I'd been waiting a long time for the Garmin Cirqa band, which plenty of people speculated about, with some expecting it to be a Whoop killer. Even back then, though, it was pretty obvious to anyone who knew Whoop, Polar Loop, or similar devices on the market that Garmin's take wouldn't really be a direct competitor. But gradually...
It's probably best to start with who this product is for, but if I told you right now, some readers would disagree. So read on and make up your own mind.
Garmin Cirqa Design and Wearing Comfort
Contrary to expectations for a
“super wearable band,” the Cirqa is fairly bulky. You don't really feel it on
your wrist, but compared to Whoop or Polar Loop, it's noticeably longer. On an
18 cm wrist, the band's length is roughly comparable to the width of your wrist
bone. What saves the fit is the excellent strap – it doesn't irritate the skin,
doesn't cause allergic reactions, feels soft, and dries quickly.
Design-wise, though, I'm a bit
disappointed. It's clear that manufacturing cost took priority with the Cirqa,
with the idea that the strap would “make up for it.” The sensor body has a
single button on the right side and a tiny LED embedded on the left. On your
left wrist the LED is easy to see, but on your right you have to twist your
wrist to check whether you're starting or stopping an activity – it's easy to
mix up, especially if you also use that same button to snooze your alarm in the
morning (that's exactly how I once ended up with an extra hour in bed instead
of turning off my alarm).
4th-Generation Optical Sensor Instead of 5th-Gen
A lot of people criticize the
Cirqa for using the 4th-generation optical sensor instead of the newer 5th
generation. It's a fair point to debate, but under the same conditions the
measurement differences between the two are barely noticeable. If you insist on
the 5th-generation sensor and mainly want sleep tracking, the Garmin Sleep
Index with the Elevate Gen 5 sensor has been on the market for a while.
Cirqa Straps and Sizing
As for straps, Garmin is one of
the few brands offering arm straps for the Cirqa too, so you can wear the
sensor on your bicep or forearm during sport.
Anyone interested will obviously
want to know how sizing works. The S-M strap does fit around an 18 cm wrist,
but the plastic hook-and-loop clasp ends up sitting in the middle of your
forearm. If you rest your arm on a desk (say, in front of a computer), the
clasp can get in the way as you move your arm – you'll hear a plastic clicking
sound. I'd recommend going with the L-XL strap instead, even for wrists as
small as 17.5 cm.
The straps are swappable, so it
probably doesn't matter which one you buy first (they're still in short supply)
– you can pick up your preferred color later.
Garmin Cirqa Features and Usability
The Cirqa is a universal tracker
– essentially a watch without a display. It measures steps, stress, training
load, heart rate, and more, all visible on the home screen of the Garmin
Connect app or in the Health section.
If you're worried the Cirqa
won't recognize your activity, a short press of the side button starts a timer
to record it manually. Press again to stop. The recorded session then shows up
in Connect, where you can simply rename it from “Timer” (a neutral placeholder
entry) to the actual activity type – strength training, for example.
The Cirqa can also broadcast
heart rate data to watches, bike computers, or any other device (not just
Garmin) that supports Bluetooth heart rate sensor pairing.
What the Cirqa Lacks Compared to Garmin Watches
•
GPS – for route tracking, the Cirqa relies on your
phone's GPS via the Garmin Connect app
•
Garmin Pay
•
LED flashlight
•
support for connecting external sensors – you can't
pair cadence or power sensors for cycling, for example
Battery Life and Charging
In practice, when paired with a
phone, the Cirqa lasts around 10 days. That's not a lot, and it'll surprise
plenty of people, but keep in mind the battery is considerably smaller than the
one in a Garmin watch. It charges via the standard connector used by most
Garmin devices.
Cirqa's Smart Alarm
One thing worth highlighting:
the Cirqa has a vibration motor and a “smart alarm“ feature – based on your
sleep stage, it wakes you at the most suitable moment. Other products (Garmin's
own and the competition's) already offer this, but it works well here. The
Cirqa wakes you “gently“ – and I put that in quotes on purpose, because the
vibration motor isn't exactly subtle. Even when it picks the right moment, it
still feels like a bucket of cold water to the face. That shock is a lot like
being woken up by a parent yelling that it's time for school. :-)
And if you skip the manual, at
least Google how the alarm actually works. A short press snoozes it for 10
minutes; a long press cancels it. But in that groggy, half-panicked moment when
the alarm is blaring, it's easy to snooze it and accidentally start an activity
recording with the same short press. Cue a messy morning in your Garmin Connect
calendar.
Garmin Cirqa vs. Whoop, Oura, Polar Loop – Is It Real Competition?
Whoop, Amazfit Helio Band, Polar
Loop, Ultrahuman Ring, Oura Ring... fill in whichever similar device you've
tried yourself or at least heard of.
All of these devices share the
same basics – optical sensors, at least a week of battery life, heart rate and
HRV tracking, skin temperature measurement, and a ton of calculations running
on the manufacturer's backend. Whoop and Oura, though, have also ridden a
beautiful wave of “wearables as fashion.” They're attractive, simple, and
genuinely well-made products that customers pay a premium for (with Whoop,
that's via subscription).
So where do these wearables
actually differ? They measure essentially the same things, using the same
principle (optics). And yet the differences are substantial.
First off – functionally, the
Garmin Cirqa sits closest to the Polar Loop. Both products come from
sport-watch manufacturers with a sports-first background. Both bands can track
sleep parameters 24/7, detect an activity, and save it. The rest of the competition
can't do that.
Through these products, both
Garmin and Polar have long since realized that not everyone is a
performance-focused athlete, and they've started investing in “longevity” and
everyday wellbeing (general human health). That's exactly where the rest of the
named competition has been focused for a while already.
...and that's where the problem
lies. Garmin has long been perceived as a maker of sports training computers.
The Cirqa isn't the company's first product “from a different shelf,” but it's
the most talked-about one right now. And then there's the Garmin Connect
platform.
Why the Garmin Connect App Falls Short of Whoop or Oura
I'll spare you the pitch about
how great it is that a Connect+ subscription lets you watch your live heart
rate graph on your phone during a workout. Why? For 9 euros a month, buy
yourself a good bottle of wine instead – you'll have a nicer evening once a
month than staring at a graph you'll see for free anyway once the activity is
saved.
Instead, I want to focus on why
I think – and unfortunately this will likely apply to the Cirqa too, unless the
app gets a serious update – that the Cirqa is NOT real competition for Whoop or
Oura.
If you look at the Whoop,
Ultrahuman, Oura, or MySasy apps, they talk to you in plain human language
right on the first screen – they tell you what you can realistically handle
that day. Garmin's interpretation of data is a lot more technocratic; you have
to piece together the sleep index, training readiness, and Body Battery
yourself to arrive at what Whoop or Oura tell you within the first second of
opening the app:
Whoop, Oura, Ultrahuman: “Great,
you're well rested, today's a day for personal bests.” Or: “Time to ease off,
cumulative fatigue is building up, give your body a rest.”
Garmin: Sleep score: 73, Body
Battery: 87, resting heart rate: 52, training readiness: 72.
Sure, those numbers are enough
for some people to know where they stand. But you have to think about it and
correlate several metrics yourself. Why doesn't Garmin just push it out as a
“message of the day” through some AI feature and tell you straight up, “take it
easier today, the last three days have been tough”? Put a plain-language
sentence next to four numbers scattered across different menu items, and the
difference is huge.
And that's exactly where Garmin
still falls short.
Who Is the Garmin Cirqa Actually For?
So, the Cirqa – why does it
exist, and where do I personally see the benefit?
I've been wearing it for a few
days, and if I didn't want it for some reason, I would have already taken it
off. There used to be a time when we wore normal watches, and Garmin, Suunto,
or Polar devices were strictly for sport – you'd change into workout clothes
and swap watches. Garmin was the first to introduce a universal sports tracker
that also measured you outside of workouts, essentially “selling” you the idea
that having data all the time is a good thing – and that you want that data.
Nowadays people feel uneasy if they haven't tracked their sleep or don't have a
“smart” watch on their wrist. There are even studies showing that some people
without sports trackers experience less stress, sleep better, and perform
better as an athlete.
Like most similar products
today, the Cirqa acts as a kind of bridge that disconnects you a little from
the stress of constantly checking metrics (since opening an app on your phone
is still a bit more effort than glancing at a watch display), while all your
metrics keep being tracked in the background... and I can say with near
certainty that more than 95% of people will never actually look back at what
their heart rate was six months, a week, or years ago. Yes, you have the data,
but it's a bit like keeping a Formula 1 car hidden in your garage just in case
you ever feel like taking it out on a track.
So the Cirqa essentially
represents a kind of disconnection and slowing down. And in my view, that's
exactly what a lot of people need in today's hectic pace of life. Lately I've
been spending more time in hospitals than I'd like, and... Garmin watches never
run out of battery there. Never. Because even if your watch were running low,
nearly every patient and doctor around is wearing a Garmin, and someone among
those hundreds or thousands of people is bound to have a charger. Seriously –
most people at Motol hospital wear a Garmin. Sure, you'll spot the occasional
Apple Watch or something else, but Vivo/Forerunner/Fenix clearly dominate. It's
almost unsettling to think about who needs all of this, why, and how. :-)
And the Cirqa is exactly that
“I've got a little tracker on my wrist doing the same job – load, steps,
activities“ – while I still get to wear my favorite classic watch. And that's a
genuinely nice thing. Most of you probably have a “classic” watch sitting in a
drawer that's a joy to look at.
Cirqa as a Companion to the Fenix, and Senior Health Monitoring
Personally, I use the Cirqa to
track the same things my Fenix watches already measure. It doesn't bother me at
all, it's light, unobtrusive – and if I happen to not have my Fenix or
Forerunner with me, the Cirqa still records the workout, and the training load
then syncs over to my Fenix.
On top of that, the Cirqa's
solid battery life and unobtrusiveness make it a pretty decent device for
monitoring seniors' health. It doesn't have Apple Watch-level features or LTE,
but seniors generally aren't thrilled about having to remember to charge a
watch every day or day and a half on top of their medication and phone. The
Cirqa is a reasonable compromise here – it's hard to break, it tracks them, and
thanks to a shared profile in the Connect app, you can check in on their health
status anytime.
For me, the Cirqa is a good pick
for winding down, disconnecting, and monitoring seniors – I charge it every
time I visit, and it gives me a bit of peace of mind.
Bottom Line: Is the Garmin Cirqa Worth Buying?
When it comes to competing with
other “longevity” devices and services, Garmin still has ground to cover, and
unfortunately this remains largely a product for existing customers – it
certainly won't pull double-digit percentages of new users away from the
competition. The Cirqa might expand Garmin's user base slightly, but not by
much. The vast majority of people buying it already own a Garmin. And anyone
tempted to switch over from a competitor might quickly switch back – the gap in
user experience and in how the app communicates with the customer is huge, and
unfortunately not in Garmin's favor. With Garmin, you basically have to know
how to “read“ the data. With Whoop, Oura, and others, you don't need to
understand anything – their app tells you exactly what you need to know, in a
way even a child could follow.
So, those are my thoughts on the
Garmin Cirqa. I can recommend it, but only if you keep everything I've written
above in mind – not everyone will be able to look past it. Don't expect
miracles from the Cirqa. It's not a top-tier design piece, unfortunately,
that's just the truth. It is, however, very simple to use, doesn't get in the
way while worn, and with the arm strap it's practically invisible. The data
quality matches what I know from my Forerunners and Fenix watches – no major
inconsistencies there.
So – Cirqa, yes or no? Yes...
but. :-)
Garmin Cirqa FAQ
Is the Garmin Cirqa a Whoop
competitor?
Not really – functionally, the
Cirqa is closer to the Polar Loop. Its main weakness against Whoop and Oura is
the Garmin Connect app, which doesn't translate data into plain-language
insights nearly as well as the competition.
How long does the Garmin
Cirqa battery last?
In practice, around 10 days when
paired with a phone.
Does the Garmin Cirqa have
GPS?
No, but it can record your route
using your paired phone's GPS through the Garmin Connect app.
Who is the Garmin Cirqa best
suited for?
Mainly existing Garmin users who
want a universal, display-free tracker, and as a device for monitoring seniors'
health.