I love my Apple Watch. But lately, I’ve found myself craving the one thing it can’t deliver: Quiet.
In a world where everything beeps or begs for attention, even my watch started to feel noisy. No matter how many times I turned off notifications on my Apple Watch, they always found a way to creep back in as a new update, a forgotten app, a spam text that slipped through the cracks.
It became an electronic leash that is pulling me back into the digital current, preventing true disconnection.
That’s what led me to screenless straps. Devices like WHOOP , POLAR, Amazfit Helio, and Hume Health Bands are part of a movement toward wearables that quietly collect data without hijacking your focus.
After a few weeks of testing and researching, I realized these bands have more in common than they do differences. They all promise recovery, readiness, and mindfulness through metrics. What separates them isn’t what they measure, but how they frame it and what they call it, how they visualize it, and what they charge you to see it.
My Pick: The Best of the Bands
At this point, these screenless straps are so similar that even WHOOP filed a lawsuit against Polar last week, claiming its strap is a little too similar. They all track heart rate, HRV, sleep, strain, and recovery. The differences come down to what each company emphasizes and how much they charge you for it.
My pick for the best overall strap is the WHOOP MG. The deciding factor is its FDA-cleared ECG and AFib detection, which make it the only true medical grade option in the group. It’s a meaningful step toward clinical wearables that bridge wellness and medicine. That said, the annual cost is high, and unless you have atrial fibrillation, palpitations, or another medical reason, it’s hard to justify. The Blood Pressure Insights feature isn’t FDA-approved, and as I’ve covered in another newsletter,, the validation data behind it is unclear.
For most people, the WHOOP 5.0 with the Life Plan is a more balanced choice. It gives you the same core data without as much long-term commitment.
Beyond WHOOP, Polar stands out for its long history in heart rate science and its reliability in the wellness world. The Amazfit Helio offers impressive features at a much lower price point, making it a great value for anyone who wants to track recovery and strain without the recurring costs. Finally, Hume is the new player in this space. There isn’t much validation data yet, but its focus on longevity and metabolic insights shows promise.
Where I think all of these straps still fall short is in getting the data to the physician. They collect an incredible amount of physiologic information, but most of it stays trapped inside the app. Until that data can move directly into a medical record or a clinician dashboard, their impact on real healthcare will always be limited.
I didn’t review BIOSTRAP Sensr Band, mostly because it isn’t a consumer product. It’s a research-grade platform built for clinical use, designed to give full access to physiologic data—heart rate, HRV, temperature, respiration, and sleep in real time. Unlike the other straps, it was created from the start for physicians and researchers who need verified, raw signals instead of summarized trends.
For me, that kind of openness is where all wearables need to go. It’s how we finally close the gap between daily life and clinical care. If wearables are ever going to matter in healthcare, FDA-approved data has to reach the people who care for the patient.
Let me know if you have a personal favorite, or if there’s a strap I’ve missed that deserves a spot on the list.
