[00:00] All right, so Whoop is dominant as a fitness tracker in the world of professional and enthusiast athletes all around the world. I have a lot of friends. I play Ultimate Frisbee, friends and
[00:12] teammates who all wear Whoops. It's this screenless, lightweight puck in a thin band with all these sensors on one side that you just wear 24-7. So when the Fitbit Air came along, a lot of those same people immediately were interested and started asking me about it. Hey, is it good?
[00:28] Should I switch? Are they comparable? And the main reason for that is the Whoop subscription. You see, you don't just buy the Whoop tracker. You buy the tracker and then pay a membership subscription that starts at $200 a year
[00:42] and goes up to $350 a year forever. If you ever do stop paying, the Whoop literally doesn't do anything anymore. It becomes a brick. It's useless. The Fitbit, on the other hand, doesn't even require a subscription at all. And the subscription they do offer for extra features
[00:55] is much cheaper than the Whoop. It's $100 a year. So almost everyone asking me about this basically just wants to know, is it as good as a Whoop, but cheaper? Because if so, then I might as well switch.
[01:07] So to any of my teammates out there watching this or any other athletes who are considering switching, I have spent the last almost two weeks wearing both of these things alongside an Apple Watch for a ton of stuff, practices, games, workouts,
[01:22] recoveries, sleeping, and more. I hated being that guy wearing multiple trackers at the same time, but hey, someone's gotta do it. And now I have your answer. You might not like it, but I have your answer.
[01:34] So to me, it's pretty clear Fitbit Air is designed to take direct aim at Whoop, not just with the matching form factor, which I'll get to in a second, but with their pricing model. So like I said, the Whoop is free, but it's literally useless without the subscription.
[01:47] I honestly hope that changes after this, but as of right now, 200 bucks a year baseline every year to get in the door. The $99 Fitbit Air is functional with no subscription at all. And it will do a good amount of basic tracking,
[01:59] heart rate, step tracking, calories burned, sleep tracking, and more. But if you want the full suite of everything, including the AI Fitness Coach and a big workout library, that's $100 a year. And there's all kinds of promos right now
[02:11] as it launches for like three free months of Google Health premium. So I would say it definitely wins the price battle. But also keep in mind, this is still Google we're talking about here, the data and ads company.
[02:23] So of course they would wanna sell you a subsidized fitness tracker and leverage the Fitbit name to get it in as many hands