Steph Curry is testing Google and Fitbit's screenless Whoop competitor: Everything we know
Steph Curry has been wearing an unreleased Google-built Fitbit band in public for months. Photographers caught the grey-and-orange tracker on his wrist on April 15 before a Warriors–Clippers game at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.
For HIIT and conditioning readers, the celebrity angle is irrelevant. What matters is the hardware format, the metric stack, and the eventual price-to-data ratio.
Hardware format: what's confirmed
Screenless. Slightly thinner than Whoop's strap. No display surface means no OLED drain, which implies multi-day battery life — Bloomberg did not confirm exact runtime. For HIIT training, a band that survives a full training microcycle without a charger removes one operational friction point. Continuous heart rate, HRV, and skin temperature can run uninterrupted across 48–72 hour blocks, producing a tighter recovery signal than a single morning spot-check.
The format also kills mid-session screen-checking. You can't tap through a notification between intervals. The wrist becomes a passive sensor, not an attention sink. For anyone running structured work — Tabatas, EMOMs, threshold repeats, mobility circuits — that's a genuine edge over a touchscreen smartwatch.
What it's supposed to track
Bloomberg names two features: a paid subscription tier for extras, and the AI coach inside the Fitbit app. No pricing. No sensor breakdown. No published validation data on the HRV algorithm. Nothing on anaerobic threshold or recovery scoring methodology.
Curry reportedly wore the device in nearly every public appearance over the past several months. Google is using him as the live validation case — daily games, high training volume, public visibility. If the HRV and recovery scores hold up under that load, the signal is credible. If they're smoothed averages dressed up as insight, skip.
What to watch before you buy
Launch date. Bloomberg said "later this year." Subscription price — the device will require a recurring fee for full functionality, including the AI coach. Whether the coach is trained on actual recovery data or wrapped around generic prompts. Third-party validation against a chest-strap HR monitor during real interval work. Battery runtime under continuous HR mode.
Until those numbers land, don't preorder. The screenless format is a real win for HIIT athletes who don't want a wrist display competing for attention. The AI pitch is unverified. Buy the metric, not the marketing.
