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When I wrote yesterday about three different Whoop-like bands rumored to be coming soon, I didn’t know how close we were to one of them actually launching. Today, Garmin’s Index sleep monitor is officially listed on their website, retailing for $169.99 and shipping in five to eight weeks.
What kind of device is the Index?
The Index is an armband, meant to be worn around the bicep while you sleep. It can track your heart rate like a smartwatch does, but it has no screen. The most prominent photo on the product page is of a woman sleeping peacefully while her phone and watch lie unused on her nightstand.
The armband is 2.5 inches wide—considerably wider than a Whoop band or a typical watch band—and Garmin says it’s made of a lightweight, breathable fabric. From the photos, it looks soft and comfortable. The band appears to have a velcro type closure. The band is machine washable, but you need to remove the device before washing, which is a small pod that measures 1.6″ x 1.5″ x 0.3″.
The band length is given as 12.8 inches for the small/medium band, and 17.8 inches for the large/XL band. You have to choose a band size when you buy the device; it doesn’t ship with both. You can buy extra bands, but they cost $49.99 each.
What does the Index do?
The Index has an optical heart rate sensor, the same idea as the green light on the back of a smartwatch. This includes a blood oxygen (SpO2) sensor, and from the appearance of the sensor in photos, the heart rate sensor seems to be the latest Elevate version—the same one Garmin put in the Forerunner 570 and 970, and the Venu 3. (I found this sensor to be even more accurate than the previous generation.)
It also has accelerometers to detect motion while you sleep, and it can measure skin temperature. The battery is listed as lasting seven nights with the SpO2 sensor on, assuming you sleep eight hours per night.
From this data, you get the same information a Garmin watch would give you about your sleep. This includes:
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Sleep length, stages, and sleep score (although I never trust sleep stages from a wearable)
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Resting heart rate
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Respiration rate
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“Body battery” (a Garmin-calculated number that is ideally near 100 when you wake up and drains throughout the day, depending on your activity and stress)
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Ovulation estimates and cycle tracking
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Breathing variations throughout the night
The Index sends this information to your phone’s Garmin Connect app, and from there it’s also visible on your compatible Garmin watch.
The Index also has a smart wake alarm, a feature we first saw on the Vivoactive 6. Unfortunately, the smart wake alarm never worked for me, as I detailed in my review. I’m seeing other users say it didn’t work for them, either—here’s one Redditor asking if it’s just them, and a YouTuber who had the same experience. The smart wake alarm asks you to set a 30-minute window during which the device will look for light sleep stages during which to wake you up. In all three of our experiences, the Vivoactive only ever woke us up at the last possible moment of the window, suggesting it wasn’t that “smart” after all.
This may be an armband, but it sure isn’t a Whoop killer
The Index is pretty much exactly what I expected from the rumors, but I have to say I’m disappointed in how limited it is. Since the Index has (really, is) a heart rate monitor, you would think it’s a no-brainer to provide a band that can be worn during exercise. Polar and Coros have popular armband heartrate monitors, which many users find more accurate than a watch and more comfortable than a chest strap. Garmin’s new Index costs nearly as much as both of those combined and still can’t measure your heart rate during workouts.
Also, this goes without saying for those familiar with Whoop, but the strength of Whoop is in its app. You can read here what it was like for me to fully buy into the Whoop way of doing things, tagging my habits and using the chatbot coach to decide on workouts for the day. An armband like the Index may physically look like a Whoop band, but it doesn’t provide the experience that Whoop actually provides. That may be a pro or a con for you personally—not everybody wants the Whoop experience or the ongoing subscription, and I can respect that.
Does the cost make sense?
A one-time price of $169.99 sure beats an ongoing subscription of $239/year like Whoop offers, which is probably how Garmin hopes you will think of this. But you can’t wear the Index for workouts, so the cost is in addition to buying a Garmin watch. (Whoop users often wear a sports watch as well, but the Whoop can still track workouts without one.)
And since the Index doesn’t provide any metrics that your Garmin wasn’t already offering (except the smart wake alarm, which was previously only on the new Vivoactive 6), you’re really paying $169.99 to wear a device on your arm rather than your wrist while you sleep.
One Redditor comments: “Now the question is: Can we retrofit this into a smaller band and get metrics all day long? Since no one was asking for a sleep monitor band but rather an all day band to wear with a normie watch.” (It’s not clear how long the battery would last with 24/7 wear.)
If Garmin is smart, they’ll release a sport band for this thing and offer the ability to start and stop workouts from your phone. Currently, the only way to get workout data on your phone during the workout is with a Connect+ subscription, which costs $6.99/month. Curiously, a $169.99 device plus an annual subscription at $69.99 works out to almost exactly the same cost as a $239/year Whoop Peak subscription. Just saying.
I could definitely see this as a future direction, but I feel like it doesn’t fit with the vibe of naming this product the Index (the same name Garmin uses for its smart scale) and wouldn’t let them call the band subscription-free. Overall, I’m underwhelmed by what the Index offers, but I have to wonder if there might be a future product or upgrade on the way to make it more Whoop-like.
