Garmin Cirqa Is Here: 10 Top Facts About Garmin’s Screen-Free Tracker

Garmin Cirqa

Garmin

Garmin has announced one of its most important products in a while, the Garmin Cirqa. This is its entry to a relatively hot category of wearable: the screen-free fitness tracker.

It’s an alternative to the Fitbit Air, the Whoop band or, for those looking a little deeper, something like the Polar Loop or Amazfit Helio Strap.

The Garmin Cirqa’s key appeal is much the same as those. It won’t demand your attention during the day. You are meant to forget it’s there much of the time, but it will records loads of stats you can dig into within the Garmin Connect phone app.

It’s going to track your sleep, recovery, VO2 fitness scores, activity levels and more.

A Garmin Cirqa costs $199.99, making it among the more expensive screen-free trackers out there at present. However, it can do a few things some of its rivals cannot, and there are no mandatory ongoing costs — unlike a Whoop.

Here are 10 of the things you should know about the Garmin Cirqa.

1. It comes in four colors

There is at the same time just the one Garmin Cirqa, and four color options for it. The brains of the Cirqa tracker are always black, at launch anyway, but it comes with one of four colors of strap.

These are black, “Captain” blue, French Gray and the pinkish looking Mauve. The straps also come in S/M and L/XL sizes. They are fabric straps, and do not use a watch clasp fastener but a velcro-style design that lets you choose exactly how tight you want the strap to be.

2. Garmin Cirqa Has A Physical Button

Most screen-free trackers have no button, no real method of interaction at all. The Garmin Cirqa has a single side button.

This is used to manually start tracking a “favorite” activity, which you specify in the Garmin Connect app. Workouts will otherwise be auto-tracked, or can be started manually in the phone app. Auto-detected activities include — obviously — “running and walking” but I don’t yet have a full list of supported auto-tracked activities.

3. It’s ready for swims, but not dives

Like most of its peers, the Garmin Cirqa has 5ATM water resistance, which also matches Garmin’s more affordable watches.

You don’t need to remove this band when showering, or when at the pool. The Garmin Cirqa won’t take to diving or deeper-level snorkeling so well, though.

4. A Garmin Cirqa Is Wider Than A Fitbit Air

The Garmin Cirqa uses a 24mm wide strap, which does not entirely cover the 27mm width of the central unit.

This matches the Whoop band, and also means it is substantially wider than the relatively subtle Fitbit Air. That tracker’s band is just 18mm wide.

5. Garmin Cirqa: Its Tech Is Familiar But Not Top-End

Core Garmin wearables all use one form or another of the company’s Elevate heart rate (and co) sensor tech. The array found on the back of the Garmin Cirqa appears to match that used by watches like the Forerunner 170, and other more affordable models.

It has two LED blobs, with the red LED elements required to measure blood oxygenation, and four surrounding light sensors. In top-tier wearables like the the Garmin Fenix 8 there are an additional four LED blocks that help improve signal reliability during exercise. You can still get good results from the Cirqa’s more stripped-back sensor team, though.

6. Garmin Cirqa Battery Life: 10 Days

Despite the lack of a screen, the Garmin Cirqa is not one of Garmin’s most long-lasting wearables. It is rated for 10 days of use between charges, and uses the same 4-pin charging connector seen across almost all of Garmin’s wearables.

10-day stamina sits somewhere in the middle of the claims made by the Cirqa’s peers, which range from around a week to 14 days for the Whoop 5.0.

7. A Garmin Cirqa Is Better For Fitness Than Most

The Garmin Cirqa has two important hardware-linked fitness features not seen in all screen-free trackers. First up, it supports Connected GPS.

This is where a wearable hooks into the GPS signal from your phone in order to provide far more accurate pace and distance readings for activities like running.

And it also results in a map for your activity logs. This will work when you start an activity from the Garmin Connect app, and should hopefully also work when you set a suitable activity to be fired off manually using the side button. I’ll test this when I get my hands on a Garmin Cirqa.

It can also broadcast its heart rate signal. This is handy for some more advanced pieces of gym equipment, or platforms like Zwift.

8. A subscription is not mandatory

Like most of this year’s other Whoop rivals, one of the big selling points is you do not need to sign up for an ongoing subscription with a Garmin Cirqa. $199.99 investment in, you’re good to go.

A Connect+ subscription does unlock some extra features, though, including a workout library accessed through the phone, advanced coaching, breathing exercises and LiveTrack location/activity tracking for friends and family.

Ultimately, a lot of this stuff fits a full-on Garmin watch better than the Cirqa. It can also be used to send temperature readings to the Natural Cycles platform, which arguably suits the Cirqa better than marathon training.

9. The Garmin Cirqa Is Mostly Plastic

The Garmin Cirqa’s casing is a “fiber reinforced polymer.” This is how the company describes the plastic used in almost all of its watches, to some extent at least.

This isn’t a wearable designed to be under the spotlight, and therefore low weight is more important than design pizzazz. It weighs 14.8g, module only, which is less than a Whoop 5.0, more than a Fitbit Air (5.2g).

10. Available To Order From July 24

A lot of Garmin gear is available to buy as soon as it is announced but the Garmin Cirqa’s reveal is a few days shy of its order date of July 24. At the time of writing you can’t even pre-order, so set a reminder on your phone if you want to pick up one of the first-wave trackers.