Five First Steps to Take With Your Garmin Cirqa Smartband.
The Garmin Cirqa is the company’s first screenless smartband, designed for 24/7 fitness and health tracking without a subscription. For existing Garmin fans who want 24/7 data without the hassle of wearing a bulky sports watch while they sleep, this $199 smartband is a welcome addition. If you’ve just unboxed it, here’s how to set it up properly and get the most out of it.
Set Cirqa as your primary wearable device.
If you already have a Garmin watch, such as a Fenix or Forerunner, you can keep it as your “Primary Training Device.” However, for 24/7 daily health monitoring, assign Cirqa as your “Primary Wearable.” If you missed this during the initial setup, here’s how to manage your devices in the Garmin Connect app :
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Select “More details” (bottom right).
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Scroll down the page and select Settings.
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Under Device Priority, select Cirqa as your primary wearable and your other watch as your primary training device.
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Sync your devices.
This setup ensures that Cirqa continuously collects recovery, step, and sleep data and transfers it to your profile, while preventing conflict between the smartband and your primary sports watch during intense workouts.
Make sure your Cirqa bracelet fits.
The Cirqa fabric strap comes in two sizes. The small/medium fits wrists of approximately 120–200 mm, while the large/extra large fits wrists of approximately 145–240 mm. A snug yet comfortable fit is essential for accurate optical heart rate readings, so take a minute to adjust the strap before relying on the readings.
Garmin sells a forearm strap separately for $49.99 , so if you prefer tracking your heart rate using your biceps rather than your wrist, it’s an option worth considering—especially if you participate in sports where a wrist strap would be in the way. Additionally, placing the strap on your forearm can improve overall heart rate accuracy, as the sensor has better contact with a larger part of the body, reducing noise from wrist movements.
Use Cirqa to check your baseline health.
At first glance, the information in the Connect app may seem somewhat disjointed and complex, so don’t try to absorb everything on day one. Cirqa can track training readiness, heart rate variability (HRV), maximal oxygen consumption (VO2 max), heart rate, pulse oximetry, stress levels, sleep, and much more. In the sleep tracking section, you can track sleep stages (though this is questionable ), daytime naps, and receive personalized recommendations overlaid on your baseline sleep quality score.
Your watch comes with pre-installed overviews, but you can customize them to suit your goals. For example, I find Garmin’s Body Battery metric overly simplistic and ultimately useless. Since I’m training for a marathon, I replaced that overview with a running economy metric to easily track my progress as I increase my training volume and intensity.
If this is important to you, now is the time to set up feminine health tracking. The Cirqa device predicts your menstrual cycle and identifies past ovulation periods using skin temperature data collected during sleep, and can sync this data with the Natural Cycles birth control app (which requires a separate subscription ).
Keep in mind that more meaningful results (such as analyzing workout readiness trends or sleep improvement recommendations) require several days or weeks of data collection. Give the system a week or two of normal use before judging its effectiveness.
Change the default action assigned to a button.
Compared to other smartbands, the button on the device itself really sets the Cirqa apart. Cirqa can track over 80 activities—running, yoga, cycling, and more—either with the press of a button or through the Garmin Connect app. It claims to automatically detect workouts, but I found this to be quite unreliable .
To get the most out of this feature, you’ll need to assign an activity type that you can start and stop with a quick button press. Open the Garmin Connect app and select Cirqa in the upper right corner. Then, select Activity Settings > Edit (in the upper right corner) > select your favorite activity type. Now, when you press the button on your Cirqa, your selected activity type will start.
And if you’re heading outdoors, remember that the band pairs with your phone’s GPS for accurate location tracking during outdoor activities, as the Cirqa itself (like most smart bands) doesn’t have a built-in GPS receiver—so bring your phone if tracking your route is important to you.
Explore the various lifestyle notifications on your Cirqa device.
In addition to its core fitness and sleep features, Cirqa offers a range of useful tools for a healthy lifestyle. The app includes a jet lag advisor, a diary and lifestyle tracking feature, water and calorie intake tracking, daily step count, and intensity minutes. There’s also a wheelchair mode with activity tracking via wrist buttons, if that suits your activity style.
Overall, it’s worth taking the time to get to know the Garmin Connect app thoroughly. Keep in mind that the Cirqa doesn’t have a screen, so to get any information you need, you’ll need to know where to find it in the app. And since we’re still in the early stages of this smartband’s launch, it’s important to regularly check for firmware updates in the app.