Whoop has emerged as a top contender in the fitness tracker market, offering a unique blend of minimalist design and advanced health monitoring features. Unlike traditional fitness trackers, Whoop forgoes a display in favour of a more unobtrusive experience, appealing to both athletes and health-conscious individuals seeking detailed insights into their well-being.

Design and Build Quality
The Whoop band distinguishes itself with a minimalist and sleek design that prioritises functionality and comfort. Unlike traditional fitness trackers, the Whoop lacks a display, focusing instead on an unobtrusive experience.

The band is crafted from lightweight, durable materials, ensuring it can withstand daily wear and rigorous physical activities. Its minimalist design allows it to blend seamlessly with any outfit, making it suitable for both professional and casual settings. The clasp mechanism is secure and easy to adjust, providing a snug fit without causing discomfort. You can fully customise your Whoop device with up to 74,000 colour and material combinations.

Features
Whoop is packed with features designed to optimise your health and performance. Some of the key features include:

1. 24/7 Heart Rate Monitoring: Continuously tracks your heart rate to provide insights into your cardiovascular health.
2. Sleep Tracking: Analyses various sleep stages and provides a sleep score to help you understand your sleep quality.
3. Strain and Recovery Metrics: Calculates daily strain and recovery to help you balance activity and rest, optimizing performance.
4. Respiratory Rate Monitoring: Tracks your breathing rate during sleep, which can indicate overall health and detect abnormalities.
5. HRV Analysis: Heart rate variability (HRV) is monitored to provide insights into your autonomic nervous system and recovery.

Performance
Whoop’s performance is commendable, particularly in the accuracy of its health metrics. The continuous heart rate monitoring is precise, offering reliable data that can be used to guide training intensity. Sleep tracking is another strong suit of the Whoop band. It provides detailed insights into sleep stages, duration, and disturbances, which can be invaluable for improving sleep hygiene and overall health.

The strain and recovery metrics are especially useful for athletes and fitness enthusiasts. By balancing these two aspects, users can avoid overtraining and optimise their performance. The HRV analysis is another standout feature, offering a window into the body’s readiness and overall stress levels.

Health Tracking
In terms of health tracking, Whoop provides a comprehensive suite of metrics that go beyond basic step counting. It tracks heart rate, sleep, strain, recovery, and respiratory rate, offering a holistic view of your health. The detailed sleep analysis helps you understand your sleep patterns and make adjustments to improve sleep quality. The strain and recovery metrics guide you in managing your activity levels to prevent burnout and promote optimal performance. The HRV and respiratory rate monitoring add another layer of health insights, making Whoop a valuable tool for anyone serious about their health and fitness.

Whoop App
The Whoop app is where all the data comes to life. It is user-friendly and provides a wealth of information in a digestible format. The app offers personalised insights and recommendations based on your data, helping you make informed decisions about your health and fitness. The sleep and recovery insights are particularly detailed, providing actionable feedback to improve these critical areas.

The app features a customisable dashboard that allows you to prioritise and reorder the metrics that matter most to you. This includes daily strain, recovery, sleep performance, heart rate variability (HRV), and more. The overview screen provides a clear and concise view of your key metrics in one place.

The Whoop app offers detailed sleep analysis, tracking all four stages of sleep and monitoring wake events, efficiency, and respiratory rate. It provides a sleep score from 0 to 100% based on the sleep you get compared to the sleep your body needs. The Sleep Planner feature helps users determine the optimal time to go to bed to maximize performance the next day.

Whoop measures both physical and mental stress throughout the day to calculate a daily Strain score ranging from 0 to 21. The app also provides a Recovery score from 0 to 100%, based on HRV, resting heart rate, sleep, and respiratory rate. These metrics help you balance activity and rest to avoid overtraining and optimise performance.

The app includes a real-time stress score from 0 to 3, based on heart rate and HRV. It offers science-backed breathwork exercises to help manage stress, either by increasing alertness or promoting relaxation. You can also track stress trends over time to identify triggers and improve stress management.

Whoop allows you to track the impact of over 140 daily habits and behaviours, such as alcohol intake, medication, and stress. This helps users understand how these behaviours affect their health and performance. The WHOOP Coach feature uses AI to provide personalised answers to health and fitness questions based on your unique biometric data and performance science.

It also offers specific recommendations for training plans, recovery strategies, and more. The app also includes social features, allowing you to join teams and participate in challenges, adding a motivational and community aspect to the experience.

Pricing
Whoop operates on a subscription model, which is a departure from the traditional one-time purchase for fitness trackers. The initial subscription includes the Whoop band, and users continue to pay a monthly fee for access to the app and its insights. While the subscription model may be a deterrent for some, the continuous updates and personalised insights provided by Whoop justify the cost for many users. The subscription also includes access to a community of like-minded individuals, which can be a motivating factor.

Verdict
The Whoop band is a powerful tool for anyone serious about optimising their health and performance. Its minimalist design and focus on comfort make it suitable for continuous wear, while the comprehensive suite of features provides valuable insights into various aspects of health. The detailed and accurate health metrics, combined with the user-friendly app, make Whoop a standout choice in the crowded fitness tracker market.

While the subscription model may not be for everyone, the value provided by the continuous updates and personalised insights makes it a worthwhile investment for many. Whether you’re an athlete looking to optimise performance or someone seeking to improve overall health, Whoop offers a holistic solution that goes beyond the basics of fitness tracking.

Price: AED 919 (includes the band and an annual subscription)

The Yasmina Midi Smart Speaker is more than just a device. It’s a personalised audio companion that seamlessly integrates into your lifestyle. This sleek speaker offers an immersive audio experience and advanced AI capabilities, making it a standout in the smart speaker market.

Design and Build Quality
The Yasmina Midi Smart Speaker features a sleek and compact design, making it a stylish addition to any home. Its modern look is complemented by a matte finish that blends seamlessly with various home decor styles.

The Yasmina Midi’s build quality is impressive. Its sturdy construction feels durable and well-made. The materials give it a premium feel, ensuring it can withstand everyday use without showing wear and tear.

Features
The Yasmina Midi comes packed with three speakers, including a subwoofer and two tweeters, delivering immersive surround sound. It supports high-quality audio playback, making it perfect for music lovers and movie enthusiasts. The speaker also features dynamic lighting that matches the mood of the music or interactions, adding a visual element to the audio experience.

The speaker has a minimalistic control panel with essential buttons for power, volume control, and a mute button up top. The mute button is particularly useful for privacy, as it disconnects the microphones when activated. The dynamic lighting on the speaker changes according to the music or interactions, enhancing the overall ambience.

The Yasmina Midi is powered by Yasmina, an AI assistant built using YangoGPT technology. It can recognise up to four family members by voice and curate personalised content based on their preferences. It can handle complex questions, provide meaningful answers, and offer tailored advice for various aspects of life. The speaker can also act as a smart home hub, controlling other compatible devices through voice commands.

The smart speaker can display information such as the time and weather and communicate emotions on the LED screen. In addition, it can recite surahs from the Holy Quran, play Adhans, and tell you the date according to the Hijri calendar. It also knows the prayer times for any city in the world.

The Yasmina Midi supports various third-party services and smart home integrations. It requires a subscription to Yango Play for full access to music streaming and recommendations. It also offers bilingual support and is capable of engaging in human-like conversations in both Khaleeji Arabic and English.

Setup
Setting up the Yasmina Midi is straightforward. The speaker connects easily to Wi-Fi and can be integrated with other smart home devices using Zigbee. The initial setup involves downloading the Yango app, connecting the speaker to the app, and configuring the settings.

Performance
The overall performance of the Yasmina Midi is exceptional. The sound quality is clear and powerful, filling up to 300 square feet with immersive audio. The AI assistant Yasmina is responsive and provides a personalised experience, making it a versatile device for various needs.

Verdict
The Yasmina Midi Smart Speaker is a robust and high-performing device that offers a unique and personalised audio experience. Its advanced AI capabilities, combined with its powerful audio performance, sleek design, and support for both Arabic and English, make it a top choice for anyone looking to upgrade their smart home setup.

Price: AED 449

Product photography by Ryan Chris

The KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 MicroSDXC UHS-I Card is a versatile memory card designed to cater to photographers, videographers, and tech enthusiasts. It boasts a read speed of up to 100 MB/s, ensuring quick access to files and smooth playback of high-definition videos.

Its write speed reaches up to 50 MB/s, making it efficient for tasks like 4K video recording and burst-mode photography. Available in capacities ranging from 32GB to 1TB, it suits various storage needs, whether for casual users or professionals. Our review unit came with 128GB of storage space.

This card is classified as UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) and Video Speed Class 30 (V30), ideal for high-resolution video recording and playback. The IPX7 waterproof rating allows it to withstand being submerged in water for up to 30 minutes at a depth of 1 meter. It is also shockproof, having passed a 5-meter drop test, ensuring data safety even after unexpected falls.

Additionally, it is X-ray proof, thanks to its ISO7816-1 compliance, making it resistant to X-ray exposure during airport security checks. The card operates seamlessly between -25°C to 85°C, handling extreme temperatures, and it is resistant to electrostatic discharge, further ensuring data safety.

In terms of applications, the card supports 4K video recording, with the capacity to record up to 1,258 minutes at 100Mbps, making it perfect for videographers. It can store up to 154,070 photos (18MP), providing ample space for photographers. It also meets the Application Performance Class A1 standard, ensuring the smooth running of Android applications, and enhancing performance on devices like smartphones and tablets.

Overall, the KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 MicroSDXC UHS-I Card is a robust and high-performing storage solution that excels in various aspects. Its impressive read and write speeds, combined with a wide range of capacities, make it a versatile choice for different users.

The durability features ensure data safety even in challenging conditions, making this card suitable for capturing 4K videos, taking high-resolution photos, or running apps on Android devices. It delivers exceptional performance and reliability, making it a top choice for high-quality and durable storage.

Price: AED 40