Garmin's Whoop Killer Is Here — But Who Actually Needs the Cirqa?

Garmin's Whoop killer is here — but who actually needs it?

It's game over for Whoop. After Google launched the Fitbit Air in May, Garmin followed in July with its own screenless tracker, the Cirqa — and like the Fitbit, it arrives without a mandatory subscription.

I've been going back and forth on this one for far longer than I'd like to admit, and I still don't think there's a single clean answer to who should buy it. So here's the honest version, category by category.

Cirqa vs Whoop 5.0 vs Fitbit Air, side by side

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)

Whoop is the one that's now hard to justify

Whoop never sells you a device. You buy a membership and the hardware comes along with it: One at $199 a year, Peak at $239, Life at $359. One and Peak ship the Whoop 5.0; Life swaps in the Whoop MG, the only model with ECG and Blood Pressure Insights.

The hardware is genuinely good — 14+ days of battery, a well-designed app, the best "just wear it and forget it" experience in the category. But three years on the cheapest tier is roughly $600, and at the end of it you own nothing. Stop paying and the band on your wrist stops being a health tracker.

Against a $199.99 device with no subscription at all, that's a hard sell in 2026.

The Fitbit Air is the value pick — with an asterisk

If all you want is a screenless health tracker, the Fitbit Air is probably good enough, and it's $99.99 against $199.99 for the Cirqa. It's tiny — a 5-gram pod, about 12 grams with the band — runs 7 days per charge, is water resistant to 50 metres, and tracks 24/7 heart rate, SpO2, HRV, skin temperature, sleep stages and AFib alerts. The core tracking genuinely works without paying anything extra.

My hesitation isn't the hardware, it's what sits behind it. The Air is built around the Gemini-powered Google Health Coach, and that lives behind Premium at $9.99 a month or $99 a year once the three-month trial ends. Buy it for the coaching and you're at Whoop money soon enough.

And personally, I'm not a fan of the Google Health app. It's buggier than it should be for a company that size. I also haven't quite forgiven Google for winding down Fitbit's own smartwatch line in favour of the Pixel Watch — if you bought into that ecosystem, you've already watched it get abandoned once.

Why I'd still take the Cirqa

$199.99, once, and that's the end of the conversation. No membership, no renewal, no feature that quietly disappears when a card expires. Garmin Connect+ exists and adds nutrition tracking and structured workouts, but nothing essential is locked behind it.

You get Body Battery, HRV Status, sleep stages with nap detection, Training Readiness, VO2 Max, stress, respiration, nightly skin temperature, and 80+ activity profiles — all landing in the same Garmin Connect account as your watch, which is the real argument if you're already in the ecosystem.

The part nobody wants to hear

If you actually want to track your training properly, you need a screen anyway.

The Cirqa has no onboard GPS — outdoor pace and distance come from your phone over connected GPS, so a phone-free run isn't happening. There's no display to check a heart rate zone mid-interval, no lap splits at a glance, and no smart notifications at all: the vibration motor does alarms and reminders, but it will not buzz for a message or a call. That's deliberate. Garmin didn't build a smartwatch with the screen taken off; it built a passive sensor.

So a screenless band is a data collection device, not a training device. If your runs matter to you, the Cirqa is a companion to a watch, not a replacement for one.

If you just want to stop looking at your wrist, that's free

Here's the thing that made me hesitate longest. For a lot of people the appeal of a screenless tracker isn't the sensor at all — it's wanting to stop glancing at their wrist twenty times an hour. That's a behaviour problem, and you don't need to spend $199.99 on it.

I built Circa for exactly that: a free watchface that displays absolutely nothing. No time, no steps, no heart rate, no battery percentage. Your watch keeps recording everything underneath — you just don't see it until you open Garmin Connect. Pick from 45 shades of nothing, and it runs on over 250 Garmin devices.

Install Circa on Garmin →

So, who should buy one?

• Already own a recent Garmin and want to look at it less? Install Circa. Save the money.
• Want 24/7 data without a watch on your wrist — because you sleep badly with one, or you'd rather wear a dress watch? The Cirqa is a real answer, and it feeds the same Connect account.
• Just want basic health tracking as cheaply as possible? The Fitbit Air at $99.99, as long as Google Health doesn't bother you.
• Considering Whoop? Do the three-year maths first.

And before you decide anything, put the Cirqa next to every other Garmin and see exactly which features you'd be giving up:

Compare Garmin devices →