In 2026, tracking your fitness and health doesn’t have to mean strapping a hulk of a smartwatch on your wrist. Most major brands now offer a screenless option that allows you to track your data discreetly and accurately, with big names including the Whoop Band 5.0, Amazfit’s Helio Strap and, more recently, the Fitbit Air. We’ve been waiting for Garmin to join the party for months now, with rumours swirling that the brand had something up its sleeve. Now, it has officially revealed the CIRQA Smart Band: its first screenless fitness tracker, promising advanced fitness and wellness features – crucially, without the need for a subscription.
The CIRQA is designed to help you make healthier lifestyle choices without demanding your constant attention. The smart band offers up to 10 days of battery life (on par with Whoop) and provides around-the-clock health and fitness monitoring, with data accessible through the Garmin Connect app.
Garmin
The band will automatically detect and record a variety of activities, which can then be viewed and edited in Garmin Connect. The fabric band is intended for all-day wear (either around the wrist or as an arm band) and is available in a range of colours: Citron Gray, Mauve, French Gray, Dark Olive, Captain Blue, French Blue and Black.
When worn day and night, the CIRQA can track metrics like wrist-based heart rate, Body Battery (Garmin’s energy monitoring metric), stress, skin temperature and more.
Women will be able to track their menstrual cycle and pregnancy, and get better period predictions and past ovulation estimates by tracking skin temperature while sleeping.
Speaking of sleep, the CIRQA promises comprehensive sleep data, including a detailed breakdown of sleep stages, a sleep score, guidance on optimal sleep duration, heart rate variability, respiration and nap detection.
In addition to tracking your daily steps and calorie burn, you can also track more than 80 different activities (including running, walking and yoga) or select a favourite activity to track by tapping the single side button on the device. This won’t be a match for accuracy compared to a GPS watch, however, as it will rely on piggybacking off your smartphone.
Afterwards, you’ll be able to view performance metrics like Training Readiness, Training Status, HRV status and VO2 Max.
Garmin
Crucially, the CIRQA retails for a one-off payment of £179.99 – that undercuts the Whoop Peak (£229 for one year) and the Whoop Life (£349 for one year) by some margin, though it’s double the price of the Fitbit Air (£84.99 as a one-off payment).
Time will tell how it compares to its subscription-based rivals in practice, particularly when it comes to the usability and intuitiveness of the Garmin Connect app. Garmin hasn’t always been the strongest when it comes to making its wealth of data easy to digest, so I’m interested to see how the CIRQA presents and interprets things.
The CIRQA Smart Band is available to purchase from July 24, 2026.