The CIRQA and Whoop Killers: are new bands about to spoil the screenless wearable party?

Killing a killer that has not shipped sounds absurd. It’s not. Garmin CIRQA is days or weeks from launch and expected to be the most credible Whoop competitor yet, and the brands watching from the sidelines are not waiting to see how it performs. They are watching the category’s economics.

Whoop surpassed an estimated $1bn in revenue in 2025, with band sales up 103% and a reported 2.5 million subscribers. Polar LOOP shipped. The Amazfit Helio Strap has shipped, and Zepp’s CEO has confirmed its Gen 2.0 successor. Fitbit AIR shipped at $99 sans subs. If Apple launched a band in September, every brand above $200 would pause its roadmap that afternoon.

In January, I scored the field, i.e. the chance of us seeing them deliver a supposed Whoop Killer.

• Garmin 90%,
• Oura and Ultrahuman 5%,
• Apple 0%,
• Samsung 2%.

This article argues that January-me was wrong about nearly everyone (except Garmin!). The case here is deliberately one-sided: only the positive argument, for eight brands. The counterarguments are your job. Get cracking.

---

Listen to the discussion

The barriers are gone.

The screenless recovery band has no hardware moat. The sensor module is a commodity, the algorithms increasingly ship bundled with it, and a lighter band may track sport on the wrist better than the brand’s own watch because less mass means less movement artefact. Supply chain complexities are solved; third-party manufacturers quote you by Friday. Whoop’s trade dress lawsuits are a speed bump for any company that diligently researches patents before deftly engineering a workaround. Even distribution risk can be straightforward, i.e. launch directly, and through your existing Amazon storefront, bring the retail partners in once the product proves itself. Sorted.

The price corridor is already known: $99 at the floor, set by Fitbit AIR, and around $400 at the ceiling, set by Whoop’s first-year cost. Three business models sit on the shelf: free, subscription, and hybrid. Simple to understand but hard to get right.

Only one barrier remains. The app. A recovery band is 95% software, and building credible HRV baselines, sleep staging and readiness modelling is a tricky but surmountable task. Tricky is what keeps the cheap clones out. Every one of these eight already runs a mature platform.

Ultrahuman

This fast mover in wearables already sells the business model that this category is converging on. The Ring AIR is subscription-free at purchase, with paid PowerPlugs layered on top for those who want more: the hybrid template, proven at scale. The recovery, sleep, and HRV algorithms exist today; the customer base is exactly Whoop’s; and the marketing already targets the same athlete. The only new engineering is a larger optical module on a strap, and that module is an off-the-shelf purchase with algorithms included. Ultrahuman has launched several rings, blood biomarker panels, CGM M1 and a home air monitor in recent years. A band is the smallest product gap left on its list.

Huawei

TruSense is among the best optical sensor platforms tested here on the GT Runner 2 and the GT 6 Pro, and the Health app already runs 24/7 recovery, sleep and readiness metrics for millions. The manufacturing scale is in-house. The home market alone justifies the product: a $79 band sold in volume across China, with a customer appetite to buy add-ons from the app, it will be the Fitbit AIR play executed at Huawei’s cost base. Western distribution friction does not matter when the first ten million units never leave Asia. No brand on this list can ship a competent recovery band faster or cheaper, perhaps even better, and Huawei always grabs the category opportunities it wants to.

Oura

A wrist band looks like brand heresy until you watch someone rack a barbell. Rings and lifting do not mix, and Oura knows precisely how many of its members log gym sessions. A band fills that gap without a single new algorithm: the platform, the readiness model, and the subscription already exist, and current members would pay nothing more for the subs – two products increase lock-in and further justify the subs. That is frictionless, full-market expansion, which is exactly the story Oura’s confidential IPO filing needs to tell. An Oura Band could launch quietly and sit alongside Oura Ring 5 on the homepage store and existing Amazon storefront, with zero retail channel risk. The company most identified with one form factor has the least work to do to add a second.

Coros

Coros has already built most of a recovery band. The armband heart rate monitor is the hardware precedent, and the earbuds show a willingness to experiment outside watches. The brand was the first in endurance sport to ship an MCP server, the tech-glue that allows AI assistants to read training data directly; a screenless band feeding an AI coach is the logical next node in that architecture.

Coros is a pseudo-value brand, and the sub-$200 end of the corridor is where value brands think they can win.

Suunto

ZoneSense proved that Suunto still adds original sports science, deriving aerobic and anaerobic thresholds from heart rate data the competition treats as noise: niche, but exactly the algorithmic confidence a recovery band needs. A new HRM, CORE watch, and earbuds confirm an active hardware pipeline. The range gap is at the bottom: Suunto sells nothing below its watches, and a band gives the brand a sub-$150 entry point that recruits new athletes into the app, runs its physiology models around the clock, and feeds better readiness numbers back to the Race 2 on the wrist.

A band adds an easy second revenue line, and at the same time, encourages ecosystem lock-in. Lock-in that eventually will result in watch upgrades. The manufacturing question answers itself: Suunto’s owner, Liesheng, already runs the lower-end Haylou wearables brand and manufactures in volume.

Samsung

Samsung already sold you half the argument. The Galaxy Ring exists because Samsung believes in screenless 24/7 tracking; the Energy Score readiness model exists because Samsung Health already computes recovery. A band is the cheaper, gym-safe sibling of the ring, sharing the same algorithms and the same app. Samsung runs a self-contained ecosystem in the Apple mould, not a generic Android accessory business, and every band sold locks a Galaxy phone owner deeper into Samsung Health. The hardware is a fraction of the ring’s manufacturing complexity.

Apple

Health+ was rumoured to be scaled back in February, dropped from iOS 27, with its components drip-fed instead, and Fitness+ is under review, with Gurman suggesting a merged health subscription. Read that as a service searching for a hardware hook. A screenless band is the hook: it serves the watch-refusers, covers the overnight hours when the Apple Watch Ultra 3 sits on a charger, gives a pseudo-alternative to a ring, and supports the merged and strategically well-fitted Health+/Fitness+ subscription, a $99 to $199 on-ramp that an $800 watch cannot be. Apple has the sensors, the silicon, the Health app and more than two billion devices to sell it through. A September launch would be the category’s defining event, which is precisely why Apple would want it.

Garmin is stronger on iOS. Here lies the Garmin CIRQA killer.

Wahoo

The hardest case is the best fit. The TRACKR heart rate monitor proved that Wahoo can do on-body optical sensing well, and its customers are the most recovery-obsessed demographic in endurance sport: cyclists who already track TSB in the Wahoo app and structure entire seasons around form and fatigue. A 24/7 band completes the model Wahoo already half-runs, adding the HRV-led recovery side to the training load side it has shipped for years. The app needs work to accommodate that, and the COROS link-up muddies the route, but Wahoo built its entire company by spotting one unglamorous product the big brands ignored. It has seen this gap before.

The scorecard

Brand	Likelihood	Model	Price	Impact
Ultrahuman	8	Hybrid, paid add-ons	$149	Direct Whoop assault from the brand built to make one. Middle market impact.
Huawei	9	Hybrid, modest paid add-ons	$79	Resets the floor below Fitbit AIR, volume play. Regional. Minimal impact.
Oura	9	Hybrid, existing subscription	$199	Direct Whoop assault. Closes the gym gap, expands the IPO story. Impactful.
Coros	8	No subs	$129	The AI-coach band, value corridor winner. Some middle-market impact.
Suunto	8	No subs	$149	A customer lock-in move. Minimal market impact.
Samsung	7	Hybrid, subscription tier	$179	Galaxy Ring’s cheaper sibling, Android lock-in. Minimal market impact.
Apple	7	Subscription, merged Health+ service	$199	Category extinction event, but for whom? Whoop or Garmin?
Wahoo	7	No subs	$129	Completes the TSB model, which its cyclists already live by. Minimal market impact.

The 12-month call

Huawei ships first, in Asia, at a price the rest cannot match. Oura announces before it ships, timed to its IPO window. Ultrahuman follows within the year because speed is its entire corporate personality. The other five take longer, and Apple takes the longest, but the direction is set. CIRQA will not have killed Whoop. It will have proved to every boardroom on this list that the category is worth entering, and more recovery trackers are coming than any of us will have wrist space for.

That is the prosecution’s case, deliberately one-sided. Now argue against it. Comments below.

Quick answers

Is Garmin CIRQA already a Whoop killer?
CIRQA hasn’t officially launched yet. It is the most credible Whoop competitor to date based on leaks and Connect app code, but until it ships and is tested, that question is open.

Which of these eight brands is most likely to launch a screenless band first?
This article makes the case for Huawei first (price and manufacturing speed), followed by Oura (IPO timing incentive) and Ultrahuman (track record of fast launches). The counterarguments are in the comments.

Do these bands require a subscription like Whoop?
Three business models are emerging: free (likely Garmin CIRQA, Coros, Wahoo), subscription (Whoop, possibly Apple), and hybrid with a free tier plus paid features (Oura, Fitbit AIR, Huawei). Most of the brands argued for here would likely go free or hybrid to undercut Whoop.

Last Updated on 29 June 2026 by the5krunner