Garmin CIRQA, EU Features, Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro: Week in Brief

Three stories worth your attention this week: Garmin is quietly building toward a screenless recovery band called CIRQA, EU regulations just handed Garmin owners iPhone features they never had, and Amazfit came back swinging with the Cheetah 2 Pro. A lot moving at once in the wearables space.

The CIRQA leak is the most interesting long-term play. Code spotted inside the Connect app points to a device with no display, built around the existing Connect+ subscription model. That puts it squarely in Whoop 5.0 territory: a band you wear 24/7, focused on recovery metrics, optical PPG at the wrist for heart rate and HRV, no buttons to press. Garmin already has the ecosystem. The question is whether athletes will pay a monthly fee on top of Garmin hardware prices that already start around 300 dollars.

On the EU front, iOS 26.5 brings two features to EU Garmin users that Apple Watch owners in the same region have had for years: reply-from-wrist and Live Activities. Brussels forced the door open via the Digital Markets Act. US and UK users get nothing, at least for now. It is a real quality-of-life upgrade for EU athletes who refused to switch to Apple Watch but always envied the notification handling.

The Amazfit Cheetah 2 Pro is the brand's first serious running watch since the original Cheetah line, and it shows. Titanium case, sapphire crystal, tested against Garmin, Polar, and Stryd references across running, cycling, and swimming. The price jumped fifty percent over its predecessor, which puts it in a more competitive bracket against the Garmin Forerunner 965 and Coros Pace 3 Pro. Whether the GPS accuracy and optical sensor data hold up against those references is the real test.

Short verdict: CIRQA is a watch-this space situation. The EU Garmin update is genuinely useful for a chunk of our readers. And Amazfit is clearly trying to earn a seat at the serious endurance watch table.