Episode 68
Apple Watch vs. Oura, Whoop, and Withings
Apple Watch vs. Oura, Whoop, and Withings
Health wearables have exploded in popularity, promising better sleep, fitness, and recovery tracking. But with so many options—Apple Watch, Whoop, Withings, Oura, and Ultrahuman Rings—which one is actually worth your money?
More importantly, do these devices improve your health, or are they just expensive digital trophies?
In this breakdown, we’ll compare features, accuracy, HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and “strain” tracking, battery life, hidden costs, and privacy concerns—so you can make the best choice for your lifestyle.
We have come a long way since the pedometer - which I used to buy and give to my post op surgery patients to encourage them to walk.
What Do These Devices Track?
Most modern wearables track heart rate, sleep, HRV, activity levels, and even blood oxygen and temperature. More than just steps - which they all track, but each device has its strengths:
- Apple Watch – Tracks HRV, ECG (FDA-cleared for atrial fibrillation), and fall detection. However, cellular models require a monthly subscription for full use, and it no longer tracks blood oxygen (SpO2) due to a patent dispute.
- Whoop – Focuses on recovery, strain, and sleep—but requires a costly subscription and has no screen.
- Oura Ring – A discreet ring tracking sleep stages, HRV, and body temperature.
- Withings – The only one besides Apple to be FDA-cleared for atrial fibrillation detection, with a focus on medical-grade tracking (smart scales, blood pressure monitors, and sleep mats). Unlike Apple, Withings still tracks blood oxygen (SpO2). Withings also tracks heart rate continuously during sleep, and thanks to its long battery life, it can be worn at night for weeks without interruption. No subscription required.
- Ultrahuman Ring – A newer ring with a focus on metabolic tracking and recovery.
Scientific Insight:
A 2020 Nature Digital Medicine study found that wrist-based devices overestimate activity but underestimate calories burned, while rings tend to be more reliable for sleep and HRV.
HRV and Strain: What Do These Metrics Really Mean?
What is HRV (Heart Rate Variability)?
HRV is the variation in time between heartbeats—a measure of how well your autonomic nervous system is functioning.
- Higher HRV = Better recovery, lower stress, and improved cardiovascular health.
- Lower HRV = Fatigue, overtraining, stress, or even illness.
However, HRV is highly variable based on factors like hydration, sleep, and time of day.
How Wearables Measure HRV:
- Apple Watch, Whoop, Oura, Withings, and Ultrahuman all track HRV, but accuracy depends on when and how it’s measured.
- Whoop and Oura measure HRV during deep sleep, which is considered more stable than spot-checks.
- Apple Watch and Withings measure HRV periodically throughout the day, which may be less reliable due to external factors.
💡 Bottom Line: HRV is useful for tracking trends over time, but daily fluctuations can be misleading.
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What is “Strain” and Is It Useful?
Strain is Whoop’s proprietary score that estimates how hard your body works based on HRV, heart rate, and activity levels.
- High Strain = More exertion, requiring longer recovery.
- Low Strain = Your body is well-recovered.
🚨 The Problem?
- Strain scores don’t account for individual fitness levels—what’s high strain for one person may be normal for another.
- External factors like caffeine, stress, and dehydration can artificially raise strain scores.
💡 Bottom Line: While strain tracking can help athletes fine-tune training, it’s not always meaningful for the average user.
Accuracy & Reliability: Can You Trust the Data?
Not all wearables are created equal.
- Withings and Apple Watch are both FDA-cleared for atrial fibrillation detection, meaning they have been tested for medical accuracy.
- Apple Watch’s ECG is 97% accurate for detecting AFib (JAMA Cardiology, 2023).
- Whoop and Oura’s HRV tracking is solid, but they are not medical-grade devices.
- Withings devices have been used in clinical research, meaning their data is considered highly reliable for medical use.
- Withings still provides blood oxygen (SpO2) tracking, while the Apple Watch lost this feature due to a patent dispute.
- Withings tracks heart rate continuously during sleep, while the Apple Watch requires the user to trigger measurements manually or wear the device overnight (which can be inconvenient due to short battery life).
Bottom Line:
- For medical-grade tracking, Withings and Apple Watch are the best choices.
- For recovery & strain, Whoop and Oura perform well but lack medical validation.
- For long-term health monitoring, Withings is the clear winner.
More for our paid subscribers below - comparing battery life, hidden costs, and the overall winner.
Battery Life & Charging: The Hidden Cost of Convenience
Device Battery Life. Charging Time
Apple Watch 18-24 hours 1-2 hours
Whoop 4-5 days 1.5 hours
Oura Ring 4-7 days 20-80 minutes
Withings 3-4 WEEKS ~2 hours
Ultrahuman 4-6 days 1-2 hours
🔋 Withings wins by a landslide with up to a month of battery life. This allows users to wear it at night for continuous heart rate tracking, something that’s difficult to do with an Apple Watch.
Costs & Hidden Fees: What’s the Real Price?
Device Upfront Cost Subscription Hidden Costs
Apple Watch. $250-$800. None for basic use $10-$20/month cellular charges
Whoop Free device $30/month ($360/year) bands/sleeves
Oura Ring. $299-$549. $6/month ($72/year) Without subscription, limited data
Withings $250-$500 No subscription. None
Ultrahuman $349-$499 $8/month ($96/year)
💰 Whoop is the most expensive long-term due to its subscription model.
💰 Apple Watch requires a monthly fee if you want cellular features.
💰 Withings is the most cost-effective—one-time purchase, no subscriptions, no hidden fees.
Final Verdict: Why Withings Wins
🥇 Best for Most People: Withings – FDA-cleared, blood oxygen tracking, continuous heart rate monitoring at night, long battery life, no subscription, strong privacy protections.
🥇 Best for Fitness & Heart Health: Apple Watch (beware of cellular fees).
🥇 Best for Recovery Optimization: Whoop (if you can afford it).
🥇 Best for Sleep & Metabolic Tracking: Oura, Withings, or Ultrahuman Ring.
Final Thoughts
Wearables are great tools, but they don’t replace healthy habits.
I told Verizon that I don’t need the now $21 a month for cellular for the Apple Watch. The Withings Watch looks much nicer and easily stays on my wrist day and night.
I had Whoop for over a year and a half. It has great insight, and those who have a favorite watch (Timex, Rolex, Omega, and so forth) but want tracking might like this device. You can wear a Whoop on your sleeve and still have your fancy watch on your wrist. I am a watch fan - but day in and day out, Withings is now my go-to. But even when I am going out and put on my watch that Dad gave me, I don’t need a lot of things tracked. I can be free of the digital age.
I am not a ring fan. As a surgeon, they don’t work for me. Every surgeon loses rings to scrub laundry. Which is why many surgeons simply don’t wear rings at all.
Withings also has an entire health system with blood pressure, a scale (where I keep track of my weight), and a sleeping pad that can diagnose and track sleep apnea (FDA-cleared).
Transcript
>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Hello everybody, I'm Dr. Terry Simpson and today
Speaker:we're going to talk about health wearables. Whoop.
Speaker:The Apple Watch, Withings devices,
Speaker:Aura and ultrahuman rings. Which one is
Speaker:actually worth your money and do they really improve your health or are they
Speaker:just expensive digital trophies?
Speaker:I've tested these wearables extensively and today I'm going
Speaker:to break them down. Which device is best for fitness
Speaker:recovery, sleep and heart health? The hidden
Speaker:costs of these devices, the ah, subscriptions, fees and
Speaker:replacements and who really owns your
Speaker:data and why? I ultimately chose
Speaker:Withings as my go to wearable. Stick around to the
Speaker:end where I'll share my personal experiences with these
Speaker:devices and why I canceled my Apple
Speaker:Watch cellular plan.
Speaker:Let's dive in.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I am your Chief Medical Explanationist, Dr. Terry Simpson
Speaker:and this is Fork you fork University,
Speaker:where we bust a few.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Myths and make sense of the mad.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Things have come a long way since.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Early in my surgical career when I would buy
Speaker:pedometers for my post op bariatric or weight loss
Speaker:surgery patients. I'd buy them and give them to.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Them because I wanted them to walk.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: In those days we didn't have the.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Apple Watch and pedometers were something they.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Could track on and get a visualization.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Of what they did.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Did it work?
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Well for some patients, it worked pretty well.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: For others, they seem to put them away.
Speaker:Modern wearables have advanced tremendously. They
Speaker:can track your heart rate, your sleep, your heart
Speaker:rate, variability, activity levels, blood oxygen
Speaker:levels, temperature, even do an EKG
Speaker:and tell if you have atrial fibrillation. A dangerous
Speaker:heart condition. Probably the most common one
Speaker:that everybody has on the wrist today is the Apple Watch.
Speaker:It tracks all of those things that we talked about,
Speaker:including a fall detection. You know, I fall in and can't go
Speaker:up. But Apple can no longer track blood
Speaker:oxygenation due to a patent dispute. And the
Speaker:cellular models of the Apple Watch, you know,
Speaker:they require a monthly subscription. Whoop is a
Speaker:device that came into fore in the last few years. It focuses
Speaker:on recovery, strain and sleep. And this device
Speaker:started by tracking really high caliber
Speaker:athletes to help them say, nope, you've done
Speaker:a little bit too much work and you've got to hang back.
Speaker:So it's a really comprehensive device. The
Speaker:Oura ring is pretty popular these days. It's a ring
Speaker:that tracks sleep stages, heart rate variability
Speaker:and body temperature. Withings is the
Speaker:only one besides Apple to be FDA cleared for
Speaker:atrial fibrillation detection with a focus on
Speaker:medical grade tracking. Unlike Apple,
Speaker:Withings still tracks blood, oxygen and
Speaker:heart Rate continuously during sleep. Thanks to its
Speaker:longer battery life. It's being worn at night for weeks without
Speaker:interruption and there's no subscription required.
Speaker:The ultra human ring and there are some others now are
Speaker:newer rings with focuses on metabolic
Speaker:tracking and recovery. A uh, 2020
Speaker:Nature Digital Medicine study found that risk
Speaker:based devices overestimate activity
Speaker:but underestimate calories burned.
Speaker:And rings tended to be more reliable for sleep and
Speaker:heart rate variability.
Speaker:So what does heart rate variability or HRV and
Speaker:strain? What do those metrics mean? Heart
Speaker:rate variability measures the variation in
Speaker:time between heartbeats. It's a
Speaker:reflection of how well your autonomic nervous
Speaker:system is functioning. A higher HRV
Speaker:means better recovery, lower stress, and
Speaker:improved cardiovascular health. A uh, lower
Speaker:HRV means fatigue, overtraining,
Speaker:stress, or even illness. I
Speaker:noticed that my HRV went down down
Speaker:for a couple of days before I developed symptoms of
Speaker:COVID Kind of scary if
Speaker:you think about it. But it's nice to know you're getting sick and
Speaker:it's time to hang back and recover a little bit. It's also nice
Speaker:to know when you've taken too much strain in your
Speaker:workout, which sometimes I tend to do.
Speaker:But here's the problem. HRV fluctuates
Speaker:a lot based on hydration, sleep and time of
Speaker:day. So if I don't get much sleep at night, or
Speaker:if I'm dehydrated because.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I just didn't take in enough water.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: My HRV goes lower. So
Speaker:Whoop and Aura measure HRV during sleep, which is a
Speaker:little bit more stable. Apple Watch and Withings
Speaker:measure HRV periodically through the day, which may be
Speaker:less reliable due to other external factors.
Speaker:So HRV is great for trends over time,
Speaker:but not necessarily on a daily health
Speaker:score. Strain is
Speaker:whoop's proprietary score that estimates how
Speaker:hard your body is working based on heart rate
Speaker:variability, heart rate and activity levels.
Speaker:The problem? Strain scores don't account
Speaker:for individual fitness levels. What's a high
Speaker:strain score for one person may be normal for
Speaker:another. And remember, they started their
Speaker:company based on the most incredible athletes in
Speaker:the world and have been bringing it back down to
Speaker:us. Caffeine,
Speaker:stress, dehydration and alcohol can
Speaker:all artificially or not artificially raise
Speaker:strain scores. So strain tracking can really help elite
Speaker:athletes. But for most people, it's just a number to obsess
Speaker:over. Battery life is
Speaker:important. I mean, there's nothing worse than having a device
Speaker:on you and then all of a sudden it doesn't work. The Apple watch
Speaker:is good for 18 to 24 hours. Its charging
Speaker:time is 1 to 2 hours. The problem is
Speaker:sometimes I have woken up and put on my Apple
Speaker:Watch to see its low power because I didn't quite fit it on the
Speaker:magnetic device carefully enough.
Speaker:The WHOOP is good for four to five days. And
Speaker:actually that's what they say I find my whoop is good
Speaker:now for about three days and it takes about an hour
Speaker:and a half. Charging the Oura ring four
Speaker:to seven days. I found it good to be about three to five
Speaker:days. It takes about an hour to charge it.
Speaker:The Withings watch three to four weeks and it takes two
Speaker:hours to charge. And the Ultra human, four to six days. One to
Speaker:two hours. Withings wins by a landslide. It's
Speaker:the only watch you don't have to think about charging every night. And
Speaker:that makes it really good for sleep
Speaker:tracking. So I find that for
Speaker:me, the Withings, which is FDA cleared for
Speaker:continuous heart tracking, atrial fibrillation, blood
Speaker:oxygen, has a great battery life, doesn't have a
Speaker:subscription, and has strong privacy protection,
Speaker:really tends to be the one that I liked
Speaker:for heart health and for fitness. Apple watch. But
Speaker:you have to be careful. The cellular fees are a lot.
Speaker:The cellular fees for my Apple watch from Verizon were
Speaker:$21 a month for recovery
Speaker:optimization, Whoop, if you can afford it, or Withings,
Speaker:and for sleep and metabolic training. The Withings,
Speaker:Aura and Oura rings are great. So I
Speaker:told Verizon I didn't need to pay the $21 a month
Speaker:for.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Cellular surface on my Apple watch anymore.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: The Withings looks better. It's sleek, it's classic.
Speaker:It can stay on my wrist day and night. The battery
Speaker:lasts nearly a month. Apple watch barely a
Speaker:day. There's no subscription, and the whoop and
Speaker:aura of those subscriptions can get expensive fast.
Speaker:Withings also integrates with an entire health system.
Speaker:I use our blood pressure monitor, I use our scale to
Speaker:track my weight and a sleep pad, which is FDA cleared for
Speaker:diagnosis of sleep apnea. I had the WHOOP
Speaker:for over a year and a half. And if you love your
Speaker:Rolex, Omega or Timex but still want health tracking,
Speaker:one Whoop is a great option since you can wear it on your arm and keep
Speaker:your classic watch on your wrist. Now I love watches,
Speaker:but day in and day out, Withings has become my
Speaker:go to. And the reason is it just
Speaker:looks like a watch. And I got tired of wearing an
Speaker:Apple watch and it constantly ticking me or uh,
Speaker:reminding me of something. But sometimes
Speaker:I like going out at night and I wear the watch that my
Speaker:dad gave to me in the last year of his life. I
Speaker:don't need to track everything. I, uh, can be free of the digital
Speaker:age. So sometimes when I go out for a nice dinner,
Speaker:I'll put on my dad's watch to remind me of my
Speaker:dad. And just because it's a great looking classic
Speaker:Seiko and I go without
Speaker:any tracking. Finally, I'm not a
Speaker:ring fan. You know, as a surgeon, rings
Speaker:don't work for me. Every surgeon I
Speaker:know, every surgeon loses rings in the
Speaker:hospital laundry. And that's why most of us don't
Speaker:wear rings at all.
Speaker:Wearables are great tools, but they don't
Speaker:replace healthy habits. And tracking
Speaker:is only useful if you act on the data, not just
Speaker:obsess over it. Please do check
Speaker:out my new substack.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Channel if you want more information about wearables, which you can
Speaker:find@tsimpson.substack.com
Speaker:youm can also find me on YourDoctorsOrders.com
Speaker:and4Q.com this podcast
Speaker:was written and researched by me, Dr. Terry Simpson.
Speaker:And while I am a physician, I am not your physician. And before you
Speaker:embark on physical activity that might cause you some
Speaker:strain, please do check with your doctor to make sure you can
Speaker:handle that. Not a chiropractor, not an eastern
Speaker:trained guru, but a real board certified medical
Speaker:physician. This was distributed by our
Speaker:good friends at Simpler Media and my friend, the pod God, Mr.
Speaker:Evotera, have a great week.
Speaker:Hey Evo. I remember when the first Apple watch came
Speaker:out.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I was so excited and I picked.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Up one and you said, I don't need a watch.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I got a phone.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: I can look at the time, all that. You aren't a watch wearer. I am
Speaker:a watch wearer. And you know what I found about the Apple watch?
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: It's really not a watch. I just had
Speaker:to give it up.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Although I do like wearing the Withings because it actually looks like a watch.
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: But that's me. What's on your wrist these days?
Speaker:>> Dr. Terry Simpson: Anything besides the arm of your beautiful wife?
Speaker:>> Speaker C: My wrist remains unadorned, my friend.
Speaker:Though now that I am the age that you were when we
Speaker:first met many years ago, maybe I
Speaker:need that, uh, Withings things.
