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.
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".
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.)
From this data, you get the same information a Garmin watch would give you about your sleep. This includes:
Resting heart rate
“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)
Breathing variations throughout the night
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.
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?
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.
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.
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