“If you have a Garmin watch but don’t like wearing it to bed, the Cirqa might be the perfect accessory”: I’ve tested Garmin watches for years, but the Cirqa might be the most comfortable wearable it has ever made

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Garmin's screenless wearable was rumoured for what felt like forever before the brand finally announced the Cirqa in July 2026. Of course, I was otherwise engaged, as is often the case when Garmin launches a new product, so I didn't start testing the new screenless wearable until a couple of weeks ago.

As a longtime Garmin watch fan, I have been waiting for years for the company to launch a screenless wearable, but I thought it would be a smart ring, not a Whoop- and Polar-rival band. There is nothing wrong with bands, but given the popularity of models like the Oura Ring 5 , I thought Garmin would bring out a finger wearable first.

I was wrong (not the first time), but I'm not disappointed. The Cirqa has some personality and does what a screenless wearable should do: passively track your health and fitness. Better still, it gives you access to the company's polished ecosystem for a lot less than your average Forerunner or Fenix.

All that said, the Cirqa suffers from the same issue as other casual Garmin wearables: the algorithm caters more to athletes than everyday people. Still, it's hard not to like the Cirqa. If you have a Garmin watch but don't like wearing it to bed, the Cirqa might be a good accessory. It's also beneficial for people who do resistance training and often handle kettlebells.

Garmin Cirqa review

Price and availability

The Cirqa was announced in July 2026 and is available to buy now at Garmin UK , Garmin US , Garmin EU and Garmin AU for £180 / $200 / €200 / AU$299. It comes in two sizes (S-M and L-XL) and four colours, including Black, Captain Blue, French Grey and Mauve. It's one of Garmin's more affordable wearables and is on par with watches like the original Vivomove.

Design and build quality

The Garmin Cirqa is essentially a heart rate sensor with a vibration motor attached to a strap. The removable module itself measures 27 x 47 x 9mm and weighs just 14.8g with the smaller S-M strap. The L-XL strap makes the setup marginally heavier at 21.2g, but it's quite light overall.

The case is made from fibre-reinforced polymer, the same material most Garmin watch cases use. The 24mm-wide fabric strap attaches using 14mm quick-release pins. The smaller strap fits wrist circumferences between 120 and 200mm, while the larger fits 145 to 240mm. You can also pair the module with an optional upper-arm band.

The Cirqa uses Garmin's Elevate Gen 4 optical heart-rate sensor. It's not the latest Gen 5 hardware used by watches such as the new Fenix 8 Pro or the Forerunner 970 , although this particular implementation also supports skin-temperature tracking.

It has 128MB of onboard memory (for data, not music), Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity, and a 5 ATM water-resistance rating, making it suitable for swimming.

Features

The sensor can also track blood oxygen (a.k.a. Pulse Ox) and includes an accelerometer, but no built-in GPS. Like cheaper fitness trackers, the Cirqa uses connected GPS from a paired smartphone to track outdoor position.

The band can continuously monitor heart rate every second and feed data into familiar Garmin metrics, including HRV Status, Body Battery, stress, sleep, Training Readiness, and Training Status. It also supports advanced sleep tracking, nap detection and respiration monitoring.

Performance

It's hard to talk about the Cirqa band's performance, as it's essentially the same as other Garmin wearables that use the Elevate v4 heart rate sensor. It has no screen or GPS, so it mainly tracks your vitals and sends them to the Connect app, where the algorithm makes sense of it all.

I have Active Intelligence, part of Connect+ , Garmin's paid subscription service. As a result, the algorithm provided activity summaries and suggested workouts based on my activity. The Cirqa band tracks workouts (e.g. walks) automatically and takes them into account.

Now, the issue is that even though I walked loads during the testing period, my sciatica prevented me from doing any proper workouts like runs or cycles. Even though I reached over 650 intensity minutes in a week, my Training Status still said I was in 'Recovery'.

Not sure about you, but doing that much walking a week does count as workouts for me and the algorithm, but Garmin's athlete-centred training features don't seem to care, which creates a strange situation where you'll continuously feel you're not exercising enough while also doing quite a lot.

Another strange thing is that Active Intelligence requires an internet connection and won't give you any info without it. Most companion apps, including Oura, will provide plenty of insights without data usage, so I don't understand why Garmin can't do the same.

As for data accuracy, there isn't much to criticise. The Elevate v4 is more than sophisticated enough to track most of what you'd track with the Cirqa band. Sleep, stress, and blood oxygen all seemed okay to me compared to the Oura Ring 5 and the Ultrahuman Ring PRO, both of which I wore simultaneously.

Battery life and charging

Garmin rates the Cirqa for up to 10 days of battery life, which sounds good until you realise that on most wearables, the display eats up most of the battery power. Since the Cirqa doesn't have one, even with the sensor being on most of the time, the band will last for well over a week.

My testing came close to Garmin's official figure. I took the Cirqa off the charger at 100% when I started testing it, and it had dropped to 86% just over a day later. After a little over five days of continuous wear, there was still 40% remaining.

The battery finally reached 12% just over eight days after the test began. Based on that discharge rate, I would have expected the Cirqa to make it comfortably through a ninth day and potentially get very close to Garmin's quoted 10-day maximum.

Charging is fairly quick, too. Starting from 12%, the Cirqa recovered almost 80% of its battery in 57 minutes. You probably won't need to charge it particularly often, then, and even a relatively short top-up should be enough to keep it running for several more days.

The Cirqa uses the same four-pin charger the company has used for years, so if you already have a watch, you should be able to charge your band with the same cable.

Verdict

The Garmin Cirqa is a comfortable, discreet and impressively long-lasting fitness tracker that makes Garmin's excellent health ecosystem more accessible without putting another screen on your wrist. It works particularly well as a companion to a Garmin watch (and is a decent enough fitness tracker on its own), although the company's athlete-focused algorithms still feel less accommodating to casual activity, and some of its smartest insights sit behind Connect+.