Garmin Released Its First Smartband Without a Screen Today, and I Tested It.

For all the Garmin fans who’ve been utterly ruthless about leaks, today is your day: Garmin has released the Cirqa smartband for $199.99 . After months of speculation, it’s finally official, and I’ve spent the last few hours wearing it. Here’s everything we know so far about Garmin’s first screenless smartband, along with my first impressions.

My first impressions of the Garmin Cirqa smart bracelet.

The Cirqa is Garmin’s attempt to enter the increasingly crowded market of screenless fitness trackers. On paper, it looks like a cross between the Fitbit Air ( $99.99 ) and the Whoop (which famously has a tiered subscription system; Whoop charges $239 per year for a mid-tier subscription, which includes the Whoop 5.0 device). My colleague Beth Skwarecki compares the two trackers here , and I’m eager to see what she has to say about the Cirqa’s place in the market.

According to Garmin, the key benefit of their bracelet is that it “reduces distractions while providing 24/7 health and fitness tracking.” You get 24/7 monitoring of your heart rate, stress level, Body Battery, pulse oximeter, and skin temperature, all of which can be accessed later in the Garmin Connect app. Cirqa automatically identifies and categorizes your workouts, and is said to improve this classification over time when you log into the Garmin Connect app and confirm or adjust what the device thinks you’ve done.

It comes in four colors: black, navy blue (“Captain’s”), French gray, and lilac. It features fabric straps in sizes S/M and L/XL. A hook-and-loop closure is used for adjustment. Instead of a traditional buckle, quick-release pin connectors are used, and the strap is threaded through a small metal loop.

The sensor module is physically long at 47 mm, matching the Forerunner 970’s watch face diameter. The Whoop, by comparison, is similarly wide but noticeably shorter from top to bottom. Garmin is known for catering to larger wrists, and the Cirqa confirms this trend. I’d say the design is more similar to the Polar Loop than the Fitbit Air or Whoop. And while these are just impressions from a few hours of use, the long sensor doesn’t seem like a drawback, and Garmin has convincingly demonstrated the device’s advantages, at least in terms of lightness and comfort.

Beth sent over some photos of the Fitbit Air, Whoop 5.0/MG, Polar Loop, and Amazfit Helio Strap to give you an idea of ​​how the Cirqa compares.

Subscription is not available yet.

Garmin emphasizes that the device doesn’t require a subscription at launch. I directly asked a company representative if this might change in the future. With the usual caveats about not discussing any future plans, Garmin stated that it won’t suddenly discontinue features that are currently free. Any future paid tier will be optional, with new features available through a subscription, and existing features hidden behind a paywall.

This is consistent with how Garmin has generally handled Connect+ so far. As a reminder, the screenless wristband means the Garmin Connect app takes over most of the work. Features like more detailed workout information, expanded icons/gamification, and so on will be found within the app. None of this has been confirmed, but it’s a fairly predictable shape for the future paid subscription, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it.

The Cirqa sensor is essentially a Gen 4 “plus” sensor.

Inside, the Cirqa uses Garmin’s older Elevate Gen 4 optical sensor, not the Gen 5 sensor found in newer Garmin watches, nor the one used in Garmin’s own Index sleep monitor, which launched last year to track heart rate, blood oxygen levels, stress, respiration rate, and skin temperature (essentially everything but an ECG).

But that’s not all. Cirqa may not have a 5th-generation sensor, but it does add skin temperature measurement to the older 4th-generation base model , making it functionally something like a 4th-generation plus (my informal definition). Skin temperature readings are crucial for tracking women’s health and for Garmin’s partnership with Natural Cycles .

However, for Garmin fans, the outdated sensor may be a disappointment, given all the rumors and speculation surrounding the launch of this smartband. Whether this will lead to unsatisfactory results remains to be seen in the next few weeks.

The button on the Cirqa will delight fans of smart bracelets.

Fitness trackers without a screen typically don’t offer any physical controls (Whoop and Fitbit Air are both buttonless). So, the Cirqa’s side button is a welcome addition: pressing it is much easier than opening an app or waiting for activity tracking results, which you then have to adjust to get accurate data.

Here’s everything I know about this button at the moment:

• A single press starts (and then stops) any workout you’ve marked as a favorite in Garmin Connect, with the unit vibrating and the LED flashing green while it’s recording.

• Snooze (press) and stop (hold) the alarm

• Pairing mode (triple press or hold for about 6 seconds)

• Additionally, you can turn on/off the heart rate broadcast (hold for 3 seconds if enabled).

• Silence. Find my group.

You can’t press the “Stop” button while an action is in progress, but if you press “Stop,” the LED will flash red until you save, resume, or cancel the action in the app. I’ll let you know how this differs from the pause button after testing.

Is Cirqa worth buying?

The Cirqa costs $199.99, with an optional wrist strap for $59.99 if you prefer to wear it above your elbow rather than on your wrist (useful for those who find wrist trackers disruptive to their workouts). Frankly, this high price is consistent with Garmin’s current brand image. Garmin seems to be betting that its ecosystem (and in the case of this smartband, the lack of a subscription) is worth charging upfront.

Here’s a quick overview of where Cirqa stands compared to its competitors:

• The Fitbit Air fitness tracker is now available for $99.99, with a Google Health Premium subscription.

• The Amazfit Helio strap also costs $99.99 and does not require a mandatory subscription to purchase.

• The Polar Loop watch costs $199, the same as the Cirqa.

• Whoop, the device to which all other devices in this category are tacitly compared, doesn’t directly sell any hardware. The cheapest plan, Whoop One, costs $199 per year for the current Whoop 5.0 model, Peak costs $239, and the Whoop MG with ECG functionality is only available on the Life plan for $359 per year.

Garmin claims that with a one-time purchase of Cirqa for $199.99, you’ll get a year’s subscription to Whoop’s cheapest plan, and you’ll never have to pay anything else. And, of course, Garmin’s advantage isn’t so much the hardware. The assumption is that if you’re already using the ecosystem—tracking training load, heart rate variability, recovery, VO2 max, and all the metrics Garmin fans say they can’t live without—you’re willing to pay more for the integrated data rather than starting over with something cheaper. As for Cirqa, a Garmin representative told me that the Cirqa’s features are comparable to the Venu 4 smartwatch, which costs $549.99 .

Ultimately, whether Garmin’s features are truly worth the extra $100 depends on how deeply immersed you are in the Garmin world. For someone looking for devices in this category without owning a Garmin device, convincing them of the benefits is much more difficult when competing devices retail for $99.99.

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