Whoop’s wearables are designed to maximize the amount of data they collect, so much so that the company built an optional battery that can top up your Whoop without taking it off. The long-term problem has been how Whoop devices actually look—they’re more discreet than an Apple Watch, but they still look like a gadget and a fitness-oriented one at that. Enter Whoop’s new solution: the $149 Meridian Band, a new housing for its fifth-generation sensors that’s designed to look luxurious, not unlike a piece of jewelry.
The Meridian comes in gold, silver, matte black, and rose gold finishes and is made from titanium, the go-to material for premium wearables as of late because of its hardiness and durability. The band is adjustable like Whoop’s fabric bands and features the company’s recognizable “W” on the top, but Meridian is also immediately more eye-catching because it’s made from a Milanese mesh. Introduced to the world of wearables through the “Milanese Loop” Apple sells for its smartwatches, Milanese bands are a classic style of watch band that’s woven from individual metal wires. They’re more flexible than a link bracelet, while looking just as premium, if not more so.
The new band fits the Whoop 5.0 and the Whoop MG and can be added to an order when you sign up for a new Whoop subscription. As a way of making Whoop’s sensors more palatable in non-gym settings, the Meridian band makes a lot of sense. It is, ironically, also a new way to make wearing a Whoop even more expensive. The company famously only offers its wearables as part of a subscription, and once you stop paying, the wearable stops working. Whoop’s strict subscription structure is one of several reasons the $99 Fitbit Air or $200 Garmin Cirqa is compelling. While either screenless wearable can benefit from an additional subscription, they both work without one.
Whoop offers plans at multiple prices (the cheapest starting at $199 per year) and multiple ways to lower the initial cost of a Whoop, like the option to trade in a competing wearable for a discount or subsidize the cost of joining with FSA or HSA funds. Still, committing to Whoop long-term means you could pay more over time than you would with the company’s competitors. For the kind of customers buying a Meridian band, that might not really matter.
