Tech Advisor
If a recent Reddit post is to be believed, it seems as if the much rumoured Garmin Cirqa fitness band could be the solution to finally give the company’s automatic workout detection a shot in the arm. The now deleted post, spotted by Gadgets & Wearables , explained that the rumoured Cirqa could work as both an independent fitness tracker, much like the Whoop Strap 5.0, but that if you have a Garmin watch to hand, then it would work in tandem with the wearable to fill in the gaps, namely with auto detection, which is an area where Garmin watches have typically struggled with. Although this claim needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, having some sort of communication between the Cirqa and Garmin smartwatches would make sense, and would be remarkably like a big feature of the freshly launched Fitbit Air . Google’s budget-priced screenless fitness tracker is able to work with the Pixel Watch 4 (and previous iterations), filling in the blanks during instances where you’ve removed the watch from your wrist or together for more accurate data. Credit: Stylus Store According to the post, the Cirqa would use its sensors to detect a sustained period of movement and then engage with the watch to activate GPS tracking, which the user could potentially dismiss if they don’t want location data. The current state of automatic tracking At present, automatic workout detection is one of the weaker areas of Garmin’s fitness tracking ecosystem. It is possible for Garmin’s software to detect workouts without a manual prompt via the Move IQ system, but these events are not recorded in your activity history, so there’s very little incentive to rely on it. By comparison, competing wearables like the Apple Watch Series 11 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 are far better at recognising workouts automatically, and give the user an opportunity to confirm if a workout is taking place. Thomas Deehan / Foundry While automatic workout detection is unlikely to be used at the start of an official run or when down at the gym, it helps with recognising other exercises, such as walking and hiking, that you might not consider as being worthy of tracking, but can make a huge difference to your overall cardiovascular health. At this point in time, there’s still a lot that we don’t know about Garmin’s screenless band, but one recent rumour did point towards a potentially high price tag for the device, which could significantly hamper its chances against the wonderfully affordable £84.99/$99.99 price tag of the Fitbit Air.
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