“It’s a first of its kind… in a way,” says Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry in a sponsored Instagram post. He’s referring to the band around his wrist, saying it will impact health and wellness to offer a “new relationship with your health.” The post ends with the Google logo, implying that this is the tech giant’s next health wearable.
By all appearances, it seems like a Whoop clone, which is to say it’s a screen-less wearable that may be yet another way to sell users a new hardware-based health subscription.
We know little beyond that. Bloomberg reported based on an anonymous source that Google-owned Fitbit has plans to launch it later this year. The device will have “basic features” out of the box and it will, indeed, try to entice users into some sort of subscription. The band itself sports athletic orange accents along a gray band, but we don’t yet have confirmation of what sensors are included.
This new band is likely going to be tied with an updated AI-enabled Fitbit app. Previously, only subscribers could access the public preview for this personal health coach inside the Fitbit app. Google recently posted on its blog that non-paying users can now access the preview as well. With those features, Google promises you’ll get cycling insights, nutrition tracking, and free “mindfulness sessions” for stress management. Google is trying to entice more users onto its AI subscriptions by drawing from the “first hit is always free” playbook.
Whoop is getting too big to ignore
For those still unaware, a Whoop is a screenless health tracker with sensors capable of monitoring heart rate, skin temperature, motion, and everything else you would need to tell if you were off your game on your latest five-mile run. Instead of a usual Fitbit or similar device, Whoop relies on an annual subscription. The $200 Whoop 5.0 comes with a Whoop One subscription that will monitor simple metrics. You need to spend more if you want stress monitoring, blood pressure insights, or AFib detection. The competing fitness band Polar eschews the subscription model entirely with its Loop tracker.
Whoop is now valued at roughly $10.1 billion after the company raised another $575 million from global entities as varied as the Qatar Investment Authority and Mayo Clinic. Both Google and Curry are likely seeing dollar signs radiating off fitness wearables. Coincidentally (or not?), the basketball star’s former teammate, Kevin Durant, has millions of dollars invested in the Boston, Massachusetts-based Whoop, Sportico reports. So it’s clear athletes believe in screen-less health and fitness wearables.
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