Garmin CIRQA Review: a Fitness Expert’s Take on the New Screenless Wearable

The Garmin CIRQA is the brand’s first display-free smart band, designed to continuously track your health, sleep, recovery, and activity without the distractions of an on-wrist screen. And on paper, that’s a very enticing proposition.

As an experienced fitness product reviewer, I can confidently say that Garmin makes some of the best fitness wearables. Its GPS and heart rate tracking are among the most reliable I’ve tested; the Garmin Connect app offers a comprehensive amount of health and training data for free; and its watches generally strike a great balance between monitoring your workouts and tracking your recovery.

But despite retaining all of the brand’s impressive technology, the CIRQA falls short compared to other screenless fitness bands. I wore the CIRQA 24/7 for four weeks, across workouts, walks, sleep, and everyday life — and though Garmin’s health and fitness tracking remains top-notch, the CIRQA’s surprisingly bulky sensor makes it difficult to get a comfortable fit. It’s also double the price of its primary competitor, the Fitbit Air.

Garmin’s tech does have some advantages over Fitbit’s, but those perks are less useful when you remove the ability to see real-time data on your wrist. Ultimately, I found that the Garmin CIRQA took away a lot of what makes the brand’s other devices so great without offering any meaningful benefits in return — all while asking you to pay more than other better-designed screenless wearables.

What we recommend instead: The similar Fitbit Air is a better value for people who want a comfortable, distraction-free smart band to track their health. Meanwhile, those who don’t mind having a screen on their wrist are better off with a traditional Garmin wearable. You can learn more in our Fitbit Air review and guide to the best Garmin watches.

What I like about the Garmin CIRQA

It boasts the brand’s excellent health and fitness tracking

The CIRQA’s biggest advantage is that, underneath the screenless design, it’s still a Garmin.

The band boasts long battery life with up to 10 days of use. It continuously tracks heart rate, stress, skin temperature, Pulse Ox, steps, calories burned, and Garmin’s Body Battery metric. If you wear it overnight, you’ll also get detailed sleep tracking, including sleep stages, sleep score, HRV (heart rate variability), respiration, and nap detection.

On the fitness side, it can track more than 80 activities and delivers many of Garmin’s more useful training metrics, including VO2 max, training readiness, training status, workout benefit, and recovery time.

All of this can be accessed in the Garmin Connect app on your phone, and it all comes without a monthly subscription — a major plus over some screenless band competitors like Whoop or top smart rings like the Oura.

The screenless design minimizes interruptions

If you’re someone who needs to put your head down and work, a screenless tracker is simply less distracting than a traditional fitness watch that flashes incoming texts and notifications at you all day — even with the sound off.

The same goes for workouts. I like having my steps, calorie burn, and effort recorded because that data feeds into my daily Body Battery and recovery. But most of the time, I don’t need to know exactly how fast I’m running or how hard I’m working in the moment. Unless I’m training for a race or an event, my goal is usually to check movement off my to-do list while pushing as hard as I feel capable of.

For me, a screenless tracker like the Garmin CIRQA means fewer distractions during a workout while still allowing me to see all the juicy data it captures later to inform my overall health and recovery.

Where the Garmin CIRQA falls short

It’s too bulky for a screenless tracker

I have two big issues with the Garmin CIRQA tracker, and one is comfort.

The device’s sensor/battery housing, which rests under the band, is pretty bulky — it sits a full half-inch above your wrist. Moreover, the tracker feels substantial on your wrist. It weighs 0.75 ounces, which doesn’t sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things. But for a tracker — especially one that doesn’t have a display — it’s heavy enough that I could feel it and was aware of it at all times.

Even after two weeks of continuous use, I was very aware that it was on my wrist. After four weeks of testing, I still hadn’t gotten used to it.

I also struggled to get the band tension right. The CIRQA uses a hook-and-loop velcro system, but because the sensor/battery housing is so bulky, when I adjusted it to what felt comfortably snug, I sometimes woke up with indents on my skin.

In my opinion, half the point of a screenless tracker is to forget you have it on. They’re supposed to be as discreet as possible while still capturing the health and fitness data users want, but the CIRQA simply falls short in its physical design.

The start/stop button is cool in theory, but not that useful in practice

The CIRQA has only one button, a small one on the side that you can program to start tracking your favorite or most-frequently-used activity. On the one hand, this is a smart solution to a major gripe I have with other screenless trackers like the Whoop and Fitbit Air: you have to open the app and cycle through a few buttons to track a walk or a bike ride.

I set my button to walking because this is the activity I’m the least likely to pull out my phone for before launching into it. With a click of the button, the band buzzes to show that tracking has begun.

However, more than once, I found myself detangling dog leashes, setting out, and then second-guessing whether I had already pressed the button or just intended to. There’s no light or other visual indicator to confirm that an activity is currently recording, and you can’t check on your wrist.

It’s a small detail, but it kind of negates the advantage of having a fuss-free activity start button in the first place.

Also, in the bigger picture, most people who use a Garmin aren’t looking to track one single kind of activity. It’d be much more helpful if the Garmin CIRQA had a smart-sensing system like Oura’s, so you could press the button to start recording any activity and then check the app later to confirm whether you were on a walk, run, bike ride, ski lap, etc.

The lack of a screen creates more compromises than benefits

While I like the appeal of a screen-free wearable, the CIRQA does the bare minimum — and doesn’t offer a real reason to choose it over a screenless competitor other than the fact that it’s Garmin.

Removing a screen works best when the hardware becomes dramatically more discreet in return. With its thick band, the CIRQA is still very noticeable on your wrist. And with its high profile and heft, you’re always aware it’s there.

If I’m wearing a fitness band that’s noticeable to myself and others, I’d rather have access to Garmin’s excellent real-time data with a screen.

Garmin CIRQA vs. Fitbit Air vs. Whoop

Compared with competing screenless fitness bands, the Garmin CIRQA simply falls short, with Fibit and Whoop both offering better value depending on your priorities.

The less expensive Fitbit Air makes the most sense for most people considering a screen-free tracker. It’s thinner and lighter, costs $100, and similarly focuses on passively tracking everyday movement, sleep, and health without putting another screen on your wrist. Having tested both, I also found the Fitbit Air to be more discreet, so it blended into more outfits and was substantially easier to forget I was wearing it.

If you’re an athlete looking to improve your fitness and recovery without the distractions of a watch face, the Whoop 5.0 is a better choice. It’s designed for people who train hard — runners, triathletes, CrossFitters — and who want to understand how training strain, sleep, and recovery all interact so they know when to push harder or back off. Its downside is that it requires an ongoing paid subscription.

In theory, the CIRQA sits somewhere between these two, offering more advanced training metrics than the Fitbit Air without requiring Whoop’s paid membership. But the vast majority of people who are drawn to Garmin’s training focus will be much happier with one of their top-performing fitness watches that give you real-time workout data, like the Forerunner 265 or the Vivoactive 6.

Should you buy the Garmin CIRQA?

I think Garmin makes some of the most impressive fitness watches on the market, with top-tier GPS, extensive activity tracking, long battery life, and super helpful training features like the Garmin Coach and Body Battery recovery score — all without requiring a subscription.

But I don’t know who the CIRQA is for.

For someone who primarily wants passive health and wellness tracking, the CIRQA is bulkier, thicker, and more expensive than its screen-free competitor, the Fitbit Air. And, while the CIRQA is backed by the same great software as other Garmin watches, the benefits of that technology aren’t as useful without a watch face delivering mid-workout stats to help you train harder.

Garmin makes excellent watches precisely because they let you access incredibly accurate fitness data while you’re exercising. The CIRQA cuts off half the reason Garmin devices are worth buying, and at $200, it’s hard to justify that trade-off.

Casual users drawn to the CIRQA’s screenless design will be happier with the cheaper Fitbit Air, and those interested in Garmin’s more advanced workout data are better off spending a little more and buying the more traditional Vivoactive 6 fitness watch.