Garmin Ltd. NYSE:GRMN, a company entering the screenless fitness-tracker market, has launched its $200 Cirqa Smart Band as competition intensifies in a category popularized by Whoop Inc., a fitness-tracker company initially focused on elite and professional athletes. Available now, the Cirqa combines activity and health monitoring in a device that can be worn on the wrist or as an armband. The tracker measures sleep, stress, heart rate variability, skin temperature, blood oxygen saturation and VO2 max, while allowing users to manually start workouts across more than 80 activities. Garmin has also included automatic exercise detection, potentially making the device more convenient for users who do not want to record every workout manually.
The Cirqa uses the collected information to calculate a Body Battery score that attempts to show how well rested a user may be. Garmin has rated the device for up to 10 days of battery life and is offering its fabric band in several colors. More importantly for consumers comparing long-term costs, the Cirqa does not require a subscription, giving Garmin a different pricing approach from Whoop, which relies on mandatory membership fees rather than hardware sales. This subscription-free model could help Garmin appeal to buyers who want health and fitness tracking without another recurring payment.
The launch comes as more companies follow Whoop into the screenless wearable market. Whoop, which released its first tracker more than a decade ago, has expanded from a niche professional-athlete audience toward mainstream consumers and is now valued at $10 billion as it moves toward a public listing in the coming years. Alphabet Inc.'s Google NASDAQ:GOOG, which operates the Fitbit wearable brand referenced in the source, recently introduced the $100 Fitbit Air, offering an optional subscription for more advanced features. For investors, the growing number of competing products suggests that device pricing, subscription requirements and health-tracking capabilities may become increasingly important factors shaping competition in the screenless wearable segment.