Whoop and Google have a new rival: this is the Garmin CIRQA, the screenless band that requires no subscription

Garmin has officially announced the CIRQA, its first screenless activity tracker, and with it, enters directly into the territory that Whoop had been occupying alone for years and which Google has just joined with the Fitbit Air. The proposition is clear: tracking all day with nothing to look at on the wrist, and without the obligation of paying a monthly fee for the device to function.

The price is 199.99 euros, a figure that places it below the cumulative cost of a one-year subscription from its direct rivals and makes the business model the product's main selling point.

The CIRQA completely foregoes the screen. There are no notifications, no watch face to check, and no touch interaction beyond the bare minimum. All information lives in the mobile application, and the band behaves like a discreet sensor that is forgotten on the wrist.

The direct technical consequence is battery life: up to 10 days per charge, a range that eliminates the battery anxiety carried by smartwatches with always-on displays. The design consequence is a slim, light, and comfortable device for sleeping, a decisive factor for a product whose flagship feature is sleep analysis.

The sensor suite covers continuous heart rate, respiration rate, oxygen saturation, skin temperature, stress levels derived from heart rate variability, detailed sleep tracking with stages and scores, hydration logging, women's health, and proprietary Garmin ecosystem metrics such as Body Battery.

The GPS is connected, not built-in: the band uses the phone's to record routes, a decision consistent with the goal of keeping power consumption low and the size compact. For serious running or cycling, Garmin continues to target its watches; the CIRQA is designed for the continuous tracking of health and general activity.

Here is the direct blow to Whoop. The CIRQA works without a subscription: you buy it, sync it with Garmin Connect, and access fundamental metrics without paying anything else. The advanced layers—more elaborate analysis, long-term reports, personalized recommendations—remain behind Garmin Connect+, the company's paid plan.

This separation between product and service is exactly the opposite of Whoop's model, where the hardware is meaningless without the active fee. For the user who only wants reliable data without a recurring commitment, the difference is substantial.

The band arrives in two sizes and four colors, with interchangeable straps that allow it to be adapted for athletic or daily use. The target audience is recognizable: those who want continuous health metrics without adding another screen to their lives, those who sleep with the device on, and those who are already within the Garmin ecosystem and are looking for a discreet complement to their main watch.

With the CIRQA, the screenless wearables segment ceases to be an experimental niche and now has three heavyweight players competing for it. The deciding variable will not be the sensor —all three measure well— but rather how much the user is willing to pay each month for their own data.