stress

Job interview vs. Oura, Garmin and Whoop? And what about the Limitless Pendant?

I arrived at the interview wearing my wearables – Garmin, Whoop, Oura, and the AI pendant Limitless. All detected stress, each differently. The highest peak? Garmin: 99/100 right in the middle of the talk. Which one told the truth? And what does the LLM say?

LORDoftheSMARTRINGS

12 Nov 2025 — 7 min read

Job Interview and stress vs wearables

It was an ordinary Tuesday at 2:30 p.m., and after years, I was heading to a job interview again. Across from me sat the department head, an HR recruiter, and the HR director—a bit of an overmatch. Even though I’m no rookie, interviews can still bring a dose of stress.

During the interview, I was wearing representatives from the main wearable categories:

⌚ Garmin Fenix 8
📏 Whoop MG
💍 Oura 4
…and as a bonus, my personal AI assistant – ☮️ Limitless Pendant

The question is: did these devices detect the stress? And, more importantly—how accurately?

Before we dive into the data, let’s mix a quick anti-stress cocktail. Cheers! 🍸

📽️

Prefer video version? See HERE.

🫖 Pre-Interview Cocktail

I knew the interview would make me a bit nervous. So I decided to prepare not only mentally, but also physiologically. About an hour and a half beforehand, I took a few mindful steps:

🫁 Physiological sigh – A technique recently popularized by Andrew Huberman. The idea is simple: take a deep inhale through the nose, add a small “top-up” breath (just when you think your lungs are full), and then exhale slowly through the mouth. A few rounds of this can calm the nervous system almost instantly. I felt clearer, more focused, and grounded.
💊 L-theanine – An amino acid found in tea that promotes calm focus without making you drowsy. I often take it before situations where I want to be in flow yet stay relaxed.

🔵 Methylene Blue – I have to admit, this isn’t your typical supplement — and I definitely wouldn’t recommend it casually or after just reading about it. For me, methylene blue helps me feel a little less antisocial (sounds odd, I know, but it works). In small doses, it has a mild nootropic effect and seems to sharpen my verbal interactions.

Did it help? At least as a placebo, yes. 😄 But I think the whole ritual really put me in the right state of mind. In reality, it’s hard to say for sure — unfortunately, I didn’t have a control group without the cocktail. :)

📊 What Do the Data Say?

The interview went by quickly — 45 minutes and it was all done. I had a decent flow, good word cadence, and probably a lively heart rate too.

⌚ Garmin Fenix 8 – Orange Peaks of Truth

Garmin shows stress levels on a daily graph using color codes:

🔵 Blue = Rest (9h 29m) – including sleep
🟠 Orange = Moderate to high stress
⚪ Gray = Physical activity

The highest peak appeared around 2:42–2:45 p.m., climbing all the way up to 99 — dangerously close to the maximum value of 100. And the timing? Right in the middle of the interview. Coincidence? Hardly!

GARMIN FENIX 8

📏 Whoop MG – The High-Stress Zone

Whoop visualizes stress a bit differently. Instead of a continuous minute-by-minute graph, its Stress Monitor looks more like a tachometer, showing your current stress load on a scale from 0.0 to 3.0.

Whoop’s measurement was more consistent — it marked the entire period from 2:14 p.m. (right when I sat down in the meeting room and started strategizing) until 3:51 p.m., when I finally got into my car and put on some Sabaton to calm down.

In other words, Whoop also captured the afterglow of the stress response — which actually makes sense. Stress often peaks after a stressful event ends, as the nervous system needs some time to normalize.

According to Whoop, I spent 3 hours and 44 minutes in the high-stress zone that day.

For comparison: my six-month average is 2 hours and 18 minutes — so this interview day clocked in almost 90 minutes higher than usual.

Whoop 1 month free.

WHOOP 5.0

💍 Oura Ring 4 – Weekly Context and Daily Detail

Oura interpreted the data from essentially the entire afternoon as being in “Stressed” mode — and honestly, it wasn’t wrong. On my way to the interview, I ran into an unexpected traffic jam, which added a little bonus round of nervousness. I’d definitely classify that period as “stressed.”

Oura ring 4 on AMAZON

In Conclusion

All three devices flagged the more nerve-wracking parts of the day as stress — though each used a different method of interpretation and visualization.

Garmin, with its precisely structured and highly granular orange “report card,” showed values right at the edge of the maximum. Personally, I’m not a big fan of that type of graph — I tend to prefer a more high-level view, which Whoopdelivers nicely through its simple curve and tachometer-style stress scale from 0 to 3.

Oura, on the other hand, approaches stress from a slightly different angle — one that aligns with the philosophy of Elissa Epel, the author of “The Stress Prescription.” It divides mental states into four distinct zones:

It’s no coincidence that Elissa Epel is considered a true stress guru — she also serves as an advisor to Oura Health.

I talked more about stress and the Oura Ring in detail here:

I have to add one more thing to stay true to the usual quality of my content. Whenever possible, I always use the best available reference devices for testing and validating data from wearables.

The series “The Best Smart Ring” stands as proof of that commitment:

However, when it comes to measuring stress, things get a bit more complicated. Most wearables rely on indirect estimates based on heart rate, HRV, and similar metrics.

To truly understand stress, we’d need to monitor adrenaline and cortisol levels directly.

But interestingly, even consumer-grade devices capable of that are starting to appear on the market:

👂 BONUS – Limitless Pendant

I’m still exploring possible use cases for the Limitless Pendant — a wearable pendant that listens to everything around you and then lets an LLM model creatively (and sometimes questionably) interpret what it heard. :)

And as luck would have it, the pendant happened to be active during my interview.

So, after it was all over, I asked the model…

And the LLM replied:

When it comes to stress, though, LLMs aren’t exactly great at detecting tone, voice tremor, irony, or subtle emotional cues.

So the Limitless response was more of a generic (and typically flattering) one — after all, the AI probably doesn’t want to upset me… I might delete it. 😄

Limitless Pendant

VIDEO-VERSION