WHOOP fitness trackers are finally getting step counting

What’s the big whoop about step counting? After all, not all steps are created equal, and lazily shuffling our feet around the bedroom in the morning is going to be a lot less impactful on our health than trekking uphill at full pace. For a lot of us, though, counting steps is still a handy metric — an at-a-glance representation of our activity that day — and all the best fitness trackers report it. That’s why we’re a little surprised to hear about one fitness tracker brand that’s only now getting around to offering step counting.

If you didn’t catch our little pun, we’re talking about WHOOP, the company that makes some very low-profile screenless trackers, including the most recent WHOOP 4.0 we checked out a couple years back. While the unusual tracker was a bit expensive and required an ongoing subscription, it offered some great holistic feedback, tracking heartrate round the clock to estimate body strain. And while it exceled at things like sleep tracking, it also clearly wasn’t a replacement for your average tracker, not overloading you with real-time stats.

That streamlined approach to product design also meant some compromises, and step counting found itself among them. That’s finally changing now, as 9to5Google shares that WHOOP is delivering an update going out today or tomorrow that will start providing step data for users. Understandably, this has been a highly requested feature, but WHOOP also justifies its inclusion at this late date by citing studies linking access to this kind of data with reduced rates of heart disease, obesity, and depression.

Are they any WHOOP users out there who have been waiting for this for years? Have you just found yourself using another fitness tracker to get step data in the interim? Share your experience in the comments.