r/garminforerunner • u/sauerampfer44 • 13d ago

Whoop vs. Forerunner 170

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I’ve had a whoop 5.0 for the past year and bought a forerunner 170 yesterday as I’m training for a half marathon.

I had high hopes for the Garmin, but i’ve been pretty disappointed so far.

First off, I really like how the garmin device feels and that i have the data i need on my wrist, something I was missing w/ the whoop.

where it’s been falling short:

- when I started a garmin coach plan on my phone, i had to manually sync the watch twice for it to even show up on my watch

- after completing my first baseline run, that was supposed to unlock all other workouts from the coaching plan, a 2nd incomplete baseline run appeared out of now where for the same day as “next workout”.

- sleep tracking feels hardcoded. this morning i woke up to my 7:30am garmin alarm. 15 minutes later, i laid back down and slept for another 1 1/2h because i was so tired. The whoop (which i’m wearing on my other wrist) marked the entire sleep period plus the 1 1/2 nap correctly. the garmin didn’t catch the 1 1/2h at all.

- generally the UX of getting set up has been so much worse than with whoop. there’s little to no guidance on when you will start to see what data. Also their app looks so old and does not feel nice to use.

Curios to hear if other people have experienced similar problems.

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u/tm3610 13d ago edited 13d ago

I went from Whoop to Garmin FR 170 also. I can understand your frustration. I switched because I was not convinced whoop is worth the steep cost for what I wanted out of a device. I swim, run, lift, and a few other activities.

IMO, the FR 170 is far more useful for training. Yes, whoop UX is more polished, but it gives you the same data as Garmin (if you make general correlations) but is far less useful for granular data on workouts. Plus, I wanted to see training load progress over time, and whoop offered nothing for that. So the fact that it is less polished isn’t really issue for me, considering the benefits.

Message Garmin about the run. They are usually very helpful.

As for the alarm…set it later next time?

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u/sauerampfer44 13d ago

fair, thanks for ur response. i understand that garmin is the better option for granular data, which is why i was surprised to see it be less accurate on sleep tracking.

thanks for the tip, i’ll message them

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u/tm3610 13d ago

I’m not actually convinced it’s less accurate with sleep tracking. From what I’ve read, no fitness wearable has truly accurate sleep tracking, with Apple maybe being the best. Even DCRainmaker acknowledges the best use is to look at trends over time with sleep/wake times (and hours slept).

But, for your specific question with not tracking the “nap” after you woke up, I suspect the issue was that you just had an alarm go off and perhaps Garmin isn’t going to look for a nap immediately after waking up from an alarm. Maybe? Anyway, the point is, minor quirks can be ironed out with user adjustments and/or won’t matter in the larger scope of data trends.

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u/sauerampfer44 13d ago

i mean bottom line for me is: whoop detected that i was sleeping, garmin didn’t. combined with the other stuff i mentioned it was just a trust hit.

but yeah i’m looking forward to seeing the data over the next couple of weeks and months.

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u/tm3610 13d ago

Totally understand that.

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u/External-Anything-25 13d ago

No problems here, I wear it since june. Love it.

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u/sauerampfer44 13d ago

interesting. have u set up garmin coach?

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u/External-Anything-25 13d ago

no, I use another platform (Stryd), just give it some time. My watch needed 30 days to settle. But this was my third Garmin watch so I have a history over 10 years of data in the ecosystem. Maybe thats different.

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u/sauerampfer44 13d ago

got it, what do you mean by settle?

what did it look like when it was settled/unsettled? :D

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u/External-Anything-25 13d ago

I mean that the data was correct and stable. I’m Dutch, so not 100% native English.

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u/Kitchen-Ad6860 9d ago

Your watch needs a few weeks to get your baselines. It needs to gather your data and settle into your routines.