Garmin Cirqa vs Whoop vs Fitbit Air — And Why You Probably Don't Need One

The Garmin Cirqa — and the free watchface that replaces it

On 21 July 2026, Garmin did something it had never done in its entire history: it launched a wearable with no screen. The Cirqa Smart Band is $199.99, requires no subscription, and gives you exactly one button and one multi-colour LED to interact with. It is Garmin's direct answer to Whoop, and to Google's Fitbit Air.

It is a genuinely interesting product. It is also, for a large share of the people reading this, completely unnecessary — so let's start there.

Already own a recent Garmin? You don't need the Cirqa

The core pitch of a screenless band is behavioural, not technical. Nothing about the Cirqa's sensors requires the absence of a display. Garmin removed the screen so you would stop looking at it — no glancing at the time mid-conversation, no checking your battery percentage, no watching your heart rate climb and getting anxious about it. The band collects data all day, and you read it later in Garmin Connect, on your own terms.

Your Garmin watch already collects that same data. Elevate optical heart rate, Pulse Ox, HRV Status, Body Battery, sleep stages, Training Readiness, stress, respiration, skin temperature — all of it, and on most modern watches with a newer heart rate sensor than the one Garmin put in the Cirqa. The only thing your watch does that the Cirqa doesn't is show it to you.

So I built Circa: a free watchface that displays absolutely nothing.

Everything else keeps running underneath it. Your watch still logs sleep, still tracks HRV overnight, still builds your Body Battery curve, still records activities with real onboard GPS — you just don't see any of it until you open Garmin Connect. That is, functionally, the Cirqa experience, for zero dollars, on hardware you already own.

Where the watchface genuinely can't compete

I'd rather be honest about this than oversell my own app. A watchface can remove the screen; it cannot change the physical object on your wrist. The Cirqa is a 21-gram fabric band. A Fenix 8 is roughly four times that, with a hard bezel that presses into your wrist when you sleep on your side. If your reason for wanting a screenless tracker is comfort in bed, or being able to wear a proper mechanical watch during the day while still tracking 24/7, no watchface solves that.

The Cirqa can also be worn on your upper arm with an optional bicep band — which is meaningfully more accurate for optical heart rate during hard efforts, and something no wrist-bound watchface can replicate.

So: if your problem is attention, install Circa and save $199.99. If your problem is the watch itself — its weight, its bulk, or the fact that you'd rather wear something else — the Cirqa is a real product that solves a real problem.

What the Cirqa actually is

The module measures 27 × 47 × 9 mm and weighs 14.8 g on its own, about 21 g with the woven nylon ComfortFit band attached. It's rated 5 ATM, charges in roughly 90 minutes, and Garmin quotes up to 10 days of battery — less if you leave Pulse Ox on, which is why it ships disabled by default.

Inside is Garmin's Elevate Gen 4 optical heart rate sensor plus an accelerometer. Gen 4, not Gen 5 — which is the reason there is no ECG on this device. You do get Pulse Ox, nightly skin temperature, respiration, HRV Status, Body Battery, sleep stages with nap detection, stress, Training Readiness, VO2 Max, recovery time, and women's health tracking with Natural Cycles integration. It supports 80+ activity profiles with automatic detection, and uses connected GPS from your phone for outdoor pace and distance, including LiveTrack.

What it doesn't do: no onboard GPS, no altimeter (so no floors climbed), no ECG, no music, no Garmin Pay, and — importantly — no smart notifications. The vibration motor handles alarms, move reminders, bedtime alerts, Smart Wake and Find My Band, but it will not buzz for a text message or an incoming call. That's a deliberate choice: Garmin didn't want to build a smartwatch with the screen taken off.

Controls are one textured button. A single press starts your favourite activity (LED flashes green); pressing again stops it (LED flashes red until you save or discard it in Connect). Three presses or a six-second hold enters pairing mode; a three-second hold toggles heart rate broadcasting. You can't pause an activity from the band — that has to happen in the app.

Cirqa vs Whoop 5.0 vs Fitbit Air

These are the three serious screenless trackers on the market right now. They look similar and cost wildly different amounts of money over time.

Feature	Garmin Cirqa	Whoop 5.0 / MG	Fitbit Air
Device price	$199.99	Included with membership	$99.99
Subscription	Not required	Required — $199–$359/yr	Optional — $9.99/mo or $99/yr
3-year cost (cheapest path)	~$200	~$597	~$100
Battery life	Up to 10 days	14+ days	Up to 7 days
Weight (with band)	~21 g	~26.5 g	~12 g
Water rating	5 ATM (50 m)	10 m (IP68)	50 m
SpO2 / blood oxygen	✅ (off by default)	✅	✅
Skin temperature	✅	✅	✅
ECG	—	MG only (Life tier)	— (AFib alerts only)
Blood pressure insights	—	MG only (Life tier)	—
Built-in GPS	— (connected GPS)	— (connected GPS)	— (connected GPS)
Activity profiles	80+	Auto-detect + manual	Auto-detect + manual
Smart notifications	—	—	—
Companion app	Garmin Connect	Whoop	Google Health
AI coaching	— (Connect+ optional)	Whoop Coach (included)	Gemini Health Coach (Premium)

The real difference is the bill, not the sensor

All three measure roughly the same things with roughly comparable optical hardware. What separates them is the business model.

Whoop doesn't sell you a device at all — you buy a membership and the hardware comes with it. One is $199/year, Peak is $239/year, and Life is $359/year. One and Peak ship the Whoop 5.0; Life swaps it for the Whoop MG, which is the only one with ECG and Blood Pressure Insights. Peak adds Healthspan and Whoop Age. Stop paying and the band stops being useful. Over three years, the cheapest Whoop path costs roughly three times a Cirqa.

Fitbit Air is the cheapest way in at $99.99, and the core tracking genuinely works without paying anything more. But it's built from the ground up around the Gemini-powered Google Health Coach, and that lives behind Premium at $9.99/month or $99/year after a three-month trial. Buy it for the coach and you're at Whoop-adjacent money quickly; buy it as a dumb, comfortable 12-gram sensor and it's a bargain.

Cirqa is the only one of the three where $199.99 is genuinely the end of the conversation. Garmin Connect+ exists and adds nutrition tracking, structured workouts and a live heart rate graph, but nothing essential sits behind it. For anyone who has watched subscription fatigue eat their wearables budget, that alone is the argument.

Who should actually buy one

Buy a Cirqa if you're already in the Garmin ecosystem and want 24/7 tracking without a watch on your wrist — because you sleep badly with one, because you'd rather wear a dress watch, or because you want a second sensor on your upper arm during hard training. The data flows into the same Garmin Connect account as your watch, which is the whole point.

Skip it if you own a recent Garmin watch and simply want to look at your wrist less. That's not a hardware problem. Install Circa, get on with your day, and put the $199.99 towards something that actually adds a capability you don't already have.

And if you're weighing the Cirqa against buying an actual Garmin watch — or trying to work out which watch you'd stop looking at — put them side by side first:

Compare Garmin devices →