Step count Over Estimation or Underestimation?

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1

This weekend, I set a challenge to walk 50,000 steps in a single day, and to track it using the:

  1. Whoop 4.0 [right wrist]

  2. Garmin Instinct 2 [left wrist]

  3. iPhone 13 [pocket]

Throughout the day, I noticed a lot of inconsistencies in the three. Long story short – Garmin was way ahead (nearly 4k steps more than the peers), Apple Health was the average of the two, but Whoop showed the biggest of discrepancies.

Whoop’s step count constantly lagged behind the two. At first, it was by 5%, but by the end of the day, it rose to 10% lower than the Garmin. Basically, I ended the day with 53k steps on Garmin and 48k steps on the Whoop. At times, the difference was larger (47k Garmin and 40k Whoop).

What’s worse is that Whoop’s step count updates slowly. I noticed that its step count updates in batches, which I think are every 5-8 minutes. This annoyed me because, towards the end, I kept obsessively looking at the step count increasing step by step, and Whoop constantly gave me old data. At one point, after walking nearly a kilometer, it froze my steps at ~47k.

I was under the impression that Whoop’s step count overshot most other devices. I’ve noticed a near 10-15% higher count on Whoop vs Garmin previously. This is the first time, it’s under shooting the step count versus peers. Unsure if this happened because I walked more than usual or if this is a recent update.

What does this community think? Have you noticed varying step counts with distance?

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2

Late response here but I’ve had the same issue the past few months, especially this week especially in the morning. I always do at least an hour walk in the morning during the week, then several other walks and exercise throughout the day (weekend activity is doubled) and it takes a while to warm up the step counter. It is undercounting now but 2000k-3000k - same length of time, often more distance covered. It shouldn’t bother me as much as it does but my weekly average is dropping especially as working in an office I am not walking as much but aim to move around as much as possible. Long story short I strongly feel it’s underestimating by a significant amount.