Garmin has just entered Whoop’s territory with the new CIRQA. He has chosen to attack right where it hurts most

Wearing a device on your wrist to get to know your body better usually means accepting one more screen. The race pace, notifications, alerts and summaries appear there, inviting us to constantly check what is happening. Garmin now joins a proposal that other manufacturers had already explored: eliminating that part of the experience without giving up continuous tracking. Your new bracelet collects data during the day and nightbut centralizes your consultation on your mobile. It does not seek to show more things, but rather to offer another way of living with personal monitoring.

The protagonist of this story is called CIRQA Smart Band and it is Garmin’s first screenless smart bracelet designed to bring together daily monitoring, sports and well-being in the same device. In Spain we can order it from July 24 by 199.99 euroswith two sizes, a fabric strap adaptable to the wrist or arm and up to ten days of autonomy. This is not the first time we have seen the company explore this format: in 2025 it launched the Index Sleep Monitoralthough that proposal was focused on sleep and recovery.

Technical sheet of the new Garmin CIRQA

Using CIRQA means accepting that we won’t be able to check what you’re recording by just looking at your wrist. There’s no dial to go to, menus to scroll through, or data that appears when you raise your arm. To consult them we will have to open the application on mobilewhere we can review the information collected and, during an activity with the phone’s GPS, check basic data such as distance and pace. On the band we will only find a side buttonconfigurable to start our favorite activity.

Garmin wants to measure everything without putting another screen on your wrist

The device can recognize activities such as walking or running on its own and save them for us to review later. As we confirm or correct those records, it will adapt its classification to try to identify them more accurately in the future. We can also manually start tracking more than 80 activities and assign one of them to the side button. For outdoor routes, however, you will depend on the phone’s GPS: it does not integrate its own. With the mobile connected, it also allows us to share our location through LiveTrack.

Outside of training, the bracelet maintains continuous monitoring of heart rate and can alert us if it detects unusually high or low values ​​depending on our settings. Also estimates oxygen saturationrecords stress, skin temperature, steps, calories and intensity minutes. Body Battery also offers an estimate of how our energy reserves evolve throughout the day. Added to this are the monitoring of the menstrual cycle and pregnancy, retrospective estimates of ovulation and the recording of habits such as alcohol or caffeine consumption.

At night, the proposal becomes especially ambitious. CIRQA breaks down sleep stages, detects naps, calculates an overall score and offers a personalized estimate of how much rest we need. It also analyzes the regularity of our schedules, alignment with the circadian rhythm, breathing and HRV status, in addition to including a smart vibration alarm. These measurements can help us identify changes with respect to our usual pattern, but they do not allow us to diagnose apnea or other sleep disorders.

When we train, its value is not only in accumulating measurements, but in trying to convert them into decisions. The predisposition to train combines factors such as sleep and recovery to tell us whether it is appropriate to speed up or slow down, while the training state helps to interpret whether we are training productively, if we have reached a peak of form or if we are accumulating an excessive load. We can also follow the evolution of VO2 maximumknow the estimated benefit of each session and see how much time the body needs before the next effort. Garmin also includes a specific mode for wheelchair users, although with adapted functions and without VO2 maximum calculation.

Garmin insists that CIRQA does not require a subscription, and it is essentially true: we can check sleep, recovery, training status or Body Battery without paying a periodic fee. That doesn’t mean everything is included. The company places some functions after Connect+ artificial intelligence, nutrition, meditation, select training plans and advanced graphics during live activities, while Natural Cycles maintains its own rate. The approach is thus separated from that of Whoopwhere membership is part of access to the product; Here the payment layer is optional and is added on an already functional basis.

The CIRQA does not arrive at empty land. For 99.99 euros, the Fitbit Air offers he basic tracking without fee and book your personalized trainer with Gemini for Google Health Premium. Polar proposes a formula closer to that of Garmin: its Loop costs 179.90 euros and does not require a subscription either. Amazfit completes the range with the Helio Straporiented towards training and recovery without mandatory recurring payments. As we see, the absence of a screen is no longer enough to differentiate ourselves: we must also look at how much we pay and what is available after the purchase.

For 199.99 euros, the CIRQA is especially suitable for those who already use other Garmin devices and want to maintain continuous monitoring without always wearing the same watch. It can also be attractive if we prefer sleep with a more discreet cloth bandswitch between a traditional watch and a wearable or reduce distractions without giving up data. On the other hand, it will be less convincing for those who need to check their pace during the race, go out without their cell phone or simply count steps at the lowest possible price. Its value is not only in what it measures, but in how it is integrated into an already built ecosystem.

Images | Garmin

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