DC Rainmaker

Massive News: COROS To Add Full Mapping to Pace 4 Watches

Ray Maker — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 13:11:55 +0000

As is always the case in sports tech, September can be full of surprises. But I’m pretty sure nobody had this on their bingo card. COROS has just announced that existing Pace 4 watches will get a firmware update allowing the same level of mapping as the rest of COROS’s watches. That’s a massive shift, not just for COROS, but for some of their competitors as well. Historically speaking, we haven’t seen offline mapping at this price point before from the endurance-focused companies (e.g., Garmin/COROS/Suunto/Polar/etc). We have seen it from the smartwatch-focused companies (Apple/Samsung/Google), but the maps/routing there is quite a bit different than the endurance-focused ones.

In any case, COROS has announced that as of today, the Pace 4 gets full offline mapping, just like the COROS Pace Pro or COROS Nomad, or any other COROS device with mapping. The Pace 4 previously had breadcrumb-style routing (so you could follow courses/routes), but below the breadcrumb trail it was simply blank, like this:

Now, you’ll get a full map below it, like this:

As with other COROS devices, this is a so-called “non-routable” map, meaning it’s effectively a static image that’s presented below your route. As such, you can’t create-routes or re-route on-device, that has to come from some other platform (the COROS app, Strava Routes, Komoot, etc…). But, for most scenarios, this is perfectly fine. And it includes topographic details as well.

In the case of the COROS Pace 4, the only real limiter here is the size of storage, which is 4GB (as compared to 32GB on the Pace Pro or 32GB on the COROS Nomad). This limits just how much map data you can download offline. However, because of the way COROS does map sections, you don’t have to download an entire continent like Garmin, so you can be a bit more particular in what you spend your GB’s on. Note that on my watch, 2.3GB out of 4GB was already used by ‘Other’ (which doesn’t include maps/workouts/audio/routes).

For context, here are some random map sizes I just checked (it’s somewhat imprecise, because tiles overlap other countries):

– Germany: ~1.1GB
– Spain (mainland): ~780MB
– UK & Ireland: ~580MB
– California: ~330MB
– Colorado: ~225MB
– South Africa: ~300MB
– Japan: ~550MB
– Mallorca: 14.5MB

In other words, it’s pretty easy to stay within the available space for any given trip, especially if you’re able to be particular about which map tiles you need:

In terms of map speed, I’m not seeing any meaningful difference to a COROS Nomad device I have handy. Both enumerate the map tiles at basically the same speed. However, I did find that the map didn’t update fast (or even correctly) while rotating the watch/my body, whereas the COROS Nomad was instant. Both have magnetic compasses (3D compasses), so I expect this is probably just a beta bug that needs to be sorted out.

COROS says that once enabled on your Pace 4, the mapping functionality is identical to that of the Pace Pro watch. There are, of course, still other differences there, like battery life, display size, case bits, etc…

In any event, if you want to try it out, COROS is letting anyone start downloading maps to their Pace 4 starting today in public beta. Seems like the perfect thing to do for the weekend ahead. Well, unless you have a big race, in which case, never install new software the night before a big race.

With that – thanks for reading!

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Google Pixel Watch 5 In-Depth Review: Is It Enough?

Ray Maker — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 12:08:05 +0000

From the outside, the Pixel Watch 5 doesn’t really look any different (it’s externally identical). But to the end user, the Pixel Watch 5 brings about one of the most impressive GPS accuracy shifts we’ve seen since the start of GPS sports watches. But almost none of that progress is because of the actual Pixel Watch 5 hardware itself. Instead, it’s Google doing what Google does best – leaning on its other products and platforms to pull together.

In fact, if you step back and look at the Pixel Watch 5’s new features, you’ll see that pattern repeat itself in almost every category. The new AI features lean heavily on the work the Gemini team has done. The bulk of the sports and fitness features lean heavily on the work the Google Health app (previously Fitbit) team is doing for more than just the Pixel Watch 5. Still, all of this requires glue on the watch to pull it together. Over the last three weeks, I’ve been putting this watch through its paces, trying to figure out if all of these things are worth the upgrade, and more critically – is it enough to make the Pixel Watch 5 compelling in a sea of options?

With that, let’s get right into it!

The Key Updates:

Here’s the full list of what’s new on the Pixel Watch 5, in one simple list:

– Increased processor CPU power by 12%
– Increased RAM by 60%
– Claimed 20% faster overall operations
– Added GPS post-processing accuracy gains (for walk/run/cycling-based activities)
– Added weight and rep tracking (coming this fall)
– Added workout builder (app)
– Added audio cues for structured workouts
– Added rest timers for structured workouts
– Added new Bedtime mode with face
– Added 11 new glanceable complication styles
– Added 2 new watch faces
– Added new generative watch faces (ok, this is legit cool, see below)
– Added ‘Raise to Gemini’ questions/answers in no-internet situations
– Added Gemini proactive text responses for automatic replies (requires Pixel 11 phone)
– Claimed 15% more accurate sleep tracking
– Added new smart wake alarm option
– Added new overnight sleep breathing quality metric
– Added ‘Health Guardian’ umbrella feature/concept
– Added Breathing emergency detection (will detect persistent loss of oxygen saturation)
– Added new Blood Pressure trends report (app-based, coming to Pixel Watch 3/4/5 this fall)
– Added new insulin resistance trends report (app-based, coming to all Pixel & Fitbit devices this fall)
– Same exact case sizes as before
– Also added new Steph Curry special band edition, shipping Sept 3rd

Pricing has increased for the first time since the launch of the Pixel Watch series, now $50 more than last year for the non-LTE models, and a $30 increase for the LTE models, bringing it to:

41mm: $399 for Wi-Fi and $479 for LTE
45mm: $449 for Wi-Fi and $529 for LTE
Steph Curry Special Edition (LTE only): Starts at $579

Here are the color options, shown below (Obsidian aka black, Olive, Fog aka white, and Canyon):

Finally, note that the Pixel Watch 5 requires an Android phone, though it largely does not require a Pixel phone. There are a few features that require a Pixel phone (such as the camera shutter feature and Pixel phone unlock from previous years), as well as this year the Gemini proactive text responses for automatic replies require not just a Pixel phone, but a Pixel 11 Phone.

Got all that? Good, let’s get right into using it.

The Basics:

The Pixel Watch 5 UI has received minor upgrades to it, largely via Wear OS updates. For most users, you’d struggle to notice these minor things, but I’ll mention them as we go along here. There are handy quality-of-life ones, such as the new sleep watch face, which is unique to Pixel Watch 5 for the time being.

In any case, backing up briefly, the Pixel Watch 5 has a full touchscreen, with two buttons (one of which is a Digital Crown). Pressing the upper right button brings you to the ‘Recents’ (your recent apps), while the Digital Crown scrolls as you’d expect. If you press the Digital Crown in, you’ll get a list of all your apps. Meanwhile, long-holding the single button opens up Gemini. Otherwise, you can swipe from different directions to open up different features.

In my case, I tend to swipe from the right to get to the Focus Metrics, which shows all my metrics for the day (and Cardio Load for the week):

If I tap the ‘More’ button, I get an individual list of metrics across all the core activity areas. It’s a pretty logical and clean execution, and it’s easy enough to scroll through.

I can tap any given metric glance to get more details about that particular metric, such as steps or stairs, showing a timeline of the day.

All of this information is then synced/displayed within the Google Health app. Google fully shifted over to that revamped version of the Fitbit App this past spring with the Fitbit Air launch. This app leans heavily on AI to generate a more talkative timeline of your activities. You can still customize the metrics at the top page of the home dashboard, though it can’t really extend beyond that. If you don’t have a Google Health Premium subscription, then the bottom half will largely be void of text (which is how some people like it).

You can tap into any of these metrics to get more details about them, such as steps or sleep, pulling up longer-term history. The general line in the sand for Google Health is that all of your data is free/accessible, but the AI insights are what require the subscription. For the most part, anything with wordy text is an AI snippet requiring a subscription. I’ve slowly gotten used to the whole thing, but I do wish I still had more control over the homepage to reduce the talking and increase some of the core data bits. There are also times when workouts are severely delayed in showing up (many hours in my case), though Google says they’re working on figuring out and fixing that.

Back on the watch, all of this is displayed on a 3,000 nit display, which has been plenty bright in all my adventures thus far, both on bright sunny days, as well as dark rainy days. The display has adjusted brightness accordingly. Of course, like all smartwatches, that 3,000 nit value is the peak brightness level, which it will only hit momentarily. It doesn’t stay there forever. Nonetheless, even in bright sunny conditions in the Mediterranean (Mallorca, Spain), there are no issues seeing it:

When it comes to the watch faces, there are both new watches as well as generative watch faces. The generative watch faces are getting all the attention, and rightly so. You can simply ask it to create a watch face based on anything you want. Pizza, pasta, the Eiffel Tower, etc… The world is your oyster. Oh, wait, you wanted an Oyster watch face? No problem, here ya go:

Look, I’m not generally a big fan of generative AI (for lots of reasons), but I’ll give credit that this makes a small part of me smile. It’s fun.

Since we’re on the AI train, I’ll mention that Google added the ability for Gemini to give responses in non-internet-connected scenarios. Think timers and the like, not requiring the internet to respond.

Inversely, if you have internet and a Pixel 11 phone, your watch can now produce quick-tap automatic reply proactive text responses for incoming text messages. It’ll leverage all the things in your phone (e-mail/calendar/etc…) to do this. For example, if my wife texts me to ask about our flights for Wednesday, it can respond with the details automatically by pulling them from my calendar/e-mail.

Of course, there’s still Gemini on the wrist for everything else. As I said last year, Google is far ahead of its competitors in this space, in terms of bringing AI to the wrist. It just works.

In any event, let’s move on to some of the new sleep bits. The Pixel Watch 5 has a new bedtime sleep watch face mode, which essentially does what everyone else does and dims the screen a bunch and puts the watch face into red lettering on a black background, so it doesn’t blind you at night. Here’s a clean daytime photo of it, followed by a legit fuzzy-cam night photo of it:

Note that you can have your watch automatically go into that mode, or do it manually by tapping the little bed icon.

Likewise, it’s worth mentioning the new smart alarms. These work like most smart alarms in that you set a time to wake up (e.g., 8AM), and then it’ll wake you up anytime between 7:30AM and 8:00AM depending on your sleep phases/stages, to find the least-sucky moment in terms of that sleep cycle. Once that 30-minute window prior to your wake-up time expires, you’re getting woken up, whether you like it or not.

Now Google claims 15% improved sleep accuracy, but there’s no real way to validate/test that in my scenario. Likewise, while I do look at sleep wake-up/fall-asleep times, I don’t judge sleep phase/stages (e.g., REM/Deep/etc…). The reason is that even in a best-case (gold standard clinical world), the highest level accuracy is in the low 80% range. With other devices all reporting below that. We’d never use a heart rate strap that was only 80% accurate to judge workout accuracy; thus, there’s no logical reason to do the same with sleep phase/stage data. That’s just silly.

Instead, I’ll note that the times have been consistently within about 5 minutes of my sleep times. And even more notable, there have been no issues with snooze alarms or such, which some wearables get tripped up by (thinking you woke up, when I promise you, I can snooze the crap out of something).

Once you do wake up, the first thing you’ll see on your watch is the Morning Brief. This shows your stats from last night, as well as Readiness score and local weather:

You can still, of course, dive into the sleep stats anytime you want via the normal sleep pages, to see those stats:

All of this data feeds into the Sleep & Health tabs on the Google Health app. The Sleep tab is fairly straightforward:

Meanwhile, the Health tab is where you’ll see your Vitals and other core metrics. Like most companies, Google started displaying these in a consolidated view over the last year or so, and then trending them against your baseline. This includes resting heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), SpO2 (Blood Oxygen), Breathing Rate, and Skin temperature variation. Note that skin temperature variation is per-device, so if you flip back and forth between a Fitbit Air and a Pixel Watch, this gets all dorked up.

Which then finally gets us to the Readiness score. This used to be called Daily Readiness under the Fitbit realm, but is now shortened to just Readiness. That looks at your sleep, HRV, and resting HR levels to outline how ready you are to take on the day. This score doesn’t change throughout the day though (unlike Garmin’s Training Readiness), but it does do a really good job of showing fatigue you may have from previous workouts or poor sleep:

As you can see above, you can trend this over time pretty easily to see how it shifts.

With that, let’s dive into the workout pieces.

Sports Tracking:

Next up we’ve got sports tracking. This is an area where Google has made some notable gains around strength training (both on-device and structured workouts coming from the phone), but unfortunately, those new features haven’t gone live yet. It sounds like that’s “very close”, which I suspect is Google-speak for “We found a last-minute bug that kept these from going live”, as they weren’t listed on the ‘later-gator’ features during all the media briefings (those later-gator features like weight lifting are coming later this fall).

In any case, let’s talk about what’s there today.

First up, to start a sport profile, you’ll either tap the little runner-man icon on the watch face, or tap the Digital Crown to get to the ‘Exercise’ app, which brings you here, showing your recent sports, and then below it, all the exercise types and settings:

It’ll save your three most recent sport types at the top, and then everything else you have to go fish for. There are approximately 55 sport profiles, which I’ve handily listed here for you:

Aerobics, Badminton, Baseball, Basketball, Bike, Bootcamp, Boxing, Canoeing, Circuit Training, Core Training, Cricket, Cross-Country Skiing, CrossFit, Dancing, Elliptical, Field Hockey, Football, Golf, HIIT, Hike, Indoor Climbing, Kayaking, Kickboxing, Martial Arts, Mountain Biking, Outdoor Workout, Paddleboarding, Padel, Pickleball, Pilates, Powerlifting, Rollerblading, Rowing machine, Rugby, Run, Skating, Skiing, Snowboarding, Soccer, Spinning, Sport, Stair Climber, Strength Training, Surfing, Swim – Open, Swim – Pool, Tennis, Treadmill, Walk, Weightlifting, Weights, Workout, Yoga

When you choose a given sport profile, you can tweak the settings for that sport profile. In my case, we’ll use Running. From here, we can change the two workout views (just barely), modifying the four slots in a single data page. You can also change the splits to be automatic 1KM/1MI splits or not. And there’s an automatic pause button.

Look, Google may have added in a lot of features over the last few years, including sport ones. But at this point there’s no excuse for not having a manual lap option. Likewise, the configurability of data pages is well behind all of their competitors. These areas need to be significantly improved. In this day and age, there’s just no reason why both of these aren’t here by a 5th-generation watch.

Speaking of missing features, there’s still no way to pair a heart rate chest strap to the watch. There are third-party apps that can do it, but then you’ve got all the baggage that comes with third-party apps. The same goes for the lack of any other sensor support, especially cycling sensors like power meters (or other fitness equipment). Again, in 2026 that’s become baseline stuff for every company in this category, and Google needs to spend time on those things.

In any event, once we go ahead and choose the sport we want, I can tap to start it. In the case of running, for example, it’ll happily capture my run without any issues, and I can see my stats as I go along:

Within the Google Health app, you can let the Google Health Coach create workout suggestions automatically, or you can create your own, either manually or via the text prompt (even using voice). So, for example, for today I asked it to create an 8x400m workout, as you can see below. It did so correctly, exactly what I wanted. It did guess on my ‘target’ (e.g., HR or pace), which is fine, because honestly I was just gonna run it hard, and see how it worked out. I’m doing it on crushed gravel on trails with some 90° turns, so trying to stick a specific pace will be tricky.

Now, despite telling it to save it, it didn’t actually save/show-up on my watch. You have to go back and explicitly tap the little flag in the corner, and then reconfirm you want it in your workout library; then it’ll sync. This seems like a bit of a disconnect.

Once that’s done, you’ll see it while running, showing your targets and counting down each section, and targets. You can see in this rest section it shows me 35 seconds into a 1m 30s rest period. Taking photos during 400m repeats (and having those photos actually be clear on a dreary day) was challenging. So, rest periods you get.

Once you’ve completed a workout (any workout), then you’ll get a full summary of your activity. I’d say this falls short in terms of detail compared to some of their endurance-focused competitors, but is in line with something like the Apple Watch.

Now, the last thing to cover from a workout standpoint is Cardio Load. This is Google’s training load metric, and it’s actually pretty darn good, and is one of the best ones out there in terms of holistically capturing your full day, both structured workouts and other bits that contribute to bodily load.

You see, a Garmin watch (and everyone else except Whoop), only accounts for training load when you start a workout. If a workout didn’t happen, then the load didn’t occur. But the problem is that it misses things like loading boxes for moving (house) for hours. Or it misses running for 10 minutes in a giant international airport, dragging luggage and kids to get to your plane because the WestJet ticket agents didn’t know how to do their job. I mean, not that I have specific recent examples or anything. Google/Fitbit captures all of that, because Cardio Load is simply looking at your heart rate 24×7, and assigning load throughout the day.

Cardio Load is displayed on the watch, as well as being able to see it in the app. Each workout gets assigned a Cardio Load number, and then likewise the rest of the day gets accumulated load as well. It’s a really solid system, and it is better than Whoop because it follows industry norms on training load accumulation (versus the wonky 21-load cap that Whoop has, which makes no sense physiologically, or even just logically).

You can see above how I earned Cardio Load, including both a bunch of workouts, as well as other activities. Depending on the week, this bucketization will vary. In fact, even more, depending on the device, this will vary. Meaning, if I wear a Fitbit Air, I’ll get more ‘categorized’ cardio load, because it will automatically create workouts for things I might not bother to (e.g., moving boxes). Whereas the Pixel Watch 5 won’t create those workouts automatically, and instead will just assign the Cardio Load to the other bucket. Not a big deal, but kinda a notable difference.

Obviously, you can see above the Cardio Load goal that it’s automatically and dynamically assigned to me. It changes each way; I just let it do what it feels like doing.

Now lastly, remember that the new strength workout pieces aren’t yet available publicly, so they aren’t in this review. Hopefully that happens soon, as it’s pretty cool.

GPS Accuracy:

Now arguably the biggest new feature of the Pixel Watch 5 is the revamped GPS accuracy bits. This is almost entirely done in post-processing, where they refactor your GPS track based on a ton of data to produce astonishingly accurate results. By far the most accurate GPS tracks we’re seeing in sports tech today.

I have an entire video and post on that here, where I go into massive geekery in New York City over hours of running, as well as a ride, purposefully seeking out the most difficult GPS situations I can find. Now, I just want to recap the basics of what Google is doing from that post, and then show you a bunch of new non-NYC data in deep forests.

To begin, Google says they’re focused on trying to solve for really three specific GPS issues. To consumers, these ‘issues’ manifest themselves as an assortment of wonky GPS track errors, but to GPS engineers, these are basically three specific issues. They are:

– Poor tracks in tall building scenarios: Commonly known as urban canyons, such as New York City, or really any building, tall buildings will not only block GPS signals, but more critically, as far as bad tracks go, they will literally reflect GPS signals (off glass and metal), which tricks GPS watches into thinking they are somewhere they aren’t. In GPS-lingo, these are called multi-path errors, because the path from the satellite to your watch can take multiple paths to the watch, only one of which is ‘real’/true (or even none of which are).

– Terrain blockages: This is a semi-similar bucket to the first one, except for natural terrain blockages, like cliffs, or mountains, or tree cover. These things are less likely to reflect the GPS signal, but can still present challenges due to limited GPS satellite views (remember, a GPS watch will normally be connecting to upwards of dozens of satellites at once).

– Atmospheric issues: This is probably the bucket you think of least, but still a very impactful part of the signal. This is mainly focused on weather, including heavy cloud cover, rain, thunderstorms, fog, etc… Basically, anything in the sky that’s dorking up GPS reception.

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how they are making the tracks better. And now it’s important to note that they are doing this in post-processing. Meaning, it’s not fixing your exact position in real-time as you go down the street, but afterward. And critically, it is very much not just road/trail-snapping (as some of their competitors do). In fact, I’ll literally demonstrate that over and over again, purposefully trying to trick it (and where the competitors will route snap). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Google is using three specific fixes to post-process the tracks. They are as follows:

1. 3D Building Models: Here, they are using Google’s massive database of the entire world, mapped in 3D (think Google Earth), which in turn knows the exact building heights of just about everything on this planet. From buildings to mountains to bridges, it knows it all. By knowing there’s a building there, and the specific height, it can determine whether or not you (running on the street or wherever) can actually see the satellite your watch thinks it can see. Or, if instead, that GPS signal is being reflected off of a different building, causing a multi-path error/inaccuracy. By knowing which satellites can and cannot be seen by the watch, it can reprioritize which signals to trust, and then reprocess that file with satellites the watch can actually see. All of this also applies to non-building terrain too.

2. DGNSS Weather Correction: The next step is to use real-time reference stations to understand current weather and atmospheric conditions for your exact location. From there, Google will apply these corrections to your file, attempting to mitigate that rain or otherwise problematic weather.

3. Signal fusion: Finally, Google was already doing various on-device signal fusion like most companies (e.g., looking at accelerometer/gyro/etc to see if you were actually going the direction GPS says you are), but now, they reprocess that all again in the cloud, with the 3D building/terrain models and DGNSS weather correction.

Note that they are doing this for pedestrian-based walking/running/hiking, as well as cycling-based activities. They do not impact/help other sport modes at this time, such as openwater swimming.

So, let’s get into some actual tracks here, before and after differences. Note that in my previous accuracy deep-dive post, I showed before/after tracks using two Pixel Watches (including a special development one). You should check out that post to see the differences. In this post though, I’m just focusing on the final production device and how it compares to Apple/Garmin/COROS/Suunto.

Now, as a reminder, here’s just a look at the differences in New York City, which are pretty substantial compared to some of the leading GPS watches on the market:

Here we can see the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro on the wrong side of the street, while the Pixel and Apple Watch are on the correct side of the street, with the Pixel Watch having me correctly on the actual sidewalk, versus the Apple Watch playing a tiny bit in traffic.

Next, as I enter this park, the Pixel Watch is a couple of meters off the crosswalk that I used. I mention this mostly to be fair, not because it’s a huge deal (since I was only a few meters off above with the Apple Watch).

In any case, more notably though, I did three loops around this small pergola of sorts, which was perhaps 3-4m wide. All three units actually tracked that surprisingly well.

Moments like this show slight differences that, again, might not be super obvious. Apple has me in the buildings and the street. Whereas Google shows a more clear crossing of the street. Garmin’s track isn’t bad, but again, it isn’t exactly where I went.

Here on this turn, you can see the real advantage of Google’s multi-path algorithms reducing the errors, whereas Garmin is on the wrong side. While Apple is on the correct side, this is almost certainly automatic snapping to the sidewalk going on here (which Apple will do, more on that later).

Still, the Pixel Watch 5 is not perfect. Below (the vertical street), a perfect example of that. You can see Apple correctly keeps me on the sidewalk on this section, whereas Google put me into the side of the buildings across the street. Of course, one only needs to look at the street before (the horizontal one here) to see that Google nailed that.

Of course, my aim is to try and break things. And that’s exactly what I did below. In this case, I stopped for a cold drink, and then decided to walk through/under this bridge (not running), go about 25 meters beyond the bridge, then cross the street, and then turn back up the street. Google absolutely nailed this. Garmin got the general gist of things (vaguely), and Apple simply decided I wasn’t stupid enough to actually do that and ignored me entirely.

And as I approach the outer edges of Times Square, you can see bigger buildings equal bigger problems for Apple. For Garmin, they mostly aren’t in the buildings, but in the middle of the road. Whereas Google is exactly on the correct sidewalk side.

As I enter Times Square, with the massively tall buildings on both sides, the units actually don’t do that badly. Of course, I’m here to cause problems. So I do a tight loop around this building in the center. Google is the closest to correct, though still with some light building shaving. Garmin gives the 4-year-old-toddler version. And Apple just makes a mark across the building. To the right of the building, the Apple/Google squiggle is correct, as I stopped to take some photos there. Garmin has me on the wrong side of the street.

And one more moment on this run where I aimed to break things was this circle I ran in the middle of the street (it’s now a closed street). You can see Google perfectly hits that circle (I show it in my video, from the GoPro perspective). Garmin isn’t bad, albeit a bit tight. And Apple again decides there’s no way I actually drew a circle in the middle of the street, and thus puts me on the sidewalk.

But again, Google is not perfect. And just a block later, it throws me into the buildings, while only Apple correctly sails down the street on the right sidewalk.

Anyway, for the rest of the run, this pattern basically continues, though Apple did struggle a bit more in the buildings at times. You can view the whole track here, if you’d like.

With that, let’s dive into a forest trail run as a good starting point. This one is an out and back (handy for seeing how close each track aligns), with a very tight trail that is often surrounded by steep cliffs. This is a snippet of the longer run, but I wanted to focus on this more interesting section, versus some of the gravel roads that led to it.

For context, this is what we’re looking at, trail-coverage-wise:

As I work my way through the forest, all of the watches are pretty darn similar. I would say that it feels like the Pixel Watch 5 track isn’t quite as close together as the others, given this is a simple single-track scenario. But that might also be the brighter green coloring making it more prominent or something.

On this next section of the run, the cliffs really start to dork with all the units. You can see the Pixel Watch squiggling around, as well as the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro being a bit offset too. The COROS Nomad and Apple Watch Ultra 3 seem to sneak through the best here.

On this other section of trail, equally against the cliffs and trees, all the units did fairly well.

Next, we’ve got a road/gravel ride, eventually off into the forests. This didn’t have a ton of super-tall trees, but did have some steep switchback sections here and there, which were worth exploring. At a high level, including all the main roads, this looks perfectly fine:

That said, if I zoomed into sections of roadway, the Pixel Watch 5 wasn’t super impressive here. It wasn’t horribly wrong or anything, but it was getting clearly outperformed by Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro and Apple:

Next, just before it turned into gravel, there’s a very steep near-20% grade switchback section, and it’s funny, because you can see me wobbling back and forth across the road (I was curious if it’d show up, and since it’s a desolate road, yes, I can confirm it did show up):

Note above that the straight lines are when I came back down again.

If we zoom in on some of the tree sections on gravel roads, this also looks fine, but not stand-out either. Just shrug-usual:

Same goes for another section that’s fairly steep as it descends down to the water. Note there isn’t really any cool Google Earth 3D imagery in this area unfortunately, which perhaps is the issue here – I’m not sure.

Finally, one more run this time in a simple park doing a slate of loops as intervals (each loop was 450m around a trail section). It’s a good test to see how tight the tracks are. First, to establish the high-level area, things are good:

Then, we’ll zoom in on the loop itself. It’s about 450m per loop, with a few 80-90° turns in there. As you can see, things are pretty good, with only the Suunto showing a little bit more variability.

Now, here’s where it gets really fun. In this case, if we take away the Suunto, we can literally see which side of my body I wore each one on. The Google Pixel Watch 5 on my left wrist, and the Garmin/Apple Watches on my right wrist (making clockwise turns). Those tracks stay consistent to each side on almost every loop. That said, there’s no meaningful difference here between Google’s corrected track and Garmin’s track. There are a couple of minor differences to the Apple track.

Now, while I won’t dig into all the details here, this same pattern has applied in Europe as well. Here’s a run from last night (Sept 1st) showing that while the Pixel Watch 5 produced perfectly fine tracks, I wouldn’t say it was the leader on this route if I wanted to nitpick every single sidewalk. In that case, the Fenix 8 Pro in forced multiband was the leader (beating both Apple Watch Ultra 3 & Fenix 9 Pro in default non-maximum accuracy mode).

Finally, one last thing I’ve seen a lot of questions/comments on, is whether or not this changes the end-state distance of the file, as well as whether or not it impacts pace. The answer to both is no. However, one thing to understand is that for modern running smartwatches, pace is rarely just GPS satellite pace. That changed nearly a decade ago. Instead, pace (especially running pace) is a blend of data from GPS, accelerometers, gyros, and other internal sensors. These sensors essentially override big spikes that might occur from poor GPS reception, showing you going through a building, because it knows your wrist movements don’t match that. Thus, pacing-wise, things were actually already stable, and remain that way.

The distance, however, is an area that I think they could correct a little bit more. That said, like pace, distance from running watches is almost always driven heavily by the sensor data as well (which is why you can run through a long tunnel and distance doesn’t go all wonky both inside and when you exit).

Heart Rate Accuracy:

Next, let’s look at some heart rate data. There are no changes this year to the heart rate sensor in the Pixel Watch 5; it’s the same as last year. Nonetheless, I’ll quickly look at some data for fun.

First up, I’ve got a relatively steady-state run as a quickie. As you can see here, nothing really of note:

Then I’ve got this trail run I did. Again, occasional stop and go getting around tricky spots, but really solid performance here by all the units, but especially the Pixel Watch 5:

Next, we’ve got this trail run I did that had some steep sections/etc, though they don’t really correspond with where the few quirks in heart rate occurred. Sometimes, you’ll see cases where if you have to boulder/crawl around something, it may cause issues, but in this case the first HR blip was actually on a simple gravel road leaving the camping area. And the ones later don’t really make sense either. Overall though, it’s not a bad HR plot; it just has a few short issues.

And then finally, on the running side, here’s an interval run I did earlier today. This was 8x400m repeats. As you can see, it’s pretty darn strong, with only a few bobbles on the 1st and 7th interval. I don’t really know why there; nothing special happened on either.

I’ve got other running activities, but they’re all the same in terms of accuracy as the other non-interval ones: Perfectly fine.

Instead, flipping over to an indoor trainer ride, we’ve got this one here. Again, no issues at all, but indoor trainer rides are among the easiest things to track, even for hard interval efforts:

And then, rather surprisingly, this nearly-3hr-long combined road & gravel ride was really strong on optical HR, near-perfect from the Pixel Watch 5 (I’m not quite sure why the Apple Watch Ultra 3 lost HR for a short while). Very very strong performance:

Ultimately, from a heart rate standpoint, the Pixel Watch 5 continues to show very strong performance in my testing, even in the cooler conditions in which most of my activities have occurred over the last 10 days.

What’s Next for Pixel Watch?

In many ways, I think this is actually the most important question to be asked. Last year, when the Pixel Watch 4 came out, I noted that while Google’s team was doing a great job on software pieces (and internal hardware components), it didn’t seem to be making the watch ‘catch on’ in terms of sales. At the time though, they were going from a 3rd edition to a just-announced 4th edition. But now, as we get into the 5th edition, the question has to be asked with more seriousness.

The simple reality is that the Pixel Watch continues to struggle in terms of generating attention. One only needs to look at any reviewer’s YouTube views you want to see that reality hitting here again with the Pixel Watch 5. And then further compare that to the Fitbit Air (by the same team) that launched just three months earlier. That has exponentially more interest, and I don’t think it’s anything to do with the price. Said differently (and in a more Dutch-like blunt way): A similarly priced COROS watch should not out-view a watch from one of the biggest software/tech companies in the world. Yet consistently, it does. That’s not anything against COROS, as they’re making fantastic devices, but just a simple statement of obviousness.

Instead, I think Google needs to have a long think about their limiters. So, let’s briefly talk about them:

1) The Android limiter: At the end of the day, the market for a $400 watch skews very heavily towards iOS. It always has. Companies like Samsung have made it work because they largely subsidize or give away the watch as part of phone bundles. Google knows this too. But ask any other company in the sports tech industry, and they know that the Venn diagram between $400 smartwatch owners and iPhone owners is far higher than Android phone owners. Yes, Android has more global market share, but the majority of the population driving that figure in MEA isn’t buying $400 smartwatches. Watch companies consistently note that iOS market share for their smartwatches is roughly 60-70%. That matches my figures here on the site, which show iOS users outnumber Android users 2:1. As Google just showed with the Fitbit Air, they can deliver the Google Health experience on iOS just fine (sure, there are fewer Android-specific features, but I’d argue far fewer users care about the latest AI integration features than Google thinks they do).

2) The design/style of Pixel Watch: I’ve talked about this for a while, and I’ll acknowledge upfront that not every style is liked by every person. To each their own. But five generations in, the numbers don’t lie: People simply aren’t excited about the Pixel Watch design. This isn’t a debatable concept; it’s a factual reality. I appreciate Google sticking to something (anything), but there comes a point in time where the company needs to rethink the overall design of the watch. And all of that sets aside the strong industry trend for 3-4 years now to have larger and more ‘in-charge’ watch sizes (e.g., Ultra/etc styles), of which Google has none.

3) There are still notable gaps for the serious athlete: In many ways, the Pixel Watch remains frustratingly quirky when it comes to feature gaps. They spent an enormous amount of effort on creating an industry-leading GPS solution. They built by far the best sports/fitness/health AI platform on the market; nothing comes close. Yet it stumbles at basic things: You can’t pair to a heart rate sensor, or a cycling power meter, or have any meaningful amount of sport data field customization. You can’t take manual laps. These are all things that every basic sports watch in 2026 does, or even nearly a decade ago did at this price point. And that’s to say nothing of navigation/routing. I struggle to understand the (much appreciated) focus on GPS accuracy, but equally not bother with the basics.

4) There’s a lack of trust on when a Pixel Watch will get updates: Right now, the waters remain super fuzzy each release whether or not new features go back to older watches. If we look at Apple, we know that in virtually every case they go back at least 2-3 generations of watches. Same goes for COROS. For Suunto, it’s kinda hit or miss. For Garmin, we just know they won’t [Update: after they just announced the Fenix 8 owners will get Fenix 9 features…ok, sometimes they might]. But for Google, it’s not only not clear, but it’s also inconsistent. Given Google’s relative newness in the space, consumers struggle with whether or not their watch gets anything new and meaningful less than a year later.

Ultimately, my point here is that while Google’s Pixel team continues to make good progress year over year (including some very interesting new features), I feel like the disconnect between Pixel Watch as a product that people are compelled to go out and purchase continues to grow. Perhaps there are other reasons for it, but it feels like the above ones are the most likely culprits.

Wrap-Up:

In many ways, the Pixel Watch team has found themselves a relatively stable and mostly predictable update cycle pattern. One very similar to both Apple and Samsung. Each August-ish, we see a new hardware model with slightly tweaked hardware specs, and a medium amount of new software features. Those features vary each year on the spectrum from general interest features, to sports features. This year, Google mostly focused on two camps: GPS-accuracy and AI bits. However, there’s a third camp of features that won’t really show up until later this fall around health reporting (which are available to everyone). And the strength training bits fall into that realm as well.

As has been the case now for the last few years, for the features that Google does focus on, they tend to be very well executed. Say what you want about the usefulness of the GPS track correction bits, but it’s incredibly impressive in really hard places (like New York City). There’s nothing like that on the market today. They took an issue that people have complained about (vocally) for nearly decades, and basically made that issue disappear. It’s super compelling if you live in such a place. Beyond that, they did a good job of filling in some of the minor daily quirks, such as lack of bedtime mode and smart alarms. And when it comes to Google Health’s AI integration pieces, it continues to be industry-leading (exponentially more detailed and better than even their closest competitors) – albeit for those without Google Health Premium, the app can and will feel a bit flat/sparse.

If you’re coming from an older Pixel Watch, especially a Pixel Watch 1 or 2, and perhaps a Pixel Watch 3, depending on whether GPS accuracy impacts you (since that lacked multi-band), the Pixel Watch 5 would be considered a strong upgrade in terms of lots of little things. The good news is that aside from predictive responses pieces, nothing major here requires a Pixel Phone 11. I used mine almost entirely with the cheapest Samsung phone I could buy at Best Buy, and there’s no meaningful difference to the Pixel Watch 5 experience for me. It worked great, along with the Google Health app working great.

As I outlined in the previous section, I’m keen to see the direction Google takes next year, and I’m hoping they look at some of their Fitbit Air success in recent months, and how they might be able to change the overall direction of Pixel Watch going forward to match that success.

With that – thanks for reading!

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Existing Garmin Watches Will Get Fenix 9 Features: Here’s the Full Details!

Ray Maker — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 01:17:13 +0000

The changes to the Fenix 9 series are most easily grouped into two buckets: Hardware changes and Software changes. While this has always been true in the past, the biggest change here is that, unlike past generational leaps where Garmin ditched the existing models for software updates, the Fenix 9 doesn’t make that ditch. Instead, all existing Fenix 8 series devices will get virtually all the software updates (minus a few that are hardware-dependent). Even further, those changes will also go to the majority of same-platform non-Fenix watches too, such as the Forerunner 970, Venu X1, Forerunner 570, and many more within the newer common GarminOS (semi-official name) platform.

Now, I’ll have plenty more Fenix 9 details over the next while…once I untangle the giant box of Fenix 9 units that’s been stuck in customs jail for a while. Win some, lose some….

The Software Changes:

When it comes to new software features, as noted above, virtually all of these are coming to the Fenix 8 series, Enduro 3, Tactix 8, as well as Forerunner 970/570, Fenix E, and Venu X1 series. A portion of them also to the Venu 4, Vivoactive 6, and other features further to other ‘new platform’ devices. As a quick reminder, last summer (2025) leading up to the Fenix 8 Pro launch, Garmin consolidated their software platform behind the scenes. While each brand has slight user interface (visual) differences/stylings, the codebase is now consolidated. That’s resulted in virtually all watches on the platform getting virtually all new features (save some saved for higher-end devices).

Historically though, each time Garmin ‘jumped’ a model version, it would ditch the old one. For example, Fenix 6 devices didn’t get Fenix 7 or Fenix 7 Pro features. Fenix 7/7Pro devices didn’t get new Fenix 8 or Fenix 8 Pro features. Within the same numbering, they would, but outside of that, tough luck.

This shift represents a *MASSIVE* change for Garmin. While the dust is still settling, it can’t be overstated enough as to how big a change this is. It means if you have a Fenix 8 watch, you’ll get almost all these features. Same for a Forerunner 970 watch. For something like the Forerunner 570, it’ll get those that are ‘applicable’ to the watch. For example, the Forerunner 570 didn’t do Stamina, so it wouldn’t get the expanded Stamina features. Same goes for mapping things, since it didn’t do mapping.

The only caveat on the Fenix 8, is that it won’t get the items listed in the Mapping sections below. The reason is apparently tied to an entirely new mapping engine under the covers, which is specific to the Fenix 9 series. The Fenix 9 Pro has a newer processor (than the Fenix 9 base), which accounts for further mapping speed increases. Likewise, the re-named satellite battery modes aren’t going to other devices, but honestly I see that as a good thing (more on why later on). And finally, the new archery feature (ArcheryX), won’t go back to other watches.

Finally, there are further features which are lit-up for even earlier watches (via Garmin Connect), such as the Garmin Epic feature, the Endurance Score expansions, Messenger FindMyPeoples update, etc…

Not a single feature here requires Garmin Connect+, which is notable. In any case, diving into all these software-specific changes (both on-device, and via Garmin Connect app):

– Added new Garmin Epic feature, which groups multi-day events/adventures (both on-device, and Garmin Connect)
– New Stamina zone concept (see below, both on-device and on Garmin Connect)
– Added New Stamina Endurance time concept
– Added New Stamina trending feature (on Garmin Connect)
– Added New Running & Cycling Stamina graphs/curves
– Added New Rucking/Pack-Weight calorie breakout for activities (in multiple sport profiles)
– Revamped algorithms around pack-weight, to more accurately cover calorie impacts
– Added New Rucking target calculator on-watch: Can tell you how far you need to go for a certain goal & pack weight
– Added ability to change pack-weight mid-activity
– Added Dedicated Rucking Reports (summarizing pack weight, calories, elevation, pace)
– Added Rucking Multisport mode option
– Added New on-device Rucking structured workouts with GoRuck
– Added New Ski Erg Profile (officially called ‘XC Ski Indoor’)
– Huge update/change for Indoor Rowing
– Added new heart rate zones for rowing, and max heart rate
– Added new power zones and power curves for running
– Added new indoor rowing FTP values/estimation
– Added new indoor rowing VO2Max values
– Added lactate threshold for rowing, and performance condition
– Added indoor rowing activity profile countdown timer (5-second timer, to let you get ready)
– Added support for indoor rowing to update Training Status (e.g., Productive, Unproductive, etc…)
– Added new Garmin Locate feature within Garmin Messenger app
– Added ability to see athlete heart rate, pace, distance, elevation information in Garmin Messenger App
– Added inReach weather updates feature (get weather updates via satellite)
– Added Rolling GAP as a data field (both kilometer and mile)
– Added Rolling GAP as a structured workout target option
– Added new on-device watch face editor (AMOLED-only models)
– Added new ‘Field Tools’ feature, including ABC, measure height, reference point, and more

I outline all of these features in the video up above, one-by-one, on how they all work, and more details on each one. I’ll expand out this post shortly with more photos/etc…stay tuned!

Note that for features like Epic, you can go right now into Garmin Connect Mobile and build that out for past adventures with any watch. I did that today, for my Tour du Mont Blanc adventure in 2022, based on older Garmin Fenix 7, Enduro 2, and Forerunner 955 watches. Only the on-device summary pieces need newer hardware.

Fenix 9 Series Features Only:

Now there are a few features that aren’t coming to the earlier units, for slightly different reasons each. Here’s the quick version, and then I’ll explain why:

– Added new Dynamic Battery modes, which basically simplify the naming of the satellite modes
– Removed forced multi-band satellite option (all versions now have a variant of SatIQ)
– Mapping: New Perspective view (sorta a tilted map view)
– Mapping: Smoother/faster zoom
– Mapping: More responsive heading updates (orientation)
– Added new ArcheryX feature

For the mapping-related ones, Garmin says those depend on an entirely new mapping engine on the Fenix 9. That new mapping engine leverages hardware differences on the Fenix 9, including 50% more memory, more storage, plus on the Fenix 9 Pro variant, there’s an entirely new processor. Garmin did note that the differences between the map panning/etc speeds from Fenix 9 base to Fenix 9 Pro aren’t actually that different (the claim is 30-40% faster panning and calculation speeds over the Fenix 8, compared to the Fenix 9 Pro). Meaning the bulk of these speeds are coming from the rewrite, and likely more memory.

As for the new Dynamic battery modes, these are mostly just a renaming of existing modes, and removing the forced multi-band option. Garmin says they’re standardizing all battery claims on all new products going forward on this set of four modes, seen below:

I get the reason they don’t want to push these battery mode names back to older units, as that would then force them to re-do all the battery claims for every model. Which, I think we can all agree would be a giant pain in the ass. It wouldn’t change the underwritten claims, but rather, just rename the modes slightly. So, fair enough.

As for the ArcheryX feature, well…upsell gonna upsell! That said, I’m OK to let the Robinhood folks take one for the team, with us being the team. Sorry folks, I do still think you’re cool!

Going Forward:

It’s hard to overstate how big a shift this is for Garmin. This is the first time in…well…probably the last 15+ years, where Garmin has brought features back to a different wearable product generation. There were times in the Edge cycling units when features were rolled back to previous generations in certain scenarios, but even then, it wasn’t really seen as a single cohesive product grouping.

Whereas now, Garmin looks at the firmware for these models as a single group: The Fenix 8/8 Pro/9/9Pro/etc variants alongside that of the other ‘modern’ models from the Forerunner and Venu lineups. Obviously, this won’t help Fenix 6 or Fenix 7 users. Nor will it help variants like the Instinct 3 series that are dancing to their own tune. But a *ton* of derivative Garmin models (think Tactix, Approach, etc…) are all based on the newer core GarminOS common operating system.

Point being, myself and many others have given Garmin a pretty hard time on this over the years. Heck, I just shot a Pixel Watch 5 In-Depth Review last night where I gave Garmin a hard time for this. This changes that. But hopefully, it also sticks. Only time will tell.

Speaking of time, there isn’t yet a super-clear public schedule for when the firmware updates to existing devices will roll out. I’m awaiting word whether it’s the very-near-term quarterly maintenance release (which would be any day/week now), or the following one later this fall. I’ll update once I have word. [Update: Got confirmation from Garmin it won’t make this fall’s quarterly release (which is the last one of the year), which means it’d be pushed to early next year likely).]

With that – thanks for reading, and stay tuned for plenty more in-depth testing and thoughts on the Fenix 9 very shortly. Well, UPS willing…

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Garmin Cirqa In-Depth Review: Reality vs Expectations

Ray Maker — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:52:00 +0000

It’s been precisely one month since the Garmin Cirqa was announced, during which time it’s been on my wrist just about 24×7. Over that time period, I’ve come to all sorts of realizations about where Cirqa fits in (or in some cases, doesn’t).

One of the challenges of being one of the industry heavyweights is that people associate certain expectations with your products. Equally challenging, when you’re late to a product category, they associate expectations of what your competitors already did, with how your just-announced products might work. In Garmin’s case, this becomes a bit of a mixed bag of things to counteract.

In this review I’m going to dive into all of those expectations, with the reality of actually testing the crap out of this device over endless workouts, and day-to-day life. And more critically than that, testing it side-by-side with Whoop 5.0, Fitbit Air, Polar Loop, and the Amazfit Helio. Even testing two Cirqas concurrently (one on wrist, one on bicep). And all of that is backed by 7 years using Whoop, 17+ years using Garmin, Fitbit, and Polar wearables, and multiple years using Amazfit wearables. Meaning, I have the biggest bag possible of expectations and historical reality to figure out if Garmin stuck the landing here.

With that, let’s get right into it!

The Key Specs & Bits:

The Garmin Cirqa essentially has all the same health/wellness tracking features as any other recent Garmin watch (except ECG), so if you’re familiar with those features, then the answer is essentially ‘yes ’ to all of them. The key difference here to other watches is obviously the lack of a display/screen.

Price: $199USD/€199/£179/CAN$279
Battery Life: 10 days claimed
Weight: 20g
Sizing: Each color is offered in two sizes: Small/Medium, and Large/XL
Colors: 4 colorways, seen below, Black, Grey, Red/Pink, Navy Blue
Biceps Band Option: Yes (two sizes), $59 (or, $209 total with Cirqa pod if bought on Garmin’s site, instead of regular band)
Button: Yes, for manually starting activities, snooze, HR broadcasting, and more.
Daily Steps & Activity Tracking: Yes
Calorie Tracking: Yes
Sleep Tracking: Yes, including sleep phases/stages
Nap Detection: Yes
Smart Wake Alarm: Yes
HRV Tracking: Yes
Skin Temperature Tracking: Yes (nightly)
SpO2 Tracking: Yes
Respiration Rate: Yes
Stress Tracking: Yes
Women’s Cycle Tracking: Yes
Journaling/Logging: Yes
Health Status: Yes
Nacho Cheese Dispenser: No, due to size, this can only do parmesan sprinkles
Heart Rate Broadcasting: Yes (ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart)
Automatic Workout Tracking: Yes
Automatic Sport Detection: Yes
Automatic Rep Counting: Yes (an update coming shortly will bring manual rep editing to non-GC+ users)
Manual Workouts: Yes, via button/app, 80+ workout types
Structured Workouts: Only with Garmin Connect+
GPS: Not in unit, with app as Connected GPS
Altimeter/Barometer: Not in unit, thus, no stair counting
Intensity Minutes: Yes
VO2Max Estimates: Yes
Live GPS Tracking During A Workout: Yes with app, sharable to friends/family
Combines data with other Garmin devices via App: Yes, Unified Training Status/Physio TrueUp
Training Readiness: Yes
Acute Load (Training Load): Yes, including Load Ratio & Load Focus
Recovery Time: Yes
Training Effect: Yes, including Primary Benefit, Workout Benefit

And lastly, here’s a look at all the color options you’ve got (including bands):

Got all that? There’s a bunch of other more minor features under/tied to some of the above, things like Sleep Coach & Sleep Alignment features, or the app-based Jetlag Advisor. But the above is the core of it all. So instead, let’s take a closer look at what’s inside the box.

In the Box:

The Garmin Cirqa box is not a complicated affair. Like most Garmin boxes, it’s key minimal. Above you can see the Cirqa box, alongside an accessory strap. Below, I’ll also show the armband box too, as simplistic as that’ll be.

Here is the contents of the box:

As you can see, you’ve got:

A) Cirqa pod+band
B) Standard Garmin charging cable (USB-C on one end, Garmin charging port on the other)
C) Some paper stuff

That’s it; it’s as simple as that. Here’s a close look at a ‘clean’ pod/band, though; it doesn’t really look any different weeks later:

Unboxing mission accomplished, that’s all there is to it.

The Hardware:

First up, let’s look at the hardware itself. The band measures 27mm across, thus a touch bit wider than the Whoop 5.0 band, and comes in four colors as noted earlier.

Here’s my wife’s pinkish colored band. I will say this seems a bit more like a ‘dirty pink’ than a clean-slate pink. She’s perfectly fine with it, though; I was kinda surprised by how it looked in real life. Some people prefer that though, so as always, to each their own.

The band covers up the pod that sits below the strap, which contains the sensor, of course, as well as the button on the side.

You can adjust the tightness of the strap by undoing the Velcro and then simply loosening it. Complicated this is not.

The button allows you to start a workout manually, though again, it’ll do that automatically as well. This just ensures it captures the start of the workout, which is useful for activities that may be hard to detect initially (such as yoga or even a walk). It can also be used to snooze an alarm.

The pod portion is detachable, allowing you to swap it to different bands. You do this with the little pins on the inside.

I’ll say that in terms of the hardware, these pins are by far the suckiest part of the hardware. Yes, they are theoretically standard watch pins, but in practice, the way they rotate within the fabric makes getting your fingernails into the right spot to pop them out cumbersome at best. Swapping between the wristband and armband isn’t anywhere near as clean as Whoop. I’d even bet money that on a future Garmin Cirqa 2.0, this will be the first thing that goes, in favor of Garmin’s more premium QuickFit system (which is *FAR* better for quick swaps). Perhaps they did this to save space/weight, but it’s just not awesome.

The pod uses Garmin’s Elevate Gen4 optical heart rate sensor, which is their older module (Gen5 is the latest, found on their higher-end Fenix & Forerunner watches). The key difference between Gen4 and Gen5 is the inclusion of medically certified ECG on most Gen5 watches. Gen5 also has better accuracy in certain edge cases (e.g., running downhill on a cool day). But I’ve got an entire section (actually, an entire post) on accuracy.

While much ink will be spilled about Gen4 vs Gen5 here, I don’t really think it’s that big of an issue from a pure accuracy standpoint. At this price point, Gen5 would have only given ECG (medical-grade Afib detection), which, while useful to some, Garmin seems to believe isn’t really that applicable to most. I somewhat agree there. The key thing that’s in Cirqa that has historically been tied to Gen5 is skin temperature. Garmin has included an extra hardware layer atop the Gen4 sensor in Cirqa, adding in skin temperature. Note that the underlying optical HR sensor is identical, according to Garmin. Lastly, while Gen5 might have greater accuracy (though Garmin says it wouldn’t have fit), I don’t think the accuracy is the biggest issue here.

Instead, I think the biggest downside to Gen4 will simply enumerate as battery burn times, rather than accuracy. We don’t actually have any context on whether Gen5 is more battery-efficient on this platform, but no matter how you slice it, Garmin’s sensor here is far less battery-efficient than what Whoop has, or arguably even Fitbit’s. More on that later.

In terms of charging, Garmin uses the same proprietary Garmin charging port as other watches. The other end of that cable is USB-C:

Here’s how it compares side-by-side with the Whoop 5.0/MG and Fitbit Air:

Then how it looks on my wrist (17cm, 6.5″):

And then here’s how the S-M band looks on my wife’s wrist (remember, the pod size and width are identical, just strap/band length changes):

Ultimately, when it comes to the size aspects, I think on her wrist, it does look a bit larger than most of the competitor devices, primarily due to the longer length of the pod (meaning, across the wrist). It doesn’t bother her at all, and she’s been totally fine wearing it, but certainly the pod length is visually noticeable on the internets as being larger.

For me, wearing it is perfectly fine, though; it’s obviously just not as sleek visually as Fitbit or Whoop. But in terms of practical ‘do I care/notice while wearing?’ Nope. Just like I don’t really care that much that the Fitbit Air is slimmer/sleeker than the Whoop 5.0/MG. All three are quite light overall.

Now, with the hardware covered, let’s move to the most important part here, the software app. As with all screenless trackers, the app is really what matters.

General Daily Usage & Metrics

In this section I’m going to cover daily usage and general health/activity metrics. Then, the next section will be sleep, and after that we’ve got workout bits.

To start with the obvious, given there’s no screen on it, everything you see will come via the app (Garmin Connect Mobile), or be seen on the Garmin Connect web/desktop site. Behind the scenes, just like other Garmin watches, it’s tracking steps, calories, heart rate, stress, and a slate of metrics while you sleep. In fact, if I were to simply hand you a phone with Garmin Connect on it, it’d be impossible to tell this was a Cirqa device from a full-blown Garmin Fenix watch (in terms of daily metrics). They’re virtually identical, save for one exception: Cirqa does not measure stairs (flights of stairs). That’s because it lacks a barometric altimeter like most watches.

In any case, below is the main Garmin Connect Mobile dashboard. You’ll see the new ‘Essentials’ strip along the top, which you can lightly customize (it has 4 slots, but only 6 potential data fields, which is a pretty big disappointment). Below that you’ve got Today’s Activities, which is basically your workouts from today. If you don’t have any, this section disappears. After that is ‘In Focus’, where you can swipe left/right through tiles that you’ve specified.

Following that, you’ve got ‘At a Glance’, which are more customizable tiles with all sorts of key metrics. And finally, you’ve got sections for yesterday and the last 7 days:

You can edit this dashboard to add/remove pieces. For example, I’ve removed the Sleep Coach, Events, Garmin Coach Plans, and Challenges. And you can edit what happens in each of the different sections. While there are certainly opinions on the Garmin Connect app, no other wearable offers this much customization to the dashboard. Whoop and Fitbit only have very minor customization.

Of course, this is just the main dashboard; you can tap into any of these given metrics to get more details. For example, if you want to tap into the steps dashboard, you can see today’s steps, and then chart various timeframes.

Same goes for heart rate data, or calories, Body Battery, or many other health metrics:

(Note that Blood Pressure in this list comes from the Garmin Index Blood Pressure monitor, not from Cirqa)

Speaking of Body Battery, that’s the first of a few different Garmin features that tracks how your body is holding up on a daily basis. Essentially, it’s an energy level that changes throughout the day. You’ll fill up that battery at night while you sleep. Usually, you won’t get to 100%, but some portion of that, depending on your sleep. From there, activities throughout the day drain the battery. Likewise, relaxing on the couch might slightly increase the battery. Same goes for a nap. Within that, you can toggle to see stress overlaid:

I find that this is generally pretty good, though I find when I get close to the bottom, things get a bit funky. I can often go far longer than Garmin thinks I can, when it comes to operating on reduced sleep, and/or longer activities that flatline/drain the Body Battery.

Next, I want to briefly mention Health Status. This is accessed from a number of different ways in the dashboard, but it essentially trends your vital stats and shows whether you’re in your normal ranges. Critically, these are *your* normal ranges, not some other random population portion. You’ll see that you’re ‘In Range’ on the Essentials dashboard, and then you can see the details. Equally, if you pop-out of one of them, you’ll see a notice about that. Notably, the PulseOx one does require you enable that, which I’ll dive into in the next section (I’ve included a screenshot below, if you don’t have it enabled).

Now, it’s worth noting that there’s a whole slate of settings you can tweak on Cirqa. In many ways, it’s almost the same set of core settings you’d find on a Garmin watch, displayed in much the same way. Here’s a big ole gallery of them.

In any case, let’s shift into the sleep metrics, because there are a ton of those that feed into things like Body Battery and Health Status.

Note that in terms of battery life (which I usually include in the ‘basics’ section), I’ve got a separate section a bit later down on that. So check that portion out for how things trend day to day.

As far as using it with a Garmin watch (going back and forth), I might do a whole separate post on that. But the reality is that it’s simple: The data will seamlessly merge together, even aspects like Body Battery, steps, and Training Load data. For Edge devices, it’s an even better dance partner, as the Edge will take priority with manual workouts (over automatic workouts) to ensure you have the most accurate data.

About the only thing to be aware of is that for older watches (where ‘older’ is defined in Garminland as basically Forerunner 955/Fenix 7 Pro and earlier), it won’t dynamically update your Body Battery/Stress stats on your watch, but they will merge properly on the app. That’s really the only catch.

Sleep Metrics and Alarms:

In terms of receiving sleep metrics, there’s really nothing you’ll need to do, other than fall asleep. However, there is one choice that you can make related to sleep, which is whether or not to enable SpO2 blood oxygenation monitoring (called PulseOx in Garmin lingo). Within that, you’ve got three options:

A) Not enabled (default)
B) Enabled for sleep (my preference, burns very little battery)
C) Enabled for 24×7 usage (mostly useless, burns a ton of battery)

The middle option is what I do, because it then lights up the PulseOx data seen within the Health Status page. This is accessed within the ‘Health & Wellness’ settings section (of the Garmin Cirqa device in Garmin Connect Mobile).

The other piece that’s tied to this and worth a mention is your ‘Sleep Hours’. In practice, this has no bearing/meaning on whether or not Garmin tracks your sleep. You can sleep whenever the heck you want, and it’ll track it. However, what this does do is enable PulseOx during that time period (even if not asleep). Garmin says this should only happen when actually sleeping, but a month’s worth of data and seeing the telltale red light from my wrist as I cross that threshold but am still awake, indicates this is not the case.

Here’s a blurry shot of that in the dark, as I walked up some stairs:

With all that sorted, it’s time to fall asleep. The Cirqa will simply track all that as you’d expect. I cover the accuracy of this in my sprawling Cirqa Accuracy In-Depth post, as well as briefly later on in the accuracy section. Short version: It tracks the time I woke up and went to sleep basically the same as every other device on the market. The same went for my wife, who also wore it for many weeks.

Once you wake up, a few things will happen. First, you’ll see your sleep metrics within Garmin Connect Mobile. But equally, you’ll get a push notification from Garmin Connect that says “Your Sleep Score is ready to View”, which simply takes you to your sleep summary pages. Below are these pages, which outline all your sleep stats:

You’ll see your sleep score, sleep quality rating, duration, as well as sleep phases/stages. You’ll also see metrics like resting heart rate, HRV, SpO2 (PulseOx, if enabled), and skin temperature. As with other metrics, you can trend this over various timeframes if you’d like.

There’s also the Sleep Coach feature, which you’ll see on that same tab (as well as on your homepage if enabled). This will basically perpetually tell me that I need more sleep than I had, and this won’t meaningfully shift outside a tiny range for your age bracket. Hence why I don’t enable it on my homepage. Instead, what’s actually more interesting is the Sleep Alignment bits you’ll see below it:

Likewise, I do find the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) tracking super useful for spotting abnormalities that usually turn into sickness. HRV measures the time between heartbeats, and specifically, the change in that spacing (over time). Garmin requires 19 nights of sleep to develop your baseline, which then stretches out 90 trailing days. You’ll still get your HRV numbers during that first 19 nights, but you just won’t get the color-coded scoring (e.g., balanced/etc…).

In my case, I usually float between 55 and 75ms, and when training or fatigue is catching up, I’ll see my numbers dip (e.g., down into the 40’s). Inversely, a nice week of relaxing vacation might see me slide up into the 70’s or so. Keep in mind that many factors will impact your HRV, including alcohol (quite heavily), as well as any other drugs (both good drugs and bad drugs). Same goes for a red-eye flight, running a marathon, etc… So, you’ll still likely need to piece together yourself why your HRV value has plummeted. And again, remember your ranges will differ from mine. My wife’s ranges float in the 60-90ms for her normal baseline, and a good friend of mine floats in the 30-50ms range for his baseline. Further, a small slice of the population has things ‘inverted’, whereby going up is bad, and going down is good. Got all that? Good.

When it comes to alarms, you can create both static alarms and smart alarms. Smart alarms will trigger anytime up to 30 minutes prior to your designated wake-up time, based on the best sleep cycle/stage to minimize that pain. There’s no audio from Cirqa, so it’s purely vibration alarms, but they were pretty strong to me. You can use the button to snooze the alarm, or long-press it to end the alarm.

I do wish though, that Garmin would pull in its ‘Morning Report’ concept on their watches to the app for Cirqa. Basically, instead of the boring sleep stat page it sends me to with the morning push notification to my phone, consolidate things like upcoming workouts, training readiness, etc… Perhaps that’ll come at some point; it seems like a natural evolution.

Finally, the unit will track naps automatically. Though like other Garmin watches, I’ve found that it struggles to do so when simply falling asleep (upright) in a chair (be it a couch, car, or plane). But does so really well if lying down in a bed. This hasn’t changed over the past few years, and is no different here on Cirqa.

Workout Usage:

Being a Garmin device, Cirqa obviously has a stake in covering your workouts, and to its credit, it actually overachieved here a bit – especially compared to its competitors in terms of training metrics. But unfortunately, it also falls (substantially) short when it comes to automatic detection of workouts, a key part of a screenless wearable. So, let’s get right into things.

When it comes to tracking a workout, you have three core methods:

1) Start the workout manually using the button (your phone doesn’t have to be with you)
2) Start the workout manually using the Garmin Connect app (phone required)
3) Let it automatically detect the workout for you, showing up later (your phone doesn’t have to be with you)

I’ve used all three variants more times than I can count. When it comes to the most surefire way to track a workout, it’s using the app. So, let’s start there. The reason I say ‘most surefire way’ is because you get to choose the exact workout type up front, and control when the workout starts/ends.

To begin, I should briefly back up and note that there are some 80+ different sport profiles/types you can choose from. From there, you can save 10 sports for quick access, though you can always choose anything. For each activity type you save, you can very lightly customize a few settings, including the alerts (only time), laps (only distance), and whether you want the phone to save GPS tracks. Plus, the band position.

(The activity type listed as ‘On-device’ is the one that triggers when you press the button)

To start an activity, you can simply hit the little + in the upper right corner of the Garmin Connect app, then choose ‘Record Activity’, then the sport type. From there, you’ll see this screen, which shows your activity details, including Live HR and battery life.

If you have a Garmin Connect+ account, you also have an extra heart rate graph page. But even setting that aside, Garmin’s live activity details are woefully behind every one of their competitors (especially Whoop, Amazfit, and Polar, less so Fitbit Air). All of those companies offer a huge slate of details, even customizable ones, as well as map details and more. Garmin should dominate this arena given their history, and instead it feels half-baked at best.

Note that during your workout, you’ll be unable to access any other Garmin Connect pieces within the app. That’s in line with all of their competitors, though. Also note that if you’ve enabled GPS (such as for an outdoor ride/run/etc…), it’ll leverage your phone’s GPS for this.

Once an activity is saved/complete, you’ll get full details of the activity, just as with any other watch. Here’s an example of that from a recent trail run. This one is actually an automatically detected Trail Run, with the only difference being that automatic laps trigger properly in a manually started one.

Next, the second way to start a workout is via the button. The button is tied to a specific sport type that you configure. So you press it once, and it immediately starts manually recording whatever sport type you’ve set it to. If you’re a cyclist, for example, you’d probably choose cycling (and have it automatically start GPS too). Likewise, if you do lots of strength or yoga workouts, you’d set that as your preferred one. Once you press the button again, it stops the workout. It’s super simple.

You’ll get a push notification to your phone (or two, if you have LiveTrack enabled), and see a note in the Garmin Connect app that a workout is being recorded, just in case you’re unsure. If you have automatic LiveTrack sharing enabled, this notification will take you to the LiveTrack page, whereas the second notification will just take you to the activity details:

Otherwise, everything is identical to the previous app-based starting, except that you don’t need to touch your phone.

Which, ultimately, takes us to the most challenging workout piece: Automatic detection. This is by far the most difficult thing for companies to get right in the screenless space, with really only Whoop nailing it (and Fitbit very close behind, albeit with less sport types detected). The idea here is that you simply go out and do your workout, and it automatically detects it – even enabling GPS if the sport type it detects has it configured (such as outdoor running). That automatic GPS piece is very unique to Garmin Cirqa; none of their competitors have it.

But here’s a huge catch: If it doesn’t detect that workout (or a portion of it), you’re left with *NO HEART RATE* data for that portion of the workout. As a result, none of your training load and recovery stats are right; they’re all missing the data. Yes, you can adjust the timeframes on the Garmin Cirqa afterward, but this *WILL NOT* magically get your missing heart rate data back. This is unlike Whoop (and Google, and Amazfit), which allows you to seamlessly and endlessly adjust the times, and the full-fidelity heart rate data is there.

Got it? Meaning, it’s really darn important that Garmin detects a workout up front, especially the end-point (I find it rarely misses the starting point). Whether or not the heart rate is a few bpm off later on isn’t a much lesser deal than missing entirely.

Ok, so let’s say you go out for a run or ride, what happens during the run/ride itself? Nothing – at least nothing visible to you. There’s no notification in the Garmin Connect app that it’s detected a workout and is recording it (though, tech-savvy people can look in their iOS control panels for location services, and will see a purple icon next to Garmin Connect, indicating live GPS data). The only way you’d know is if you’ve got time alerts enabled, which do actually trigger during automatic workouts (they aren’t supposed to, but a bug means they currently do). So you’ll get a notice that you’ve gone a certain duration (e.g., 1 hour).

Instead, everything happens after the fact. Some minutes after it thinks your workout is done, your phone will push a notification saying a workout has been detected, and asks you to confirm it. If you miss that notification, you’ll simply see it on your homepage to check:

Once you tap into that, you can see whether or not the detection start/end was correct, as well as activity type. You can change these things, including shifting the timeframe sooner/later.

However, as was the case on my ride today, it missed massive chunks of it. Or more specifically, it broke it up into three separate activities: Unknown, Hike, Gravel Ride (the third part showed up an hour later, not in the below screenshot). Mind you, the longest time period I stopped was a mere 3-4 minutes; otherwise, it was basically stops no longer than a short traffic light. Whoop autodetected the entire ride perfectly, to the minute.

You can see below how I tried to extend the longer (first) activity (after changing it to cycling), but the heart rate doesn’t show up, nor the other GPS track portions.

The problem here is that if I were to extend the first activity to cover the length of all three (nearly 3 hours), it doesn’t pick up heart rate beyond the originally auto-detected time period. It won’t even ‘pull in’ the data it has from the other split-up activities. Just for clarity here, when it comes to Whoop and Fitbit, they don’t care, you can extend/reduce the timeframes all day long, even creating activities that weren’t detected at all, because the heart rate data was recorded in high fidelity for the entire day. Versus Garmin only shifts to that higher fidelity mode when it thinks a workout is occurring.

Here you can see two of the three chunks, which I can’t combine together (neither HR, GPS, or any other stats). You can also see the Whoop 5.0 correctly got the entire thing in one shot:

This is a really big gap, and puts Garmin massively behind Whoop for the athlete who doesn’t want to mess with an app to start/stop activities, or the button. And all of this ignores the fact that Garmin routinely mis-categorizes sport types, whereas Whoop rarely does. Fitbit rarely does for me, though; my activities mostly fall within their very small list they know (e.g., running and cycling)

I know Garmin has some tough choices to make here between battery tradeoff and automatic activity recognition. Roughly speaking, it burns about 1-2%/hour in workout mode (usually closer to 1%/hour). So if they did that 24×7, that’d basically be a mere 4 days of battery life. The Gen4 optical HR sensor is likely to blame for that, as it was designed in an era for watches, not tiny screenless wearables.

One last area to mention is heart rate broadcasting. Cirqa can broadcast your heart rate to other apps/devices on both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart. It can support three current Bluetooth Smart connections (plus the phone), and unlimited ANT+ connections. This means you can easily broadcast it to a Peloton Bike, Strava app, another bike computer, a gym treadmill (if it supports Bluetooth or ANT+), or basically just about anything.

To enable broadcasting, you’ll simply long-hold down the button for about 4 seconds, and then you’ll feel a buzz. Concurrently, you’ll get a notification on the Garmin Connect app on your phone (if nearby) that broadcasting is enabled. Further, the little LED on the side of the unit will blink orange. I’ve paired it to TrainerRoad, Zwift, and a few other random apps. And here’s another example paired to a gym treadmill:

There didn’t seem to be much of an impact on battery in the grand scheme of things, perhaps shifting it from 1.5% to 2%/hour at most (in workouts), but other times I got just 1%/hour with broadcasting.

In any case, moving on to Garmin’s stronger areas, it’s Training Status & Training Readiness. These could be part of the sports section, but in this case, for cleanliness, I’ll split them out.

Training Status & Training Readiness:

These two pieces are arguably Garmin’s biggest advantage over every one of their rivals. They started as top-end features on Garmin Forerunner & Fenix watches, and have slowly trickled down to Garmin’s budget running watches this past spring.

The first we’ll talk about is Training Readiness, which looks at a few key metrics each day to figure out how ‘ready to train’ you are at any given minute in the day. This score shifts throughout the day, based on recovery time, if you just finished a workout, and so on. Meaning, you might wake up with a Training Readiness score of 60, and it might slowly climb to 71 by early afternoon (because your recovery time from the previous workout has improved). However, once you complete that hard interval workout, it might drop down to 12, because now your literal “readiness to train” again is very low. A few different examples, below:

Training Readiness is based on the following factors:

– Sleep (last night)
– Recovery time (from last workout)
– HRV Status
– Acute Load (training load)
– Recent Sleep scores (over the past 7 days)
– Recent Stress (over the past 7 days)

The score is most heavily weighted based on recovery time and sleep, meaning if you go out and do a marathon, it’s going to show a low training readiness score, regardless of your acute load, HRV status, etc… That is, unless your effort was low-enough intensity that it didn’t make a dent because you do marathons every day or such. Again, it’s all based on what the norm is for you.

Garmin has had Training Readiness for a few years now, and generally speaking, I find it a very good indicator of how ready I am to train. Which doesn’t mean I always listen to it, but I’ll use it as one tool in my shed. If I wake up and it’s showing a score of ‘8’, and I feel rough, it’s probably time to do something easier. Whereas if I wake up and feel good and the score is 20 or 30, I’ll likely rally. Again, remember Garmin skews conservative when it comes to trying to keep you uninjured. This is a big piece of that.

One of the metrics that make up Training Readiness is Acute Load, which is perhaps the best overall metric for looking at your Training Load. This metric shows your historical load range over the past 30 days as the green range, and then the last 7 days trending line atop that. It’s super helpful for figuring out how things compare to your baseline:

(You can see the last 7 days has been quieter, out camping with the family, and since as of this screenshot I haven’t done my planned long-run today yet, which would/will likely add about 200 units of load)

With that, you can see your Load Ratio (above middle), which shows whether you’re trending up or down. Generally speaking, you want to keep your upward increase in training load at upwards of 1.2ish (meaning, you’re doing 20% more in the last 7 days than the average 7-day period over the last 30 days).

Which then carries into Training Status. Training Status is more like a true coach that just focuses on whether the ‘type’ of training you’re doing is going to make you faster. Meaning, is it a balanced diet of easy workouts, hard workouts, etc… It mostly ignores factors like sleep/stress (except it does account for HRV). Whereas Training Readiness is looking at all those factors together.

Training Status is going to give you scores like Productive, Unproductive, Maintaining, Peaking, and Recovery. In my case, generally speaking, for the last few years, I float between Productive or Maintaining most of the time, with occasional Peaking or Recovery if I’ve cut a lot of training load quickly (such as going on vacation, or before a race).

Of course, one really important thing to understand about Training Status is that it’s heavily reliant on a varied diet of workout intensity types. So, if we were looking at running, that’d mean interval runs, tempo runs, easy runs, long runs, etc… This is true of other sport types as well… If you’re only running a steady-state moderate intensity 30-minute run every other day, it’s going to struggle to be super accurate.

And again, like any real-world coach, there will be differences in training philosophies. Garmin’s Training Status will always err on the side of caution when it comes to ramping up training, to reduce injury. A more experienced athlete with a bigger training history, can usually scale-up faster than Garmin is happy with. But again, Garmin’s philosophy here matches many real-world coaches. But not every coach will match your training preferences.

Now finally, there’s one key exception to remember here: Garmin’s Training Status only accounts for workouts recorded (manually or automatically). If you have workouts less than 15 minutes, even things like moving boxes, etc… that doesn’t trip it, it won’t count. Whereas both Fitbit & Whoop do add up all of these short activities. It’s a gap worth noting when you compare how Cardio Load (Fitbit/Google) and Strain (Whoop) capture the day. I suspect that, in the long term, Garmin will shift towards that model because, frankly, it just makes sense.

Nonetheless, assuming you don’t have a bunch of random unaccounted-for load on the regular, then Garmin’s Training Status & Training Readiness are leagues ahead of every one of their competitors.

The Biceps (Arm) Band:

This won’t be a very long section, but I do want to at least briefly cover it, since it can be useful for increasing accuracy during workouts, as well as simply hiding the band for 24×7 usage. I’m a long-time wearer of the Whoop bicep band (years), and the Garmin one is arguably the best bicep band out of any that I’ve tried. The reason is simple: The fabric is much better.

Below is what’s in the bicep-band box. It’s just the bicep band itself and a piece of paper. The band comes in two sizes; in my case, with my cyclist arms, I’m easily able to make the S-M size work (with about 1.5”/4cm of extra length at the thickest part of my biceps). Perhaps if you have big beefy guns you’ll need the L-XL size.

To swap the bicep band, you’ll simply undo the two pins on either side of the pod. While I find Garmin’s pins more fiddly than Whoop’s overlapping clasp system, it’s not a huge deal either way. That said, if you were swapping it just for workouts, the Whoop system is *far* better in terms of speed of swap.

But what Garmin lacks in speed, they make up for in comfort. The Garmin band is much more stretchy, and much more comfortable texturing than Whoop. Also note that this is a very different fabric than Garmin’s wristband, which doesn’t have as much give.

One of the other benefits to the Garmin flexibility/stretch, is that it seems to prevent any sort of sensor flippage. With Whoop’s bicep band, the fabric has slightly less give, and can be prone to flipping over occasionally. Not a ton, but enough that it can be a legit problem and is well documented. Whereas due to Garmin’s flexible nature, it doesn’t seem to allow the flip, but just a bit of give instead.

Now in the Garmin Connect app, there’s a setting for where you’re wearing the Cirqa pod (wrist or biceps). This setting essentially optimizes algorithms for that location. It also disables rep-counting in strength workouts, as Garmin found (logically) it wasn’t quite as accurate for certain arm movements where the bicep doesn’t move much. Also notably, you can actually change this per sport type, which is kinda nifty (so if you always do weightlifting with the bicep band, it’ll defer to that versus your normal wear position).

(Left – the general wear position, and right, the per-sport profile position)

Now it should be noted that you can wear the Garmin Cirqa on your biceps 24×7 using said bicep band. In fact, I’ve got two Cirqa units, one on my bicep and one on my wrist (same arm) to compare side-by-side. Here are the key takeaways from that:

A) Sleep Metrics Accuracy: I find it a bit less accurate on the biceps, usually having my sleep times be about 10-20 mins offset. This matches exactly what I see from Whoop, Amazefit, and especially Polar. Wrists simply have more movement during late night/early morning in-bed phone scrolling or book reading, that the bicep location doesn’t often pick up, and mistakes for sleep.
B) Workout accuracy: By far, the Cirqa band on the biceps is more accurate as I’ll show below in the accuracy section. Especially in more challenging conditions like colder temps, outdoor cycling, or wrist deflection movements. Again, this matches what I see in Whoop and others.
C) Daily step tracking: In this case, I’m not seeing much of a difference here in most day-to-day scenarios.

Got all that?

In general, my recommendation here would be to wear it on your wrist, except for workout types that demand the biceps for more accuracy (such as wrist-focused strength workouts, or outdoor cycling especially in cooler temps). In those cases, it might be worthwhile to switch to the biceps band for the improvement in HR accuracy.

Accuracy of Data:

I’ve actually written an entire dedicated post (and video above) just about the accuracy of the Garmin Cirqa, covering the following areas:

1) Accuracy of heart rate during workouts
2) Accuracy of workout/activity recognition
3) Accuracy/differences of sleep data
4) Accuracy/differences of step data
5) Differences in Calories

Within the post, I compared it to the following other sensors concurrently:

1) Garmin Cirqa (wrist, and 2nd on bicep same arm)
2) Whoop 5.0/MG
3) Fitbit Air
4) Polar Loop (bicep)
5) Amazfit Helio (bicep)
6) Chest Strap (switching between Polar H9 & Garmin HRM-600)

Now, normally I don’t like splitting things apart into different posts and making you run around to view them all. I like all things in one place. But in this case, if I paste that massive post here, it’ll basically double the length of this already long post.

That said, if you want the super quick summary version, here we go…

When it comes to accuracy, on the whole, things are pretty good and entirely in line with both other Garmin devices using the Gen4 sensor, as well as all of their competitors in this category. The exception here seems to be my running high-intensity intervals in cooler weather, which for whatever reason just isn’t catching for me on the wrist. Beyond that though, and more simply put: Nobody is really some top faraway leader or such. For Garmin/Fitbit/Whoop, they’re all roughly in the same bucket accuracy-wise. Each with their own quirks, as you might expect.

In the case of Garmin, while they have clearly made gains in the automatic workout detection since launch, there are still some areas for improvement. And more critically, Garmin absolutely needs to figure out how to increase the heart rate fidelity, so that you can tweak those exercise times (before/after) to not be missing data (especially after). This simply isn’t an issue on Whoop or Fitbit. Beyond that, I had a few running interval workouts where accuracy just didn’t align with expectations (especially in cooler-temp scenarios). I don’t think that’s a Gen4 thing per se, since I’ve done gazillions of other workouts on other Garmin watches with Gen4 in identical conditions without any issue.

That said, for most other categories, Garmin is right in the mix and perfectly accurate. Plus, having the ability to enable GPS behind the scenes for workouts can increase accuracy in areas like distance, which its competitors simply can’t do (especially for cycling, but also running/walking). That’s something I didn’t really touch on above, but is notable. GPS distance will virtually always beat wrist-based distance estimates in most environments.

In terms of bicep band or not, the answer is super simple (and identical to my years of testing with Whoop, as well as my year+ experience with Amazfit and Polar on the wrist and bicep band). For workouts, the bicep band will generally produce heart-rate strap-level accuracy. In fact, it often exceeds it, since it’s not susceptible to various chest-strap quirks (such as dryness in cooler temps, heavy sweat artifacts in hotter temps). Conversely, for bedtimes, the wrist is better, as the bicep band tends to miscalculate sleep start/end points if on a phone/book. Again, all these companies are identical in this regard. Lastly, for daily usage outside of workout/sleep, it simply doesn’t matter; it’s a wash.

Battery Life:

So what about battery life? Well, it falls far short of their official claims/specs (which state 10 days). In reality, my battery life burn rates have been all over the map. I’m taking screenshots every few hours, day after day. I have so many battery screenshots it’s silly.

Some days, I’ve hit upwards of 30% battery burn (for a 24hr period). Other days, the lowest has been about 15%. Most days, float around 20%/day, or a smidge higher. There’s no obvious single culprit here. Workouts tend to be about 1-1.5%/hour for me (rarely, but occasionally up to 2%/hour). Sleep also tends to be all over the place, sometimes just 1-2%/night, and others like last night at 5% for the night (6-8hrs of sleep is the norm). It’s the variability here that’s made things so hard to pin down.

While there have been the rare day that I only burned 10% battery (on-track for the claimed 10-days battery), those days have numbered low single-digits during this entire 30-day period.

Thus realistically, on average, this has put me at about 5-7 days with the most recent firmware (in a best-case scenario, with sleep PulseOx enabled to light up Health Status). Compare that to Whoop’s 14 days, which I very regularly and consistently get – even when doing multi-day treks with 14-17/hours a day of hiking/etc… Like, it’s scary good how efficient their battery is.

Either way, don’t expect 10 days of battery life here on Cirqa.

The Bugs:

This is, by far, the buggiest launch of a Garmin product in years. Garmin needs a wake-up call here.

While Garmin’s product team has been relentless in trying to fix many of these over the last month, prominent ones still make the user experience stumble at times (including just today, August 23rd). And even then, bugs fixed over the last 2-3 weeks doesn’t really excuse the launch situation. Thankfully, many of these bugs can be solved via app and back-end platform updates, with very few being on-device issues. Note that there was a firmware update 2.50 in the last weekish, though that seemed focused on HR items.

A quick peek at some of what I’ve been running into:

1) Garmin Connect UI hangs when manually starting an activity with ‘low connectivity’: If I’m in a bad cellular spot that *barely* has connectivity when I press start on a manual activity, the app will entirely hang visually, though behind the scenes it’s perfectly fine. Killing and re-opening the app works, and no data is lost. Note that if I have zero connectivity, it’s totally fine. A fix should release by the end of the month for this (to the app).

2) Not detecting entire/numerous bike rides of 30+ minutes: This continues to be hit or miss. I can go for some rides that are great, and others that are hot mess territory. Two weeks ago I missed an entire 60-minute ride of reasonable intensity. Just yesterday (August 22nd), it fumbled a 3-hour ride.

3) Time-based alerts in sports modes don’t actually alert (such as the hourly chime) when in manual mode: In short, there’s some logic behind the scenes that’s flipped. Alerts aren’t firing in manual mode, but are oddly firing in Auto mode. This should be the opposite.

4) Garmin Connect mobile unable to handle timezone changes when traveling: This has caused JetLag Advisor to think my travel day is still in the future despite already happening (and yes, my dates are definitely correct). Garmin says they’ve found the cause for this, and it’ll be in the next update.

5) Garmin Connect Sleep Coach notifications triggering mid-day: These notifications should only appear close to bedtime. Both myself, DesFit, and numerous users have reported this. I haven’t had this happen in the last few weeks, so perhaps this one can finally be marked as fixed.

6) Random Garmin Connect app speed graph bugs that appear to show me going roughly 600,000KPH (or going 000,000KPH…it’s hard to tell): They’re looking into what’s happened here, though I haven’t seen it happen again.

7) Un-figure-out-able high battery burn days: Some days have had crazy high battery burn (upwards of 30%), with many at 20%. Garmin isn’t quite clear why. Though things have seemingly settled down more in the last two weeks.

8) Triggering PulseOx (SpO2 monitoring) when it shouldn’t: You’ll see the red light illuminate when you’re not actually asleep. Even last night, as I put the band on after removing it from the charger, it immediately started triggering sleep-only PulseOx, despite not being asleep. This continues every night.

9) Running distances are horribly off if GPS isn’t used (e.g., a 10.0KM run was a mere 6.30KM): It appears some of my earlier walks/runs weren’t calibrating the stride length, so my distances were crazy far off. Even with my most recent runs, distances are often off by 20%+.

10) Some auto-detect running workouts don’t bother to record GPS: This might be linked to a phone’s low-power mode, as I haven’t seen this otherwise. Either way, it should notify if it’s not going to record GPS due to iOS low power mode. Garmin is looking into this.

11) Issues with heart rate broadcasting dropping in/out: Literally just today, as I went to hit publish, I tried to broadcast my heart rate, and now other apps are seeing it briefly before dropping the connection. It worked yesterday, last week, and last month. Today, not so much.

12) Numerous other minor things I’ve seen and already forgotten about: Look, there’s a lot of minor quirks I’ve seen, but either weren’t big enough to remember beyond a day or so, or have already been fixed.

The thing is, most of these are easy to fix. But it’s clear there aren’t enough people (or the right people) in Garmin’s pool of pre-release testers to spot these issues. This isn’t an isolated incident; it’s a clear pattern over the last 18 months that’s gotten worse with most releases from virtually all product groups.

Over the last year or so, as Garmin has shifted its policies on external testers prior to launch, a very clear trend has emerged: The devices at launch have gotten more and more buggy. Be it the Garmin Venu X1, the Instinct 3, the Forerunner 970, and more (including the inReach Mini 3 series). Yet ironically, the devices that allowed larger tester pools such as the Forerunner 70/170, Garmin Edge 550/850, and Garmin HRM-200 were all very solid at launch. Patterns? Of course. And this pattern continued, if not escalated, with Cirqa.

Garmin had really improved their launch software quality about 3 years ago, and arguably peaked about 2 years ago. It had legit gotten really good compared to where it was 4-7 years ago. They had a big pool of external testers, they listened to them, and that made a real tangible difference to the product launch quality. But that’s clearly dwindled, with the goal of minimizing leaks.

One of the things I talked about in a semi-recent Amazfit video around software quality, is that it’s not enough to just have beta testers. You need to have beta testers that are willing to make a stink, and put their foot down when something is either broken – or something is just dumb. Having worked at one of the world’s biggest software companies, I know full well that internally, beta reports are all too often ignored as non-critical, or internal employees don’t bother to even file them. And then when it comes to external beta pools, testers are often reluctant to make a stink about something, because they don’t want to be removed from the secret device test pools.

I know Garmin’s product teams want these bugs fixed. And equally, I’ve seen that most of the time when bugs are raised (at least from me and other frequent testers), they get fixed real quickly. But currently, these product teams have their hands tied, and it’s clear it’s not working.

As I’ve said many times over the 15 years, I only include a ‘Bugs’ section in a review when things reach a bad enough point that I can’t otherwise just include the bugs in their applicable sections. Over the last 18 months, a lot more Garmin products have had this section than not.

Garmin Connect+ Subscription:

So what does Garmin Connect+ add to a Garmin Cirqa experience? In short, very little. And more specifically, very little beyond that’s specifically tied to the Cirqa device. Rather, most of the features are either general Garmin Connect+ things (like nutrition tracking), or mapping/etc that are more for watches.

As noted above, Connect+ isn’t required for the device, and instead, is only giving you a handful of extra features, mostly around coaching and nutrition tracking. Most of the coaching features seen here are usually free on Garmin’s watches with screens, but here they leverage the Garmin Connect app as your screen, and thus decide to charge you for it.

Here’s what Garmin Connect+ would add for a Cirqa user:

– Garmin Coach Workouts in app: Strength & Fitness specifically
– Additional Structured Workouts in app: Cardio, Yoga, HIIT, Strength, Pilates, Wheelchair
– Nutrition Tracking: Launched earlier this year.
– Manual Lap Creation: Via the Garmin Connect app during Live Activities
– HR graph in the app: For Live activities, it adds the heart rate chart/graph at the top, a live HR data field does not require Connect+
– Garmin Active Intelligence (AI) Insights: Very short couple-line snippets in the app dashboard
– Performance Dashboard (Web): Basically can create your own dashboard on the web
– Garmin Trails: Curated trail routes, not really applicable to Cirqa
– Enhanced LiveTrack Location Sharing: This will text (instead of e-mail, which is free), as well as a dedicated LiveTrack page
– 3D Maps in app: Again, for workouts with GPS only
– Discounts on Garmin accessories: Via app, very limited selection
– Extra Garmin Social Badges: Again, via app
– Annual Roundup of Activity Stats: At end of year, ‘Garmin Connect Rundown’ slideshow

As you can see, many of the features aren’t super applicable to Cirqa. Accessory discounts are things like Garmin cycling sensors (not applicable here), and Edge bike cases. There are also discounts on heart rate straps, but there’s an HR sensor here, and most of the time Amazon is still cheaper than the Garmin.com discount anyway.

Note that at Cirqa launch, Garmin had limited the live heart rate during workouts (your live HR in bpm) to just Garmin Connect+ users, but after substantial blowback, they issued an update 3 days later to Garmin Connect Mobile, enabling all users to see live heart rate.

Instead, the most applicable Garmin Connect+ feature here is the Garmin Coach Workouts in the app, and then the manual lap creation. The Garmin Coach Strength workouts have been behind the Garmin Connect paywall since they were introduced. But here on Cirqa, any structured workouts require Garmin Connect+. But the lack of being able to do your own structured workouts without GC+, is pretty weird.

Meanwhile, aspects like nutrition tracking are very real, and if you were previously paying for some other nutrition tracking platform, this will generally be about the same price as that, plus you get all the extra bits outlined above. You can check out my full Garmin Connect+ nutrition post here, as well as my full Garmin Connect+ features rundown here.

Wrap-Up:

For most folks, the Garmin Cirqa device will do exactly what they expect a Whoop-like competitor to do. The screenless unit will track your steps, calories, sleep, and other metrics automatically. It’ll do so for likely a week per charge, and it’ll do so in a form factor that’s reasonably similar and just as comfortable. And it’ll do so without any subscription cost at all, which, as noted, is exactly how I used the Garmin Cirqa in the review (with no Garmin Connect+ on my account). Oh, and the accuracy will largely be a wash between it and the latest Whoop or Fitbit devices. Garmin has a handy button, while Whoop has a lot more band options to choose from.

However, the difference between Garmin & Whoop isn’t really the hardware. Or even the app features. When it comes to training metrics, training data, or even daily metrics – there’s really no comparison. Garmin simply has more, and more features with depth. But unfortunately, what Garmin lacks here is a bug-free product. The Cirqa of today is riddled with mostly small bugs, but equally many big ones around automatic workout detection. While Garmin internally might classify those not so much as bugs but as limitations, to the end user a missed workout or splintered workout they can’t combine is a failure, regardless of whether you want to call it a bug. This product should have baked in the oven longer. If you manually start every workout, these issues won’t likely impact you. Perhaps the problem was my expectations.

One final question I’ve seen some ask is whether or not I’ll use Cirqa going forward. The answer is simple: Generally no. But not because Cirqa is bad or such, but because I’ll instead be reverting back to my Forerunner or Fenix watch. I use all the features of a watch on a daily basis, so for me having to depend on a phone for GPS tracks or to view heart rate/pace data, simply doesn’t make sense. In the same way, it doesn’t really make sense for most sports tech reviewers in this category. Likewise, while some might prefer to sleep with a Cirqa band, I personally find value in the flashlight at night, or just seeing the time (as I *never touch* my phone until I wake up). So again, the use case doesn’t really fit my preference. But as always, to each their own.

With that – thanks for reading!

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Insta360 X6 In-Depth Review: Worth The Upgrade?

Ray Maker — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:39:25 +0000

I’ve just published my full Insta360 X6 In-Depth Review up on YouTube; this is after almost two months of usage with the camera, across all sorts of different scenarios. From trails to mountains to cities to underwater, and plenty more. Hundreds of clips/videos, plus tons of comparison footage against the GoPro Max 2 and DJI OSMO 360. It’s an interestingly close race these days, but it’s clear that Insta360 is making a notable difference through a number of software features – rather than straight hardware upgrades (though there are many of those too).

In any case, here are all the chapters for the video (which link to each section):

0:00 Quick Overview
0:32 Smaller Size
0:48 Size Comparisons vs GoPro & DJI
0:58 Button Changes
1:28 Magnetic Charging Mount
1:46 Replaceable Lens Changes
2:35 Improved Sensor Size
2:49 Image Quality Comparisons
4:31 10-Bit Recording & Gotchyas
4:51 Dolby Vision Support
5:16 Changed to 4nm Chipset
5:26 Increased to 8K/505:32 Increased Single Lens Resolution
5:51 Increased Single Lens Slow-Mo Mode
5:56 Big changes with Instaframe 2.0
6:45 New on-device AI editing
7:14 Low Light Changes & Comparison Footage
8:35 New Underwater Invisible Dive Case Pro & Footage
9:51 Improved underwater rating
10:08 Added onboard storage
10:34 New Battery Design
11:05 Longer battery life & real-world test results
11:32 New 120MP Photo Mode
11:44 New Photo AI Reframing Feature Explained
12:21 8K vs Real 8K Explained
13:06 Tap to Connect NFC & Bluetooth Changes
13:32 WiFi & Wired Speed Increases
13:54 Pricing Overview
14:05 Compared to GoPro & DJI
14:36 Final Thoughts & Recommendations

As always, thanks for watching!

Google Pixel Watch 5 Accuracy Deep-Dive: Most Accurate GPS Watch Ever?

Ray Maker — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sure, the Pixel Watch 5 has a bunch of other new features. Some of them notable, most of them shrug. However, there’s one feature that stands out from the rest: New algorithms that substantially increase the accuracy of the Pixel Watch 5 GPS tracks. So much so that I flew to New York City (arguably the most difficult GPS location on earth), to put it to the test against the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro and the Apple Watch Ultra 3.

So confident in their product and accuracy, the Google team literally handed me the watch (well, a few watches), and told me to go off and basically try and break it. So off I went, hour after hour, trying to find ways to break the Pixel Watch 5 in New York City. Running, cycling, walking, you name it.

And to be fair, I did (barely) manage to break it. But mostly I broke the Garmin & Apple GPS tracks. Over and over again.

So, let’s get right into it, with briefly covering what’s new on the watch overall, and then we’ll GPS geek-out for a bit (because it’s crazy cool), and then after all that I’ll circle back to hands-on with all the other new features.

Pixel Watch 5 – What’s New?

Now obviously, I’m focusing heavily on the GPS pieces, because in my opinion, that’s the most substantial piece here. But there are some other notable pieces, including the inclusion of a new strength workout feature that’s bundled with an expanded workout builder feature.

Here’s the full list of what’s new on the Pixel Watch 5, before I quickly go through some of those other features:

– Increased processor CPU power by 12%
– Increased RAM by 60%
– Claimed 20% faster overall operations
– Added GPS post-processing accuracy gains (for walk/run/cycling-based activities)
– Added weight and rep tracking
– Added workout builder (app)
– Added audio cues for structured workouts
– Added rest timers for structured workouts
– Added new Bedtime mode with face
– Added 11 new glanceable complication styles
– Added 2 new watch faces
– Added new generative watch faces (ok, this is legit cool, see below)
– Added ‘Raise to Gemini’ questions/answers in no-internet situations
– Added Gemini proactive text responses for automatic replies (requires Pixel 11 phone)
– Claimed 15% more accurate sleep tracking
– Added new smart wake alarm option
– Added new overnight sleep breathing quality metric
– Added ‘Health Guardian’ umbrella feature/concept
– Added Breathing emergency detection (will detect persistent loss of oxygen saturation)
– Added new Blood Pressure trends report (app-based, coming to Pixel Watch 3/4/5 this fall)
– Added new insulin resistance trends report (app-based, coming to all Pixel & Fitbit devices this fall)
– Same exact case sizes as before
– Orders as of today, August 12th, shipping August 20th
– Also added new Steph Curry special band edition, shipping Sept 3rd

Pricing has increased for the first time since the launch of the Pixel Watch series, now $50 more than last year for the non-LTE models, and a $30 increase for the LTE models, bringing it to:

41mm: $399 for Wi-Fi and $479 for LTE
45mm: $449 for Wi-Fi and $529 for LTE
Steph Curry Special Edition (LTE only): Starts at $579

Here are the color options, shown below (Obsidian aka black, Olive, Fog aka white, and Canyon):

Now, if GPS isn’t your jam, then slide all the way down to the end of this post, where I dive into many of these new non-GPS features in more hands-on detail.

Google’s GPS Changes Outlined:

Ok, GPS geekery time. First, let’s talk about what Google says they’re trying to solve for, then talk about how they’re doing it, and then talk about whether they actually pull it off.

To begin, Google says they’re focused on trying to solve for really three specific GPS issues. To consumers, these ‘issues’ manifest themselves as all assortment of wonky GPS track errors, but to GPS engineers, these are basically three specific issues. They are:

– Poor tracks in tall building scenarios: Commonly known as urban canyons, such as New York City, or really any building, tall buildings will not only block GPS signals, but more critically, as far as bad tracks go, they will literally reflect GPS signals (off glass & metal), which tricks GPS watches into thinking they are somewhere they aren’t. In GPS-lingo, these are called multi-path errors, because the path from the satellite to your watch can take multiple paths to the watch, only one of which is ‘real’/true (or even none of which are).

Ok, with that out of the way, let’s talk about how they are making the tracks better. And now it’s important to note that they are doing this in post-processing. Meaning, it’s not fixing your exact position in real-time as you go down the street, but afterwards. And critically, it is very much not just road/trail-snapping (as some of their competitors do). In fact, I’ll literally demonstrate that over and over again, purposefully trying to trick it (and where the competitors will route snap). But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Google is using three specific fixes to post-process the tracks. They are as follows:

1. 3D Building Models: Here, they are using Google’s massive database of the entire world, mapped in 3D (think Google Earth), which in turn knows the exact building heights of just about everything on this planet. From buildings to mountains to bridges, it knows it all. By knowing there’s a building there, and the specific height, it can determine whether or not you (running on the street or wherever) can actually see the satellite your watch thinks it can see. Or, if instead, that GPS signal is being reflected off of a different building, causing a multi-path error/inaccuracy. By knowing which satellites can and cannot be seen by the watch, it can re-prioritize which signals to trust, and then re-process that file with satellites the watch can actually see. All of this also applies to non-building terrain too.

Note that they are doing this for pedestrian-based walking/running/hiking, as well as cycling-based activities. They do not impact/help other sport modes at this time, such as openwater swimming.

So, let’s get into some actual tracks here, before and after differences. Note that for production Pixel Watch 5 units, you’ll never see these before/after tracks (just like you don’t for Apple when they process your tracks, or for Garmin, unless you creatively intercept them before processing). But in my case, I was able to go run/ride with two watches during all my NYC tests. One was a production watch, and one was a development watch, which let me see the files before they were processed.

Thus, in this section only, I’m just going to show Google Pixel Watch 5 before/after. In the other sections, I’ll show production tracks vs the others. Make sense?

Here’s the first one, showing how it processed this section, jumping straight into a building section. Purple is processed/fixed, yellow is raw upload from the watch. You can see how crispy the lines are now, shifting me to exactly where I ran in both sections (on the sidewalk, crossing the street, etc…).

The changes aren’t always massive; many times, they are reinforcing confidence in what you’re seeing matches where you ran. Here, the unprocessed track is wobbling its way along, yet the processed track is spot-on:

Next, this section here, which includes a ‘trick’ test that I did at the far right (more on that later), you can see it cleaned up the yellow to match where I ran, but equally, didn’t remove the trick-loop that I did at the far right. Again, super impressive.

The same is true here in Times Square, as it takes me out of the buildings, and instead, shows me weaving through the open plazas to find my way:

Still, there are some slight imperfections, like here where it has me running through the Times Square stands/steps (even corrected). It’s only a couple of meters away, but again, it’s not absolutely perfect.

Or here, a few blocks later, where it simply can’t overcome the buildings, and has me on the wrong side (and in buildings). In this section (as you’ll see later), Apple got it very correct, and Garmin more correct than Google.

Again, to me though, it’s streets like this. Where it takes a ‘meh-good-enough’ GPS track for 2026, and turns it into a ‘holy-crap-perfect’ GPS track.

I’ll stop doing the before/after for now, and instead, we’ll look at how it compares to the others.

But first, some of you are probably already asking: Will this come to other Pixel Watches? And the answer seems to be yes, though Google hasn’t fully confirmed that. Google (year over year) does this quirky thing when asked about new features coming to previous watches, where they always say some variant of ‘We always try and bring new features to previous devices, and will have more information in a future update’. Which is Google-code for “We’ll release this update to existing watches about 2-3 months after the new watch releases, but won’t tell you that now”.

They noted numerous times that their priority was releasing Pixel Watch 5, but equally noted there was nothing that prohibited it on Pixel Watch 4 (which also has multi-band GNSS/GPS). There are very minor antenna tweaks on the Pixel Watch 5, but practically speaking, they don’t make a major difference here (as a reminder: antenna design is arguably the most important part of GPS accuracy these days).

Ok, let’s get into the results.

GPS Accuracy Results:

Ok, let’s dive straight into things. In my case, I’ve got two different runs (focused on two different scenarios and areas of town), along with a ride where I went all over creation. As part of my full in-depth review, I’ll get more into comparisons in tougher terrain.

For the purposes of simplicity in this post, I’m going to focus on a longer run, and a bike ride. There’s also a shorter run in a different section of town available here.

So, to begin on this long run, things are pretty similar between the three watches, without a lot of meaningful differences at first glance. However, it doesn’t take long for the separation to begin. Here we can see the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro on the wrong side of the street, while the Pixel and Apple Watch are on the correct side of the street, with the Pixel Watch having me correctly on the actual sidewalk, versus the Apple Watch playing a tiny bit in traffic.

In any case, more notably though, I did three loops around this small pergola of sorts, which was perhaps 3-4m wide. All three units actually tracked that surprisingly well.

Moments like this show slight differences. That again, might not be super obvious. Apple has me in the buildings and the street. Whereas Google shows a more clear crossing of the street. Garmin’s track isn’t bad, but again, isn’t exactly where I went.

And one more moment on this run that I aimed to break things was this circle I ran in the middle of the street (it’s now a closed street). You can see Google perfectly hits that circle (I show it in my video, from the GoPro perspective). Garmin isn’t bad, albeit a bit tight. And Apple again decides there’s no way I actually drew a circle in the middle of the street, and thus puts me on the sidewalk.

But again, Google is not perfect. And just a block later, it throws me into the buildings, while only Apple correctly sails down the street on the right sidewalk.

Anyways, for the rest of the run, this pattern basically continues, though Apple did struggle a bit more at times in the buildings. You can view the whole track here, if you’d like.

Instead, let’s look quickly at a bike ride. Generally speaking, cycling is at a higher speed, and tends to mean that GPS tracks are better, since watches (and bike computers) have a higher sensor confidence that you’re going 20MPH/30KPH in a given direction, and aren’t instantly off to the side some other way.

Now, starting off on this ride, I will briefly nitpick the Google, as Garmin got this turn correct. There was construction on the turn, and I had to go well wide around it.

Meanwhile, for quite a ways after that, the Google and Garmin units are basically the same. Apple is incorrectly snapping me to the sidewalk (I’m in cycling mode), whereas you can clearly see Garmin/Google have me exactly in the bike lane. Some number of blocks later, Garmin disassociates itself from that though, putting me on the other side of the street.

Still, for big chunks of this ride, there’s no real meaningful difference:

Such as when I pedaled past the very tall World Trade Center, along with surrounding buildings; there’s no major difference here. A couple of meters one way or the other at most (especially between Garmin and Google).

For example, here I did a loop around this building with tiny streets. Apple overshot very slightly on one side, but so did Google, putting me on the sidewalk. Garmin cut in a bit too tight in one spot. All in all, mostly a wash.

Even when I have literally no visible sky above me, all three units get it roughly correct. Here I am below the highway, riding for a long time below it. Google is in the most correct spot below said highway, but none of them are all that far off.

Some time later, I head across the bridge. While all three watches have me clearly on the bridge, only Apple actually gets the position within that correct. The bike lane here is on the ‘upper’ portion of your screen in this scenario, whereas the red where the Pixel Watch 5 is, is the train lines.

As for the rest of the ride, it was mostly pretty good amongst all of them, with no major issues from anyone (again, cycling speed helps). You can see here how the Apple Watch cuts the corner a bit (I’m going from right, turning left onto this street), whereas both Garmin and Google correctly show me pausing a bit out further, waiting for traffic to clear before turning. After which, Apple puts me on the sidewalk, as opposed to Garmin/Google being on the bike lane.

And ultimately, DesFit and I spent hours sitting in front of a conference room big-screen looking through hours of rides/runs we did together with the geekiest of Google Pixel Watch 5 engineers, comparing tracks from our Garmin/Apple devices, alongside both the Pixel Watch 5 pre/post processed tracks. Collectively, we judged literally every single block of every single track as to who was the winner at every moment on those workouts. On the rare scenarios that Apple/Garmin won, they would readily admit it, and then debate precisely why it probably won that half a block. The same goes for the even more rare scenario that the post-processed track was less accurate than the pre-processed track (it was almost never ‘less accurate’, but usually just ‘offset a different way’, where you’d say “I’d just split the difference instead”).

They will readily admit it’s not absolute perfection, but equally they are very confident the tracks are far better than their competitors. So much so that they are saying it’s “2X More Accurate Route Mapping in Tough Environments” along with “Our most accurate GPS route tracking for exercise, outperforming Apple Watch Ultra 3 and Garmin Fenix 8 Pro”.

How did they get to that 2X number, precisely? Well, with big fancy high-tech backpacks using centimeter-level GPS accuracy (note the head-sized pods sticking out the top). Two years ago I took this photo with that team. Oh, and that’s me at left wearing one.

From there, their claim is based on simply comparing the mean difference between each track point from each company (Garmin, Apple, Google) to the ‘ground truth’. These are the same backpack devices that all of these companies use for their own GPS testing.

Translated again, if they look at a specific point, and the Pixel Watch 5 (with post-processing) is off by 2 meters, and the Apple/Garmin watches by 4 meters, then they compare those differences. For every single point on the track. Which is how they get to the 2X claim.

Of course, I suspect that claim varies heavily based on environment. My guess is the number is higher in places like the buildings of NYC, and lower in places like the farmlands of Kansas.

New Pixel Watch 5 Changes in Detail:

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the other Pixel Watch 5 changes that I outlined at the beginning. Again, there are a few dozen features, but I kinda want to dive into the more notable ones here:

1) Added workout builder (app)
2) Added weight and rep tracking
3) Added audio cues & rest timer
4) Added new Bedtime mode with face & Smart Wake Alarm
5) Added new generative watch faces
6) Added ‘Health Guardian’ umbrella feature/concepts

Let’s first dive into the workout builder portion, which allows you to create strength workouts in the app itself. You can do this by manually creating each portion via a library of movements (and then assigning reps/weights/times etc…), or you can also just straight-up ask Google Coach (Gemini) to create a given workout focusing on a given area, and boom, the workout is done.

From there, the workout gets pushed to the watch, where it’ll iterate through each set/portion automatically.

Notably, it can also do (new):

A) It’ll give you audio cues (voice instructions)
B) They’ve added a rest timer

Next, once it’s time for bed, there’s a new sleep watch face, similar to what most of their competitors have, to minimize/reduce the chance of blinding you in the middle of the night:

And then with that, there are new Smart Wake alarms, similar to what other companies have in terms of looking at the 30 minutes prior to the alarm time, and your sleep phases/stages, in terms of determining wake-up time.

Next, there are new generative watch faces. Simply put, ask the watch (verbally) to create any watch face with any theme you want, and it’ll do it. Des of DesFit decided to make a pizza watch face in our demo, and thus, a pizza watch face was born (it gives you a few options and theme choices):

Last but not least, there’s the new Health Guardian bits. This is an umbrella concept that covers a bunch of features, including both new Blood Pressure trends and Insulin Resistance Trends features (which are not medically certified). Those are new reports that’ll come later this fall.

Thankfully, this new Health Guardian feature doesn’t require a subscription or anything else.

Final Thoughts:

There’s no question that Google’s GPS accuracy improvements here are incredibly impressive. In my mind, this is a very similar generational leap in GPS accuracy to what we saw about 3-4 years ago when Garmin introduced multi-band GNSS on their Fenix 7 devices. It would be years before competitors got anywhere in the same ballpark as that (and even then, I’d argue only one or two other watches can get close to Garmin’s current multi-band GPS accuracy). Now, Google has very clearly taken the lead, at least when it comes to post-processed tracks.

Google is almost eliminating the rare ‘edge case’ bad GPS scenarios that Garmin still has left. Again, they are not 100% perfect, but they are really darn close (and that’s in arguably the hardest GPS environment on the planet). Of course, as anyone who has a GPS watch (Garmin or otherwise) can attest to, there are plenty of ‘fun’ places you might know in your area that cause GPS watches to drop a beat. Even the newest and fanciest of models. It’ll take time to see how the Pixel Watch 5 handles all of these special places.

As for the rest of the enhancements, they are interesting, though I’d argue most of them are ones that a good portion of their competitors either have, or long have had (e.g., sleep watch faces, workout builders, rep counting, etc…). Still, there’s some legit cool integration into the Google ecosystem around automatic text replies being more aware of the rest of your phone’s data (potential privacy concerns aside). For bits like the blood pressure trends and insulin tracking, I remain somewhat skeptical. We’ve seen companies like Whoop push the boundaries of what the FDA says is a medical device, with very little (read: absolutely none) medical certification or backing. What Google is doing here seems like basically the same thing.

Again, I’ll have a full in-depth review of the Pixel Watch 5 soon, once I can push it harder in places with more challenging terrain. Stay tuned for that, as that’s what’s on tap for this week here in Newfoundland, Canada.

With that – thanks for reading!

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Garmin Cirqa Accuracy Deep-Dive Review (vs Whoop 5.0, Fitbit Air, Amazfit Helio, Polar Loop)

Ray Maker — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 16:56:47 +0000

This will probably be my rabbit-hole post of 2026, diving into the accuracy of not just Garmin Cirqa, but all of the screenless wearable bands currently on the market. And not just one Cirqa band, but both wrist and bicep/arm placement, as well as multiple people. And finally, not just heart rate during workouts, but across a slate of different categories and scenarios, spanning weeks of data gathering/comparisons.

As you might surmise, data accuracy is always important in a wearable, but frankly, even more important in a screenless band. After all, a regular GPS watch can have plenty of other smartwatch/sport/navigation/etc features that might counterbalance imperfect accuracy results; however, a screenless band has ‘one job’: Getting your data right.

But here’s the thing: There are actually a few different categories of accuracy you have to look at. And honestly, sport heart rate accuracy isn’t the most important one on Cirqa. Specifically, we have the following:

1) Accuracy of heart rate during workouts
2) Accuracy of workout/activity recognition
3) Accuracy/differences of sleep data
4) Accuracy/differences of step data
5) Differences in Calories

I’m going to dive into each of these things, including talking about how important each one is. Note that as always, I’m going to show you data from numerous other devices, both trusted reference devices as well as other competitors in the space. Specifically, virtually every section compares the following:

1) Garmin Cirqa (wrist, and 2nd on bicep same arm)
2) Whoop 5.0/MG
3) Fitbit Air
4) Polar Loop (bicep)
5) Amazfit Helio (bicep)

But I’m also not going to fake-science you. Instead, I’m going to show you how to properly evaluate accuracy of wearable devices, just like I’ve been doing for 18 years. Further, I’m *NOT* going to compare dissimilar day results. Every data point is compared at the exact same time/moment. It’s ludicrous to compare data gathered in winter, to data gathered in summer, and then plot those scores on the same chart. Those are different test scenarios/difficulty levels. Seriously, stop looking at charts that do that, it’s fake-science.

I will however, show you data gathered from both wrist and bicep, but I’m being super clear in labeling on that. Ultimately, I only have so many wrists/wrist space. As always, bicep bands will do better for workouts, and wrists will do better for sleep. Always remember that.

Sound good? Let’s cook!

A Quick Note on Placement:

For my testing, I’ve had 7 screen-less devices on me concurrently, plus two different chest straps (alternating each workout). They are as follows:

1) Garmin Cirqa (right wrist)
2) Garmin Cirqa (right bicep)
3) Whoop 5.0/MG (left wrist)
4) Fitbit Air (left wrist)
5) Polar Loop (left bicep)
6) Amazfit Helio (left bicep)
7) Oura Ring 5 (left hand finger)
8) Chest strap for workouts: Polar H9 or Garmin HRM-600

Further, for some of my wife’s workouts/data, she’s had

1) Garmin Cirqa (one wrist)
2) Fenix 8 (other wrist)
3) Chest strap (Polar H9)

A few quick notables:

A) Generally speaking, I don’t recommend two *watches* side-by-side on the wrist, specifically because the larger watch footprint will cause the watch cases to ‘tap’ into each other, triggering cadence-lock issues for heart rate during workouts, increasing step counts, and driving both watches upwards as they press together. However, with the Fitbit Air being so small, and the Whoop also being small and flat, this hasn’t been an issue. In fact, over the last three months I’ve tested both one per wrist and two per wrist on dozens of workouts and days, and seen zero difference in accuracy. This is because they are snug, so light, and fabric, they don’t bounce against each other, and have been producing virtually identical results. This is also in line with how numerous companies in this segment will use these lighter devices for comparisons.

B) Meanwhile, for the left bicep, they’re separated by about 1-2cm most of the time, and then usually slightly offset from each other. These two devices are a bit larger/chunkier, and thus I ensure slightly more separation. As you’ll see, because they’re on the bicep, they have a distinct advantage in this test. Simply put, accuracy isn’t an issue here.

C) On the Garmin Cirqa side, I’ve got one on the right wrist, and then one on the bicep (also right side). This way they are (in theory) beating to the same drum in terms of any per-side differences. While I could try testing different body sides (left vs right), over the last decade of optical HR sensor testing, I’ve virtually never found that to make a difference on my body. Further, my general stance is if a sensor can’t work on one specific side, then that’s a sensor problem, not a me problem.

D) For my wife, you can see her singular placement here of Cirqa against her Fenix 8 (non-Pro) 43mm watch, which includes the Gen5 optical HR sensor. She is also wearing a Polar H9 chest strap.

E) For the chest strap, I used both a Polar H9 as well as a Garmin HRM-600 chest strap. With many years of data on the Polar H9/H10, and more than a year on the Garmin HRM-600 (since it came out), there’s simply no meaningful difference there (including numerous dual-strap tests). Both are super accurate chest straps.

Finally, all of the data is pulled into either the DCR Analyzer (for workout data), or simply manually copied into Excel for general sleep/HR/etc data.

As you can see, I’ve attempted to make these tests as equal as possible, within the bounds of reality. Again, note that any device on the bicep will do better in workouts, and any device on the wrist will do better in sleep. The point is, I’m being super clear about where each device is, and not just comparing a Whoop bicep band to a wrist-based Garmin Cirqa band, and not overtly telling you those are in different places (as I’ve seen some do). That’s just sketchville.

Phew, let’s get geeky!

Accuracy of Heart Rate During Workouts:

In this section I’m going to look at the heart rate accuracy during workouts. This includes a variety of workouts, and critically, a variety of temperature ranges. During this time period I have workouts from home (Spain, temps in the 90°F/32°C range), and then workouts from travel to Newfoundland, where the temps are notably colder (in the 50°F/10°C range), which can absolutely impact accuracy of wrist-based optical HR sensors in certain conditions.

As always, I’m going to compare against a bunch of different units, including two different chest straps (Polar H9 and Garmin HRM-600, which I consider pretty much equal in their accuracy).

First up, we’ve got a simple indoor trainer session (cycling) to start things off. As a general rule of thumb, if sensors can’t get indoor cycling right, you’re hosed. There are no road vibrations like that of outdoor riding to complicate matters, nor pounding signals like with running. Likewise, there’s very little wrist deflection (well, usually). Here’s how that looked (Cirqa wrist is maroon color):

As you can see, it’s mostly really good here. No issues of concern, and it nailed all the intervals and recovery periods, as did all of its friends. The only two quibbles would be that it missed the first 7 minutes of the warm-up before auto-detect kicked in. And then it struggled for another minute or so after that. This is a good example of a workout type I’d do manually though.

Next up, we’ve got an outdoor road ride into the mountains, this one in warmer conditions in Spain (Cirqa wrist is green color):

As you can see, this is absolutely spot-on perfect. Really really good, which is even more notable as I was also shooting a bunch of video on this ride too, with both wrists. Same goes for the others. For the life of me, I can’t get the Whoop band to sync that workout out on the platform, so, it skips that journey. Note below that her Cirqa hadn’t arrived yet on this specific ride, whereas mine is on my right wrist.

However, now you’ll get to see the impact of temperature on wrist-based optical HR sensors while riding in colder temps. This day was a 3-hour ride, on mixed road/gravel (roughly the middle 1hr was gravel, the other ends were mostly smooth roads). The temps were maybe at best 60°F/16°C, but there was also notable wind, rain, and general crapiness. And as a result, all wrist-based units were often wrong, including Cirqa (Cirqa wrist in maroon color):

This trend continued on a different day that was also cold, showing the struggle is real for outdoor riding in cold temps.

Again, this is not a surprise, and is the same for virtually all watches while outdoor riding in cold temps. You can ‘address’ that a bit by trying to keep your wrists warmer, but the jacket I brought wasn’t really ideal for cycling, so my wrists remained exposed most of the time:

That said, a few days later in roughly the same temperatures (minus the rain), my wife had very solid results with Cirqa on a similar ride. In fact, Cirqa even beat the Fenix 8 (with Gen5 optical HR), in a very rough MTB-like section. That actually makes sense, because in massive vibrations the heavier Fenix 8 is going to bounce more on her wrist than the lighter Cirqa. Either way, solid performance here despite the temps (Cirqa wrist here in teal):

In any case, let’s shift to some running. First up, an easy steady-state run (in colder temps). Here, we can see things have no problems at all, and it’s very solid:

Again, I’d expect that, because…well…it’s easy and steady-state. No biggie, and it nailed it (as did everyone else).

So then, what about doing some 400m intervals? In this case, it was on a crushed/packed gravel surface, and as you can see, Cirqa on the wrist really struggled here, yet on the bicep was perfectly fine. Here’s the data set, with Cirqa wrist in bright red (Cirqa bicep in maroon, which is why it disappears into the line of perfection with others):

Again, while my wrists were cold, I’d have expected far better performance out of the Garmin Elevate Gen4 sensor here, so this is really surprising. In talking to Garmin about this set, they too were surprised, given that it clearly established lock during the warm-up, but then quickly fell apart during the intervals.

Out of curiosity, I then went out and did another shorter workout with 400m intervals, this time on a warmer day (62°F/17°C), and yet again, it really struggled here. I’m not sure what to make of this. Note the different colors, but all you need to know here is the red one is the bad one, and that’s Cirqa. That said, both the Fitbit & Whoop also struggled on the middle three intervals as well, just to a slightly lesser degree than Garmin. Also, in case you’re wondering why Amazfit has two files, it’s because it split the workout into two after the warm-up, as it often does the moment you slow down for 90 seconds. Cirqa wrist here in maroon.

Again, the unit is nice and snug, worn perfectly per 15 years of experience wearing optical HR sensors, and also how Garmin recommends. This isn’t a me issue anymore. Here’s a shot from the above run:

So then, out of curiosity, I swapped the two units I had (moving bicep to wrist, and wrist to bicep), just to see if perhaps there’s an issue with this specific unit and vibrations. Here are those results (same temps of 64°F/18°C), Cirqa wrist in purple:

Basically, just as bad for the Cirqa wrist(and bicep still perfectly fine). Though Whoop did make its own failboat for the entire warm-up, along with a partial warm-up failboat for the Fitbit Air. Still, aside from Garmin getting the warm-up right, the wrist Cirqa only got a single interval correct (middle one).

So then, I decided to sucker someone else into doing the exact same workout. In his case, his weather is considerably warmer, about 85°F/29°C. Cirqa wrist in orange.

As you can see, for him, with the warmer temps, it was spot-on. One bobble briefly on the 3rd interval, but certainly not the cargo-ship-sized failboats I’m seeing. My guess is that it’s some combination of the temp+terrain+pace that’s causing this failure. I haven’t seen this consistent of a failure on a specific workout in a long-long-long time.

Finally, here’s a bit of a strength training session. In this case, Des of DesFit has provided a bunch of sets of equal testing caliber, but focused specifically on strength training. He and I follow all the same methodology, and often work together on testing devices.

Here is a set that starts off with two sets of Lat Pulldowns (first two orange dots), and you can see the wrist Cirqa struggles at the outset of the first one, before settling down. On the 2nd set, Cirqa bicep struggles briefly, and then settles down. After that, for shoulder press, seated row, and lateral raises, things were mostly quite good for Cirqa, while Fitbit then struggled for a bit. On the whole however, given the relatively low BPM differences (at a lower intensity), these would be unlikely to have any meaningful training load or calorie implications. Cirqa wrist in orange.

In this next set, which starts off with bench press for the first two orange dots, then arm curl (3rd dot), shoulder press (4th/5th dot), and ends with row, you can see wrist Cirqa struggles in the first few minutes, but then settles down and is mostly pretty good. Later, the Fitbit Air struggles a little in the middle briefly. The Cirqa had no issue with the row intervals at the end, while the Fitbit on the wrist lightly struggled on the first. Cirqa wrist in orange.

Finally, one more set of lat pulldowns, then shoulder press, then ending with seated row, here you can see Cirqa (wrist and then slightly arm band), gets off to a rough start, but quickly settles down within 2 minutes. After that, the Amazfit band yolo’s for a moment incorrectly. But beyond that, it was mostly fine/close-enough during the workout parts. That one brief moment around 16 minutes where the Cirqa wrist spikes was simply in between sets. Cirqa wrist in orange.

The general/overall look at all of his strength workouts (I have many more sets, he has even more sets) is that it was actually pretty good on the wrist, with only an occasional mistake that was sometimes meaningful, but usually not. Further, the Cirqa biceps/arm band was generally pretty strong across the board, save a few mistakes occasionally in biceps-focused movements. Again, because Garmin doesn’t really ‘reward’ strength workouts as much from a training load standpoint (which is driven entirely by higher heart rates), these occasional lower-heart rate ‘mistakes’ are far less meaningful than mistakes in running or cycling missing big intervals.

Thus, overall, where I stand for workout HR accuracy is that it’s mostly like what I see with other Garmin Gen4 sensors, which is largely pretty good, but it struggles with certain workout types or conditions. In my case, it struggled with cooler-temp outdoor cycling, especially off-road. Likewise, it really struggled for my 400m interval repeats, but was fine for Des on the same workout (he was in higher temps). For other workout types, including indoor cycling and strength, it’s largely quite good and in line with the others.

Accuracy of Workout/Activity Recognition:

Fun fact: I’d argue this is actually the most important category for a screenless wearable. Well, to an extent. You see, you can’t have accurate heart rate on Garmin Cirqa if it doesn’t first recognize you’re working out. You see, unlike Whoop (and frankly everyone else), Garmin keeps their heart rate sensor at a lower power when not working out. For Garmin, this helps save battery. Then when it detects a workout, it gives more power to the heart rate sensor, to substantially increase accuracy during highly fluctuating (heart-rate-wise) workouts.

But here’s the (effing massive) catch: If it doesn’t detect that workout (or a portion of it), you’re left with *NO HEART RATE* data for that portion of the workout. As a result, none of your training load and recovery stats are right, they’re all missing the data. Yes, you can adjust the timeframes on the Garmin Cirqa afterwards, but this *WILL NOT* magically get your the missing heart rate data back. This is unlike Whoop (and Google, and Amazfit), which allows you to seamlessly and endlessly adjust the times, and the full fidelity heart rate data is there.

Got it? Meaning, it’s really damn important that Garmin detects a workout upfront. Whether or not the heart rate is a few bpm off later on isn’t a much lesser deal than missing entirely.

So, let’s look at that from a few different workouts.

1) The Bike Commutes:

I did so many bike commutes, and as a general rule of thumb here, it struggled for almost all of them. Specifically, it never detected most of them. For example:

~ 70 minute cargo bike ride with kids [Detected properly by Cirqa, and Whoop/Fitbit/Amazfit]
~ 30 minute moderate intensity commute ride [Not detected by Cirqa, but detected by Whoop, Fitbit, and Amazfit]
~ 20 minute low to moderate intensity commute ride [Not detected by Cirqa, but detected by Whoop, Fitbit, and Amazfit]
~ 25 minute moderate to high intensity commute ride [Detected properly by Cirqa, and Whoop/Fitbit/Amazfit]

I did a bunch of other shorter rides, under 15 minutes (quick errands and such, usually 5-10 minutes), and none of these were detected by Cirqa, or other bands (Whoop/Fitbit/Polar) except the Amazfit Helio. The Helio band triggers auto-detect workouts for even just looking at your bike, let alone actually riding it. I think there’s a fair balance to be made here (as in, Amazfit triggers far too much/often), but on the whole Garmin needs to work on the bike commute algorithms here.

2) Road Bike Ride into the Mountains:

For this one, I had actually intended to manually start it, but totally forgot. Turns out, it handled the start side just perfectly. However, about 90 minutes into the ride, as I reached the top of the climb and turned back to descend, it basically ended the activity, assuming I was done. It skipped the last ~45 minutes, including numerous high-intensity sections and climbs upwards of 160bpm. This was, in my opinion, the most substantial ‘fail’ during all of my testing.

As you can see, when I went to extend it out to the finish time of 3:31PM, it didn’t have heart rate data for the extended portion. Though oddly, hours later it did show up (something that Garmin also can’t really explain). Note that for all my other ‘need-to-extend’ workouts, the HR data has remained missing.

3) Running Intervals

This detected near-perfectly for both bicep and wrist on the Garmin. It had detected about 5-6 minutes early, as I had walked to my starting point, and it ‘brought in’ that walking period. This is a notable difference to the Fitbit Air, which tends to do a good job of skipping those pre-run walk bits, especially when they are super casual.

With Garmin, it tends to include any pre-walking to a start location (even if super casual). This is easy to trim out, however.

4) Gravel Bike Ride (lower intensity, 2 hours)

This was probably one of the best auto-detects that it did. It nailed within perhaps 60 seconds, the start of the ride, and then also perfectly captured the end of the ride. Even better, is that despite us taking a number of photos along the way, getting distracted talking to some come-from-away tourists, and more, it kept it all as a single activity (Whoop and Amazfit both splintered it). That also included some easier intensity sections, descents, and so-on. So plenty of opportunities to screw up, yet, it didn’t. Kudos Garmin, on this one. (Notably, this was one of my more recent rides, see why that matters at the end of this section)

5) Indoor Trainer

In this case, it started about 7 minutes late, due in part to my relatively easy warm-up. That’s somewhat to be expected. It then did struggle briefly for accuracy for a minute or two, but once it locked on, it was solid for the rest of the ride. In terms of ending the ride, it perfectly stuck that landing, within 60 seconds of the end of the ride.

6) Walk (1hr)

While I’ve done many shorter walks on either manual or auto, I wanted to be hyper-specific about exactly how long it took for this one. So I went for a late-night walk, at a medium pace. In this case, it took 4 minutes until it picked up the walk and started GPS and workout HR. Upon finishing, it nailed it within 60 seconds. Of course, the finish was me simply sitting down, so it was a bit easier to identify than the start, which included playing Frogger across a road. Either way, good job here.

7) Strength Sessions

For strength, as above with the accuracy bits, I had DesFit do a bunch of different proper strength sessions, and none of them picked up in Auto, either on wrist or bicep. He says that could be due to his mix of strength+HIIT, but he did note that the Fitbit Air did pick these up (identify them). Obviously, like Yoga, this would be the key category/reason to use the button. That said, equally, if Garmin supported creating activities afterward with the underlying HR data (like Whoop/Fitbit does), then this wouldn’t be an issue. Unfortunately, they don’t; you can create an activity, but no heart rate/load is assigned to it.

8) Other random activities/workouts

I’ve done a bunch of other activities that fall under the ‘walk’ category and such, and generally speaking these matched my experience for the ‘walk’ above, which is that it seems to do a reasonably good job of tracking that walk.

Likewise, I did a bunch of ‘strength’ sessions where I was moving boxes (for moving house) for hours on end, with a ton of sweat (because it was 95°F outside), and it pretty much spot-on tracked all of these painfully FML moments. This is a good example of how these heavy-box moving moments were much higher HR sustained for a longer period of time than a traditional strength workout, which might not get as high of a heart rate (sustained).

One last auto detection note:

One thing I’ll note is that Garmin has made a number of notable changes (good ones) to automatic detection over the last 10-12 days, even without any firmware updates. In talking with Garmin, there are basically three portions that handle automatic detection:

1) On-device firmware portions
2) Garmin Connect Mobile (app) portions, such as lighting up GPS and looking at that data stream
3) Backend platform pieces that analyze both of those, to tweak the final result

This is pretty much the same as any other company, though Garmin’s ability to enable/engage GPS does give them more flexibility on this front. In any case, they noted that there have been numerous changes on #2 and #3 above over the past two weeks, which explains some notable improvements in my automatic detections getting better.

That said, if I had to rank them from an automatic detection standpoint, it’d be:

1) Whoop: Excellent, with very rare/few errors
2) Fitbit Air: Almost excellent with also very rare/few errors
3) Garmin: Good and getting better, but still a bit fuzzy with lower intensity bits
4) Amazfit: Really good at detecting elevated HR, but can’t detect workout types and often prematurely ends things.
5) Polar: Barely passable (doesn’t detect types either, and often misses things)

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Garmin can iterate here. This is an area that Fitbit has improved substantially in the ~3 months since the release of the Fitbit Air, but it’s still an area where Whoop has years of experience and fine-tuning.

Accuracy of Sleep Data:

When it comes to sleep data, I’m specifically focused on two core things:

1) Times I went to sleep and woke up (and total sleep duration)
2) Heart Rate Variability (night average)

But I’m also going to show you these other two things:

3) Sleep score (for fun, all companies make up their own magical algorithms)
4) Breathing Rate (respiration rate)

Notably, you’ll see sleep phases/stages are missing there. Why? Because quite frankly, there’s no reliable or accurate way to compare sleep stages. Even so-called ‘gold standard’ devices are accurate at best ~80% of the time. And as a point of reference, we’d never use a heart rate strap that’s wrong 20% of the time as a point of reference, that’d be bonkers. Therefore, I’m not sure why we’d want to do it for sleep stages/sleep phases.

Plus, for the vast majority of scenarios, what matters here is ultimately duration of sleep (and whether you are sleeping). Yes, there’s obviously notable/meaningful benefits to being in certain sleep stages. But pretending that we can judge the accuracy of that against a pseudo-gold standard device isn’t benefiting you. It’s misleading you. So I won’t do it.

With that, let’s get into the sleep data, which is relatively simple, but obviously, a giant pile of data:

Oh, and a few more nights with the armband

Here are the key and consolidated takeaways from above:

1) Sleep times: The time I went to sleep and woke up were almost always spot-on (within a couple minutes), from not only Garmin Cirqa, but also the other wrist-worn devices. I do tend to see that bicep-worn devices are usually a bit less accurate for sleep, often including book/phone time in bed both prior to falling asleep and upon waking up. Whereas wrist-worn devices tend to be more correct there. I saw this with Cirqa, and have years of experience seeing this with Whoop.

First, the times I fell asleep. I’d argue that anything within 10 minutes of my estimate is good. I could have used 5 minutes, but realistically, my estimate could be off by a minute or two.

In the majority of cases, most devices picked these up within 5 minutes of falling asleep, with occasionally a few others pushing closer to 10 minutes.

And then, the times I woke up:

In general, most devices tended to stick the landing on wake-up times better, because it usually means I’m up and moving (walking around/etc), though sometimes I’m lazy in bed for a few minutes in the morning. Notably, with Cirqa, if you use the internal alarm (vibration alarm), it’ll automatically end your sleep at whatever time that alarm is set for, regardless of whether you hit snooze or not. The Garmin Sleep Index does the exact same thing.

Finally, here’s sleep duration. Note this is *not* ‘time in bed’, but rather, the ‘awake’ time total duration per night.

There’s obviously no reference on this, as each company assigns sleep stages differently, and since there’s no 90%+ accurate way to determine that, the amount of time per ‘asleep’ stages with any sort of pseudo-gold-standard comparison device could still be upwards of an hour off in terms of those stages and counting ‘awake’ time (which again, is crazy pants). Either way, you can see just how different some of these estimates can be, from all companies.

3) Sleep Scores: These all roughly trended together for the most part. Still, given that every company has different algorithms and there are no actual standards here, you see that at least once every wearable had a ‘weird’ day that just didn’t match the others. Most sleep scores are dependent on time in Deep/REM sleep, which is going to be hyper-variable.

4) HRV Data: The HRV data trended very similar to all the other devices. It’s very tricky to get really clean HRV data night after night from a Polar H10 strap (they tend to slide at night in a bed). Plus, due to the slightly different ways each company does averaging, there would be a difference here. Instead, I’m really focused on whether or not there are any outliers here.

The general trend here (that I’ve seen many times over) is really that the Fitbit Air tends to be the lowest of the group, consistently, and Amazfit tends to be one of the higher ones. Everyone else is sorta just in the middle-ground of ‘similar enough’. The only positive thing with HRV scores is that as long as that device is consistent to itself, HRV scores/ranges are different per person, and thus it doesn’t matter a ton since you’re scored against your own baseline.

4) Breathing Rate: Again, there are clearly slight differences in algorithms, but for the most part everyone was within 1brpm on any given night. Nobody was crazy-pants off, or meaningfully off. In this context, there’s just no difference between 13brpm and 14brpm in terms of your health stats.

Ultimately, in 2026, there really isn’t any meaningful difference between these companies for sleep data. I know people like to think there is based on things that happened a decade ago, but when comparing the latest generations of devices from each company, I’m getting super similar results. Equally so, I can point to wrong nights from every one of these companies. I’ve got literal years of data, but can easily pick out a single slightly offset night from every single one of these companies over the last month, where a given edge-case scenario threw it for a loop.

Accuracy of Step Data:

Perhaps this should be called ’differences in step data’, as determining accuracy in real-world situations is frankly quite tricky. Sure, it’s easy enough to count 500 steps and compare, and as I’ll show you, all activity monitors do that within a reasonable definition of perfectly fine. Instead, where things get tricky is navigating the wonkiness of your daily life. Washing dishes, taking a shower, pushing a shopping cart, partial steps while cutting/doing food prep, and tossing things in a garbage/compost bin half a step away. Does it count, does it not?

So instead, in this section I want to look at a simple 500-step test count, and then look at some daily total comparisons. As one who has been testing activity/step trackers for more than 15 years, the main thing here is consistency in numbers, rather than exact step counts. You’re never going to get a perfect counting of every single step (or half step), from any unit. Instead, you want mostly accurate numbers that don’t do too many crazy things (like counting while driving, or massive additions while doing dishes, etc…).

To start off, here’s a simple 500 step-count challenge. I just counted off 500 steps on pavement. Nothing fancy. I recorded the before values, then stopped and ensured everything was ‘synced’ before writing down an ‘end’ value. This was an out-and-back section of pavement, with two slight riser hills in each direction.

Fitbit Air (wrist): 500 steps (seriously, exactly spot-on)
Amazfit Helio (bicep): 505 steps
Garmin Cirqa (wrist): 509 steps
Polar Loop (bicep): 510 steps
Garmin Cirqa (bicep): 520 steps
Whoop (wrist): 530 steps

Fun but kinda useless tidbit: The Whoop band takes a *really* long time to reconcile steps, seemingly a ~10-minute interval. So you have to sit there a long time before/after to ensure it’s “caught up”. Fitbit is instant (live), Garmin is near-live, Amazfit is reasonable enough, and Polar sync takes almost as long as the walk itself. In any case, that’s that.

So, what about the entire day? Let’s look at a few days that were ‘clean’; in other words, all trackers were worn the full day, without any intermissions for charging. Here are three days’ worth that are interesting:

Day London City Tourist: This was an entire day spent with the kids on a day-trip to London during a connecting layover. So we started at the airport hotel in the morning, had a train ride to the city, London Eye, miles of walking, theatre performance, more miles of walking, a bike ride, more walking, a train, and more walking. A good variability to see how these trends emerge. Here’s those results

Day 3hr Bike & Such: This day included a lazy start, then a 3-hour gravel bike ride, some errands, and a bit of work/etc at home. Nothing crazy, but totally different activities.

Day Interval Run & Lazy: This day included basically a morning interval run (10KM), and then mostly nothing else except lounging around the house sitting and some work. Minor household things. Basically a mostly lazy day.

And thus, here are the results of those days:

As you can see, there’s about a 5-8% difference across the board for non-riding days. Yet, for riding days, we see both Amazfit and Polar substantially higher than the others. That’s because both companies ‘convert’ non-step workouts (such as cycling) into steps, using some magical equation. There’s plenty of debate to have about that practice; I’ve covered it numerous times before. TLDR: I think it’s dumb. But hey, it is what it is.

Either way, setting aside those algorithm decisions, all of these are in the same general ballpark of one another. Being off by 5-8% is not going to make or break any fitness plan here.

Calories Burned Differences:

Sometimes a chart is just easier. Below are basically two charts in one:

– A chart portion showing daily totals amongst the devices. I’d caution that Oura daily calorie totals are a hot mess, especially if workouts are involved. So…yeah.

– A chart portion showing a handful of individual workouts where all devices recorded ‘evenly’ (meaning, properly captured the workout with the same rough timings).

This is pretty straightforward really, so, here ya go (note my weight is set the same in all apps):

In general, across these values in the chart and others, I find the following:

– The Garmin Cirqa tends to err on the lower side of things, because (I suspect) in some of these specific workouts (like the interval run), it substantially undershot on my heart rate. Same goes for the gravel ride that would undershoot some of the quick HR spikes.

– The Fitbit Air tends to be the higher side of things. There’s no one specific thing, just…well…that’s where it floats.

– The Polar Loop tends to be even higher, often 50% higher than anyone else. There’s no obvious reason for this, but it’s been a consistent theme here.

– The Amazfit Helio somewhat interestingly has a static value for daily baseline, that doesn’t change at all regardless of how much non-workout activity you do. Meaning, active calories only trigger for things that trigger a workout (like a run, ride, or a long walk). Otherwise, there’s no additional calories awarded for a generally busy/walkable day that doesn’t trigger a workout. Instead, it just assigns a value of 2,139c per day for my baseline ‘being alive’. Kinda weird.

– Whoop’s daily totals are supposed to include your baseline rates, and it must, but man, its total calories are just super low across the board for the rest of the day, consistently. Its per-workout totals are in the ballpark of others, however.

Ultimately, I find these values are at least ‘consistent’. As I’ve long said, trying to compare exact calories or exact steps on any given day is mostly a recipe for disappointment. The same is true for looking at these calorie values and eating just below it, hoping to lose a bit of weight (or any other variation). Instead, you should be assigning an error margin buffer to calorie burn *estimates*, and likewise, if counting calories on food, do the same there as well.

Overall Accuracy Thoughts:

In the case of Garmin, while they have clearly made gains in the automatic workout detection over the past two weeks since launch, there are still some areas for improvement. And more critically, Garmin absolutely needs to figure out how to increase the heart rate fidelity, so that you can tweak those exercise times (before/after) to not be missing data (especially after). This simply isn’t an issue on Whoop or Fitbit. Beyond that, as you saw above, I had a few running interval workouts where accuracy just didn’t align with expectations (especially in cooler-temp scenarios). I don’t think that’s a Gen4 thing per se, since I’ve done gazillions of other workouts on other Garmin watches with Gen4 in identical conditions without any issue. Perhaps if I had many more weeks of data to figure out the nuances of why this specific workout keeps failing, I’d have different opinions, but that’s the cards I’m dealt.

In terms of bicep band or not, the answer is super simple (and identical to my years of testing with Whoop, as well as my year+ experience with Amazfit and Polar on the wrist and bicep band). For workouts, the bicep band will generally produce heart-rate strap level accuracy. In fact, it often exceeds it, since it’s not susceptible to various chest-strap quirks (such as dryness in cooler temps, heavy sweat artifacts in hotter temps). Inversely, for bed times, the wrist is better, as the bicep band tends to miscalculate sleep start/end points if on a phone/book. Again, all these companies are identical in this regard. Lastly, for daily usage outside of workout/sleep, it simply doesn’t matter; it’s a wash.

Hopefully this helps you figure out if the Garmin Cirqa is accurate enough for you and your needs

With that, thanks for reading!

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Garmin Cirqa (Black)

Amazon REI

Here's a few other variants or sibling products that are worth considering:

Garmin Acquires Training Peaks & TrainHeroic: What Does it Mean?

Ray Maker — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 17:17:36 +0000

Garmin announced today that it has acquired TrainingPeaks & TrainHeroic (TrainHeroic was part of TrainingPeaks). Garmin hasn’t announced how much it spent, or really much else except that it did. As you can see below, the press release is pretty thin on details. Still, I’ve got some thoughts about what this means for consumers and the industry alike.

Obviously, TrainingPeaks has been around a long time, as somewhat the de facto platform for coaches and athletes over the past decades. I started using it way back in 2008 while training for my first Ironman with a coach. I still use it today, albeit with less focus than I did in the past. My wife also uses it with her coach as well, for all of her training. Point being, I’ve been pretty familiar with the platform and its target audiences for quite a long time.

The Core Details:

First though, let’s just briefly throw the press release into this post, for historical purposes. Here it is:

SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland/July 22, 2026 — Garmin Ltd. (NYSE: GRMN) today announced it has acquired the TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic training platforms for athletes and coaches. The acquisition strengthens Garmin’s fitness ecosystem with customizable coaching experiences for endurance, strength and performance-focused athletes across every stage of their fitness journey.

“TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic share Garmin’s passion for empowering athletes and coaches around the world with world-class training tools, performance metrics and actionable insights. The addition of these highly successful platforms to the Garmin ecosystem will expand access to more authentic coaching experiences—connecting athletes with professional coaches who guide, motivate and inspire them to reach their goals.” –Brad Trenkle, Garmin Co-Chief Operating Officer

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Garmin to advance our shared mission of empowering coaches and athletes with science-based training. For over a decade, we’ve worked together to democratize coaching and performance insights, helping millions of athletes reach their peak through data-driven, structured training.” –Andy Stephens, CEO of Peaksware Holdings, parent company of TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic

TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic are digital services specializing in connecting coaches and athletes of all abilities who are looking to improve. Headquartered in Louisville, Colo., 120 combined associates from TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic will join Garmin’s global workforce. Financial terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed.

[Update/Added] Next, since publishing this post, a number of hours later TrainingPeaks has finally sent out a note to their coaches. Here’s what that said:

Hello There,

We’re excited to announce that we are now part of Garmin which you can read all about here.

Our objective is to expand access to more authentic coaching experiences – connecting athletes with human coaches who guide, motivate and inspire them to reach their goals.

As a valued customer we wanted to proactively assure you that TrainingPeaks will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem, enabling athletes and coaches to use the devices, platforms and services that best suit their needs.

We are incredibly excited for the capabilities this expanded ecosystem will enable for you to continue to grow and develop as an athlete.

Thank you for your continued support.

All the best,
Lee Gerakos
Managing Director

Got all that? Good. As I said, there’s basically nothing in terms of actual details on what’s changing. The only detail is that seemingly all employees are being retained, assuming 120 employees was the total count (I asked for clarity there, but just got the press release numbers back). Of course, keeping the employees makes sense on multiple levels. First, to maintain and expand the TrainingPeaks/TrainHeroic platform, and second, because Garmin needs all the fitness-deep engineers it can find. It’s an easy decision.

Note that the musical platforms that TrainingPeaks umbrella company (Peaksware Holdings) has, aren’t included in the acquisition, and remain with them.

However, this acquisition does include TrainingPeaks Virtual, formerly Indievelo, which TrainingPeaks acquired a bit back in 2024. That’s the Zwift-like competitor platform that now integrates more tightly with the larger TrainingPeaks platform.

Now, when you look at the broader TrainingPeaks platform, you’ve got basically a few core things:

1) The TrainingPeaks website/app where athletes log their workouts, synced in from all manner of devices
2) The coaching side to that equation, where athletes’ coaches see those workouts, and manage full businesses using TrainingPeaks as platform for that
3) Training plans that are sold to athletes for all sorts of sports
4) Coaching directory, which ties into the coaching business above
5) TrainingPeaks Virtual, which is included with TP subscriptions, for indoor cycling
6) Licensing of TrainingPeaks metrics like TSS/NP/IF to companies, including Garmin, Wahoo, etc… for various metrics.

Most of these haven’t really changed over the years. TrainingPeaks as a company has done various smaller spin-off athletic projects here and there, but few of them have ever really caught on. There’s also the WKO desktop software, but best I can tell from the release notes, it hasn’t seen updates in 2 years, and even before that it was slim pickings.

Meanwhile, for TrainHeroic, they are/were mostly focused on the strength side of the question. They boasted some 500,000 users and 10,000 coaches, and have been around well over a decade.

What’s Valuable?

Anyway, looking at those pieces there, there’s a lot that Garmin could be going after, but I’ll be honest, I’m a bit puzzled on this one. If I look at the general trend here, it’s that AI coaching is eating into real coaching (substantially). Now, don’t get me wrong, I think AI coaching mostly sucks, especially compared to real (good) coaches. But that’s neither here nor there; a lot of people are just using one-off AI coaching plans and calling it done, especially at the more basic level.

Which is another way of saying that I question how TrainingPeaks was doing in terms of growth, faced with the headwinds of AI apps. They are obviously super well known and respected, but also not really pushing the boundaries of technology (nor have they for many years). Instead, they were/are really good at being consistent and stable, something that (notoriously finicky) coaches tend to appreciate. And in many ways, athletes too. The system ‘just worked’ day in and day out, even if it was rarely on the leading edge of technology.

If I look at what Garmin might want here, there are a few things, and my thoughts:

1) The structured training plans from TrainingPeaks: This is logical, though, Gamin already has many of these and can mostly cover the same sports that TrainingPeaks has.

2) The structured training plans from TrainHeroic: This is an area that has more potential for Garmin, especially as they try and expand into this area.

3) TrainingPeaks Virtual: This has value, potentially substantial value, but only if Garmin invests heavily in it, and wants to make a go at competing with Zwift. Ultimately, if they just leave like it is, I’m not sure what the value is by itself, however, with Garmin Connect+…more on that in a moment. This however, is a piece that Garmin could more easily ‘Garminify’, since it was just recently done when Indievelo came over to TrainingPeaks.

4) The TrainingPeaks platform for athletes: Hot take here, I think this is overrated for Garmin to try and integrate. In fact, as one who worked in IT integrations of acquisitions for a decade+, I think there’s virtually zero chance they could integrate TrainingPeaks into Garmin Connect at a native/structural level. They are just too vastly different and massive platforms that don’t really allow for a marriage. Instead, they’d be operated separately.

5) The TrainingPeaks platform for coaches: This is just a layer atop the athlete platform, so they are treated as one and the same. Again, there’s zero chance Garmin can integrate this natively into other Garmin things, instead, everything will be partnership type integrations (from a technical layer).

6) The data within TrainingPeaks: I don’t think this actually has much value to Garmin. Again, hot take, but Garmin has *far* more data already in every possible way than TrainingPeaks does. Sure, there’s some competitive device data in there from Wahoo and the like, but again, that’s a drop in the olympic sized pool compared to what Garmin has. In fact, I’d even bet that Garmin generates more data within its user base every day than TP does in a year (if not far more). We’re likely talking 50-100 million users generating daily data, and the vast majority of TP data is likely from Garmin devices anyway. Finally, Garmin has hardly been on the leading edge of using big data for training models, so going out and getting a slightly different bucket of data doesn’t seem to hold much water.

So what’s Garmin’s thinking here? I suspect finding a way to eventually make Garmin Connect+ a thing people want to pay for. As I outlined in my Garmin Cirqa piece yesterday, Garmin has a very legit problem where Connect+ simply doesn’t offer a compelling reason for people to pay for it. I don’t. In fact, I let my subscription lapse this past April; it just doesn’t add anything to my life.

Yet, if they add in TrainingPeaks in some sort of tier? Now we’re talking. Same goes for TrainingPeaks Virtual as an indoor platform.

In fact, while the pricing for TrainingPeaks as a user platform exceeds that of Garmin Connect+, I think they could split out access, and offer TrainingPeaks Virtual within the Garmin Connect+ membership as a really interesting way to immediately increase the appeal to at least cyclists. Keeping in mind we’re talking about a platform (TPV) that was free before the TrainingPeaks acquisition. We know that the software development team is super lean there (and super talented).

Which to me almost sets the stage for two different Garmin Connect+ tiers, one including access to the full TrainingPeaks analytics suite as an athlete, and one including other TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic features at a more normal price point. While Garmin might try to make the argument that adding too many features to Connect+ would ‘cheapen’ the platform, I’d argue the opposite: It strengthens it. Because right now, there’s no compelling reason for most people to subscribe.

The Concerns:

Still, I have some very real concerns here. Let’s get right into them.

First, will Garmin block access to 3rd-party companies, like Wahoo and others, from uploading to TrainingPeaks? If so, coaches will quickly migrate to other coaching platforms out there, despite how much coaches (rightfully) dislike moving platforms. The key aspect of TrainingPeaks that made it successful is being data-neutral. I asked Garmin for an answer to this, but I haven’t received a reply back on that question yet.

Second, will Garmin still allow licensing of the TrainingPeaks metrics to various device makers/platforms that leverage it today? Back when Garmin acquired FirstBeat, they said they would allow such licensing. But over time that slowly disappeared, and today FirstBeat doesn’t do any licensing to 3rd-parties for their metrics to new customers as far as I know. In the grand scheme of things, most TrainingPeaks metrics can be emulated (near identically) without the TrainingPeaks name, so this isn’t quite as critical as the others. Still, it’s notable.

Third, will Garmin actually maintain and improve the platform? Garmin doesn’t have any viable pathway to consolidating the TrainingPeaks platform into Garmin Connect. From a technical standpoint, even the most talented tech acquisition integration teams would struggle heavily to consolidate these very different platforms. Structurally, they are so fundamentally old and different. Further, Garmin themselves have a long history of being unable to integrate 3rd-party platforms. We can look at the original MotionBased platform (which became Garmin Connect), or things like the DeLorme platform (which became inReach). Both well over a decade ago. In the case of inReach, we’ve only recently seen some tech changes there to light up various new features. I suspect behind the scenes it’s still totally separate. All of which ignores Tacx basically running as-is (with improvements, to be fair), ever since. Point being, Garmin is going to have to effectively maintain TrainingPeaks forever, hopefully with new features. At some point, someone might see that budget line item and question it.

Fourth, what does this mean to coaches? At this point, there’s been no real communication to TrainingPeaks coaches as far as I know, on what this means to them (in any way). So that’s a big ticket item. [Update, a few hours later, TrainingPeaks has sent out a short e-mail to coaches, which I’ve added above in the post.]

All of these are fuzzy, and when asked for more detail, there are no promises or detail to be had. Usually acquisitions have slightly more information, though, Garmin does tend to provide virtually no information on acquisitions.

Wrap-Up:

Garmin has made many fitness acquisitions over the years, some really compelling (like Backtracker, which then launched and became Garmin Varia radar, well loved by many), others that fired a blank (like Alphamantis aero sensors), and some in between, like Tacx (which cost Garmin a boatload, but hasn’t really produced many new products since). But the vast majority are hugely successful (like DeLorme). For ones like the FirstBeat acquisition, there have been pretty clear benefits to Garmin users, even if at the expense of (many) competitors. In that case, such is business. Those companies had to go out and develop their own algorithms. And then there are more recent ones like MyLaps for timing, which it’s a bit too soon to see that one play out.

On the scale of user bases, the TrainingPeaks one is likely up there as one of the biggest, alongside Tacx. Sure, there were more people crossing a finish line with MyLaps hardware at that time, but that hardly counts as an end-user in this context.

One of the things that I think separates this acquisition from those, is I feel like in most other Garmin acquisitions, the company being acquired either has some unique new technology Garmin wants, or Garmin is buying it so someone else doesn’t. In this case though, I’m struggling to classify TrainingPeaks as either of those two things – especially in the face of a rise of AI training apps. I don’t see someone like Strava seriously fishing to buy TrainingPeaks. They already bought others, and adding more to their balance sheet ahead of an IPO doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Instead, it seems logical that Garmin is looking to see if it can increase its subscription revenue, possibly via putting coaching aspects (plans or otherwise) into some sort of Connect+ bucket, or perhaps just keeping it standalone. Ultimately, if there’s one truism of Garmin acquisitions, it is that they are very rarely wrong (from a Garmin business standpoint). Sorta like Garmin’s legal team. We just don’t necessarily see what the full picture is immediately, or even in the medium term.

Only time will tell, both in terms of the impact on Garmin, but also to consumers.

With that, thanks for reading!

DC Rainmaker

Massive News: COROS To Add Full Mapping to Pace 4 Watches

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COROS Pace 4

COROS Pace 4 (White Silicone Band)

COROS Pace 4 (Black Nylon Band)

Google Pixel Watch 5 In-Depth Review: Is It Enough?

The Key Updates:

The Basics:

Sports Tracking:

GPS Accuracy:

Heart Rate Accuracy:

What’s Next for Pixel Watch?

Wrap-Up:

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Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm WiFi)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (45mm LTE)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (Steph Curry Special Edition)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm LTE)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (45mm WiFi)

Existing Garmin Watches Will Get Fenix 9 Features: Here’s the Full Details!

The Software Changes:

Fenix 9 Series Features Only:

Going Forward:

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Garmin Fenix 9 AMOLED

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro inReach SOLAR

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro SOLAR

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro InReach AMOLED

Garmin Fenix 9 Pro AMOLED

Garmin Cirqa In-Depth Review: Reality vs Expectations

The Key Specs & Bits:

In the Box:

The Hardware:

General Daily Usage & Metrics

Sleep Metrics and Alarms:

Workout Usage:

Training Status & Training Readiness:

The Biceps (Arm) Band:

Accuracy of Data:

Battery Life:

The Bugs:

Garmin Connect+ Subscription:

Wrap-Up:

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Garmin Cirqa (Black)

Garmin Cirqa (French Grey)

Garmin Cirqa (Blue)

Garmin Cirqa (Muave)

Insta360 X6 In-Depth Review: Worth The Upgrade?

Google Pixel Watch 5 Accuracy Deep-Dive: Most Accurate GPS Watch Ever?

Pixel Watch 5 – What’s New?

Google’s GPS Changes Outlined:

GPS Accuracy Results:

New Pixel Watch 5 Changes in Detail:

Final Thoughts:

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Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm WiFi)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (45mm LTE)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (Steph Curry Special Edition)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (41mm LTE)

Google Pixel Watch 5 (45mm WiFi)

Garmin Cirqa Accuracy Deep-Dive Review (vs Whoop 5.0, Fitbit Air, Amazfit Helio, Polar Loop)

A Quick Note on Placement:

Accuracy of Heart Rate During Workouts:

Accuracy of Workout/Activity Recognition:

Accuracy of Sleep Data:

Accuracy of Step Data:

Calories Burned Differences:

Overall Accuracy Thoughts:

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Garmin Cirqa (Black)

Garmin Cirqa (French Grey)

Garmin Cirqa (Blue)

Garmin Cirqa (Muave)

Garmin Acquires Training Peaks & TrainHeroic: What Does it Mean?

The Core Details:

What’s Valuable?

The Concerns:

Wrap-Up: