The Apple Watch has always been a smartwatch with health features. Yes, the Health app syncs data across the Apple ecosystem, but it doesn’t really do much other than track basic markers, i.e., heart rate and steps. Fitness buffs generally opt for other brands like Garmin. Not only is it cheaper, but Garmin Coach also offers more extensive analyses compared to Apple Health.
However, this could change in 2026 (or late-2025). Apple is developing a revamped, AI-driven version of Health called Health+ or Project Mulberry. At a basic level, it’s supposed to act like a “virtual doctor.” But whether it can finally surpass Garmin, and other fitness trackers, depends on how well it performs in the following areas.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything we know about Health+.
1. Training Readiness and Load Tracking
Garmin’s training load features are built for athletes who want structure. It tracks aerobic and anaerobic load, measures how each session impacts your overall fitness, and adjusts your training status based on recovery. You’ll get clear, detailed feedback. The reports will explain whether you’re productive, maintaining, or overreaching.
It also uses heart rate variability and rest data to recommend whether you should train hard, go easy, or rest. Apple doesn’t offer anything like this yet. You can see your heart rate zones and trends, but there’s no system to connect your sessions or track progression over time.
If Health+ wants to compete, it needs more than just AI-generated advice. It has to calculate recovery, adjust your training targets, and understand how stress, sleep, and effort interact. Right now, it works more like a wellness dashboard. For endurance athletes or hybrid lifters tracking volume and adaptation, that’s not enough.
2. Sleep as a Performance Metric
Garmin places a heavy emphasis on recovery. It logs deep, light, and REM stages, tracks overnight HRV and breathing rate, and then uses that data to influence your training readiness. If your sleep was disrupted or your HRV dropped, your morning dashboard reflects that. You’ll get shamed to oblivion if your Sleep Score is Poor. All this data directly affects how Garmin interprets your recovery and readiness.
Apple tracks sleep duration and stages, and it displays trends inside the Health app. However, there’s no real feedback loop into your fitness. With Health+, Apple could start using this data more effectively, but so far, there’s no evidence of a system that translates poor sleep into training recommendations. To catch up, Apple needs to tie sleep to physical performance and recovery, not just visualize it.
3. Food and Wellness Tracking
Apple Health+ is finally entering the food tracking space, and it might do it better than most competitors. Project Mulberry is expected to include built-in food logging, mood tracking, and even AI-assisted coaching based on your nutrition and vitals. These features live directly inside the Health app, which means you won’t need a third-party app to track meals or macros. That’s a big shift from Apple’s usual approach, and it’s something Garmin doesn’t currently offer natively.
That said, Garmin watches do sync with MyFitnessPal. You can link the two apps to get a good estimate of the calories you consume and burn. But since MyFitnessPal is still a third-party app, it doesn’t offer easy integration across your vitals, workouts, and nutrition history. Apple still has the edge here. Of course, Health+ still has to connect the dots between food intake, workout output, and recovery in a meaningful way.
4. Coaching and Adaptive Workouts
Garmin’s adaptive training plans are designed for runners and cyclists who want a periodized structure. Once you select a goal, e.g., a 10K or half marathon, your watch adjusts your workouts daily. It assesses how well you’re recovering and how you performed the day before. It’s not perfect, but it’s a customized system that tracks personalized metrics. You don’t need to manually tweak anything—the plan evolves as you do.
Apple doesn’t offer coaching or performance-based programming. Health+ might give broad suggestions like “move more” or “get better sleep,” but there’s no plan or progression built into the platform. For serious athletes, that’s a big downside. If Apple wants to close the gap, it needs structured plans that scale with your fitness instead of plain pieces of data.
5. Heart Rate Variability and Stress Recovery
Garmin uses HRV as a core recovery metric. It tracks overnight HRV trends and combines them with sleep and training load to generate your daily training readiness score. If your HRV dips below your personal baseline, you’ll get a warning that your body might still be stressed. This kind of integration is useful for athletes balancing volume and intensity, especially if you’re doing double-training days or pushing for a PR.
Apple tracks HRV, but it buries the data in the Health app without much context. You can view daily and weekly trends, but there’s no analysis or recommendation tied to it. Health+ could change that, especially if it learns your baselines and flags dips in recovery. But right now, it doesn’t interpret the numbers in a way that’s useful for training. Garmin still leads when it comes to turning HRV into actionable recovery guidance.
Overall, we’re not there yet. But if Apple gets the development stage right, Health+ could eventually become a true all-in-one platform for wellness and performance. I might seriously consider upgrading to the rumored Apple Watch Ultra 3 if that happens.
Source: The Mac Observer / Digpu NewsTex