thought of it but only because it could record everything directly to connect.
this product will be a different physical formatto hrm600 due to the ohr and who knows how long its battery will last/
Yes, the watch independence was what made me stop and start thinking about continuous usage. The battery life is there, just need a slimmer form and an adjusted feature/refresh rate.
If this materializes it would be great. I constantly go back and forth between my Fenix 7 Pro and AWU2. Need the AWU2 for the better ecg and the irregular rhythm detection. Also love the LTE and not having to take my phone with me all the time. However, I am a Garmin fanboy and am addicted to the data provided stress, body battery etc…
I’d say *finally*.
A very capable measuring device with no screen and Gen5 sensor would make sense for those of us that sometimes like the appeal of a mecanical watch while still filling up the 24/7 data analysis from Garmin.
Like you say live activities on Garmin Connect, HRM 600 activities, BB true up are paving the way to such a device. That would definitively be a game changer I’ve been waiting for so long.
And Garmin do not forget to provide with a lot of fancy bands – wrist and biceps…
I hope Polar pays attention. Another ship full of opportunities for them is about to set sail without them.They have everything they need for a band like this for years…
Everyone seems to iknow it, except Polar!
They even have the product – the band that they use for corporate sales
Actually…. Do you have any idea why they haven’t released that band to the public? Why keep it within companies?
i cant get one from polar. i’ve tried.
you can get one by signing up to a 3rd part service.
i briefly looked again yesterday as it happens, data recording might be periodic and not continuous
Whats the source of this information, how can we know this is real? can’t find any info besides this post
I assume you are a journalist. The sources name us indicated above , this post is the source. I’m obviously not going to reveal his name , job and address details
I don’t need their personal information, wasn’t planning on sending them bonbons, but at least you cold say if it’s someone from Garmin or just some rando, add some credibility.
– Post has an AI generated image
– You don’t know the name but say it might be “Garmin Sleep Band”
– Sleep band, yet it tracks other metrics and is a whoop competitor
– Asterisks all over the post
– Website full of affiliate links
Don’t be surprised I’m a bit skeptical, I hope you are right and garmin release this
#shrug. check the accuracy of the information from this site last year (some were from the same source), there are also two other leaks from the same day as this post. they will be correct too. I’m not saying any more than I have
i dont make these things up. I am good at finding things out #Solaria
that said, i do like to speculate on various topics (I enjoy it). Hopefully i make speculation clear for what it is.
Interesting! Hey Polar, are you paying attention?!
Now if only I could convince my boss that Garmin waking me at the most optimal point takes precedence over the company’s office hours……..!
Seriously though. I’d been excited before the Garmin paywall. Now I am skeptical.
Add RFID (for wireless paiments) and I’d buy it immediatly!
I’ve been wanting a Vivosmart style band without a display for a while. I have analog watches that I want to wear without losing daily Garmin metrics. A unobtrusive band would allow me to do that.
This Garmin Whoop competitor seems short of that.
Im not interested in wearing it while sleeping, I don’t bother letting the watch stay on the wrist.
I want something for „everyday“ daily tracking for steps, HR and floors. Small, without a display, biceps would be fine.
It would make combining it with a analogue watch way more attractive.
This is also why I am still side eying Whoop every half year
I sounds kinda cool, but if it doesn’t come with a brand-new sensor and with either its own subscription or something under Connect+, then I will wait and see how useful it actually is. The E5 is good enough, but we all know that it is not perfect in measuring stuff. The quantified scientist pretty much confirms it every time he test one. So apart from having a smaller device during night time, I am not sure if the data we get are so much better. In case it would be a real whoop competitor, that can replace your watch during the day, unless you start an activity, that should be more interesting. But still, with E5 I would not expect improved data.
As for the smart alarm, the VA6 has it and no one talks about it…does anyone know how good and helpful it actually is??
n=1
but in my own n=1, i dont find it accurate either. so maybe n=2!
i think you have to look at several reviewers. The QS has some very pretty charts but I suspect that the likes of dcrainmaker (and me!) test devices to more extreme levels and in a far wider range of environmental conditions
to be clear tho. if this new product has E5 and is worn on the biceps i would expect the accuracy to be very good. Wear-positoin is a key determination in accuracy. that said, my understanding is that the Garmin signal filtering algorithms are lacking.
the beauty for competition against whoop would be that you would use E5 on your biceps for resting/sleeping hr and then could use a chest strap for exercise-hr.
that said, Whoop *IS* accurate enough to measure endurance strain in the context it uses it.
I definetely listen more to what Ray, Des, Matt or you find out than the QS, but still…he does some pretty detailed testing. However, I am not sure how comfortable wearing this device on your biceps during sleep is, but I am looking forward to read and listen to all the reviews when this thing comes out. If it is issued with the E5 sensor, it will be interesting to see if there is a big difference between the band and a watch, because if not, you would buy one only for comfort reasons with the disadvantage, that you can’t easily see what time it is when you wake up…. Whatever, I am sure this will create a tectonic buzz in the sports tech world.
i wear other devices in sleep on biceps and find it comfortable.
QS, in the tests I have seen has tested some of the larger E5 devices. A lot of his tests follow a trend of “the larger devices perform worse, the smaller ones perform better.” This does make sense, as smaller devices move around less, which is better for OHR. That isn’t the fault of the E5, though. It comes in packages of various size and weight, for more accuracy, you can always go smaller. And as t5k points out, it will also be better worn on the bicep.
For me, though, the E5 is fantastic (even in a 51mm case – Enduro 3), and frankly so was the E4. But my skin tone is basically clear, so that probably helps a lot.
The new Garmin hrm strap is not the first device that can record activities without a watch. Some of their other straps (hrm pro plus, pro, and run) can record runs without the watch and sync the data later.
nope.
they can only cache the activity data once initiated by, say, a watch. then they sync back to that watch and not directly to connect.
most recent garmin straps can do that. HRM600 is different
If garmin is switching to a model where it makes accurate sensors that can all connect to a rich app(paid?) independent of a watch, that could open the doors for potential garmin apps on watchOS/wearOS as well. As cheaper sportswatches get better and as smartwatches get more accurate, this could be an interesting pivot
interesting
1. accurate sensors: i would imagine its still the elevate gen 5. yes accuracy should be improved by the biceps worn position with that sensor.
2. so what might work would be a Garmin CONNECT+ (plus) app for watch/wearOS which could link workout and wellness data back to Connect&Connect+ (we even saw last week that Garmin is linking to Google’ Health connect. paying $/£eu70 a year for the subscription would i think justify allowing that person to access regular Connect without a garmin hardware device.
I think that’s one of the best and most interesting speculations! I’m very annoyed not to thought of it myself 😉 I can’t see an obvious flaw to it, especially when Garmin Connect is better than what is offered by Google and Apple (not 3rd party apps jsut directly from google/apple)
I don’t like bicep bands so could this be worn on the wrist? If so how different would the data be do we think?
Was literally about to pull the whoop trigger but now I’m tentative!
I would imagine you could wear it wherever you want unless the product has a novel form factor.
I use a polar verity sensor to track my heart rate during swimming. Do you think it could reaplace it?
yes
but ‘sleep band’ hardly screams WR50 water resistance