- 9 minutes ago
Looking for a fitness tracker without a screen? We review the top 5 screenless fitness trackers of 2026, including the premium Whoop 5.0, the budget-friendly Google Fitbit Air, Garmin Circa, and Polar Loop. Discover which one is best for your needs!
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:04I review smartwatches and other fitness devices for a living and if you've paid attention over
00:08the last year you'll have seen screenless fitness trackers once the province of just
00:12Whoop evolved to a whole sub-genre of wearables. So is Whoop still top of the heap or can you
00:17get
00:17just as good fitness tracking from the newer cheaper competitors from both big names and
00:22small? I've tested five of this year's best screenless fitness trackers, wearing them in
00:26daily life, testing them against heart rate monitors and even as you can see here testing
00:31them against each other. Before we dive into this video make sure to scan this QR code to learn more
00:36about becoming a tech radar insider. Membership is completely free and gives you access to exclusive
00:41perks rewards and more. So who wins the battle of fitness trackers? Let's show you our top five
00:46picks one by one starting with the original the Whoop. When I reviewed the Whoop MG in September
00:542025 I thought the app was one of the best laid out wearable interfaces I'd ever seen. It offers
00:59lots of metrics including unique ones like bodily strain, had AI that was actually useful in comparison
01:05to the little tidbits we were getting at the time from the likes of Garmin and Strava and a great
01:09workout builder. But it was so detailed and so expensive that I thought the user base likely to get
01:15enough value out of it was pretty narrow and one year on I stand by that assessment. The Whoop 5
01:20.0 is a
01:21band with a slim puck weighing 26 grams on the heavier end for these trackers. You can get bicep
01:26bands and clothing including underwear with pockets for the tracker if you don't want to wear it on your
01:30wrist. It contains an optical LED sensor array like all these bands, accelerometer and gyroscope and like
01:36all the others no GPS. It can also broadcast heart rate to another device like a treadmill or peloton and
01:41battery life is impressive at 14 days and it comes with two different kinds of charger a standard charging
01:46dock or a power pack like this one which you can charge independently. This means you
01:51never have to take your Whoop off and thus leave no moment untracked. Unlike any other wearable on
01:56this list you don't buy a Whoop, you buy a membership which is an annual subscription at one of three
02:02tiers and they send you a Whoop. If you don't renew your membership it becomes an inert hunk of plastic
02:07and metal. The bottom tier membership is Whoop 1 and this gives you the basic Whoop with a cable
02:12charging dock that costs $199. The middle tier adds more metrics like Whoop age and a stress score along
02:18with the power pack and at the top tier for $349 which affords you the Whoop MG instead of the
02:24Whoop
02:245.0. This upgraded tracker swaps the plastic clasp for metal, more accurate sensors, a nicer band and
02:30adds medical grade heart health features like an ECG scanning feature as well as the premium never take
02:35it off power pack. The problem with this pricing scheme is that while the Whoop ecosystem and the
02:40app is very very good, the battery life is great and the puck is nice and unobtrusive, it's actually quite
02:45bad
02:46value. Eventually, even the lowest tier is going to outcost any other fitness tracker you can get,
02:51especially the others on this list as they all cost around a year's annual membership to Whoop 1 and
02:56you own them outright, even if most of them have premium tier elements baked into their apps.
03:01The Whoop's also of limited use for runners and cyclists as having a screen to help you train with
03:05speed, heart rate zones and direction is just too useful. This is acceptable if you've got a cheaper
03:11device but at premium prices, the Whoop is hard to recommend for everybody.
03:17The Google Fitbit Air is slim and light, slimmer even than the Whoop 5.0, weighing just 5 grams
03:23or 12 grams with the strap. That's insanely light. It comes with a choice of one of three different
03:28band options, a silicon active band, a woven performance loop or a polyurethane elevated
03:34modern band. I'm wearing the performance loop at the moment. The Fitbit Air is lovely and light,
03:39which makes it incredibly comfortable to wear day and night, crucial for effective sleep tracking.
03:43It feels a bit like a toy bracelet, but I won't hold that against it as it's just down to
03:48that
03:48lack of weight. Many times during my testing period, I forgot it was on and it's slim enough that I've
03:54seen people online convert it so they can wear the Fitbit Air on the back of their watch straps.
03:58Sensor-wise, it has the LED sensor array, although not as many as some of the others on this list,
04:03along with the accelerometer and gyro as standard, and it packs a 7-day battery life. Impressive for a
04:08device of this size. It's even got a haptic vibrate smart alarm function like the Whoop,
04:12which is nice. We found it accurate in heart rate tracking compared to the Apple Watch Ultra 3,
04:16and generally a good performer for the price. The Google Fitbit Air costs $99, and for that you get
04:21access to all your basic metrics like heart rate, sleep score, readiness score, and new health guardian
04:27features like insulin resistance trends and blood pressure trends. The app is much messier and harder
04:32to use them, whoops, and that's largely because it was built for the Google Health Coach premium
04:36subscription program. This costs an additional $10 a month, or $100 a year, and it's basically a chat
04:43bot trained on lots of health data and content. You can upload pictures of your food to get an estimate
04:47of your macros, plan your diet, help you plan workouts, surface your metrics from within the app,
04:52and much more. During testing, I found it useful and flexible enough, especially for nutrition
04:57logging and workout building, but there have been reports of inaccuracies online, plus my tolerance
05:02for interacting with chatbots is quite low. I'd much rather just tap a button to get the information
05:07I need, rather than type out my request in natural language. The Garmin Circuit is my Goldilocks tracker.
05:16It's got granularity and lots of metrics like the Whoop, but it's still pretty good value like the
05:20Google Fitbit Air, rounding out the top three. As a result, I called it the best screenless fitness
05:25tracker of 2026 overall in my review, and I think it'll hit that sweet spot for most people. The
05:30Garmin Circuit is a bit larger than the Fitbit, weighing 21 grams, and it's got the usual array
05:34of LEDs, SP02, accelerometer, and gyroscope via Garmin's Elevate V4 heart rate sensor array.
05:41Battery life is seven days, and it uses the proprietary Garmin cable just like the usual Garmin watches do.
05:46Plus, my favourite bit of design, it's got a tactile button. Press it once to start a workout,
05:51and once to stop a workout, and you get a vibration each time to tell you it's
05:55worked. It's much better than relying on the other app's automatic activity tracking detection,
05:59and as somebody who just likes tactile things, it instantly endeared the Garmin circle to me.
06:05You can also use the button to stop the haptic alarm. It comes in four different colour fabric
06:09bands, but no other material option. I would have liked to have seen a silicone option here,
06:13but it's not a deal breaker. The device costs $199, and you get a lot for your money,
06:18including access to Garmin's excellent suite of Garmin Connect features. Lots of metrics,
06:22including sleep score, heart rate, and daily readiness scores like the Fitbit,
06:26and VO2 max, Garmin's fitness age, and stress, which you can only get on higher tier whoop subscriptions.
06:33Performance wise, it performed well against my heart rate monitor, accurate enough on regular
06:37basis for general purposes, and it's also great for Garmin users that use its edge cycling computers,
06:42as cyclists can see their route maps on their consoles and get their metrics on wrist. An additional $7 a
06:48month gets you Garmin Connect Plus with its AI nutrition logging and Garmin Coach training plans.
06:56The Helio strap from Amazfit is another budget option, costing $100 in the US, and like the Fitbit,
07:03it's got an optional add-on for an AI wellness advisor in the app, along with lots of audio content
07:07like
07:07relaxation and meditation, which costs $70 for an annual subscription. Amazfit's gone all in on value to
07:14make a device that isn't as slim and unobtrusive as the Fitbit Air, but certainly is as equivalent in
07:19terms of basic features and value. It's very light at 20 grams and comes with a wrist strap as standard,
07:24although like whoop and Garmin before it, it also offers an arm strap at an additional cost,
07:28although that strap is cheaper than either of the other two's bicep bands. It's quite proud on the wrist,
07:33and as you can see on the band, this is the Hirox version, as Amazfit is the official timekeeper of
07:38the
07:38Fitness Race franchise, but the band also comes in a discreet two-tone dark grey.
07:44Sensor-wise, it's got the same kind of array as all the others have, LED heart rate tracking,
07:49skin temperature, gyro and accelero, and haptic feedback alarm. There's no button here.
07:54Like Whoop and Fitbit, you either manually start a workout in the app or trust its automatic activity
07:59detection. It can also transmit live heart rate data to a third-party device, like a treadmill,
08:04like the Whoop can. Our reviewer found the performance of the strap just fine from an
08:08accuracy and daily wear perspective. Battery life lasts 10 days, which is great, and its charger
08:13is this magnetic puck that you can stick on any old USB-C charger. The app doesn't have a lot
08:17of
08:17the options and features you get from some of the other trackers, such as the AI-powered nutrition
08:21logging from Garmin and Fitbit, or the comprehensive workout builder and strain score from the Whoop.
08:25Amazfit has its own unique metric in the BioCharge score, but in practice, it doesn't work much
08:31differently from the redness that you get on all these other trackers.
08:37Last on our list is the Polar Loop, from the same company that make the Polar electrical
08:41heart rate monitor I use to test all these other devices. It's the only one out of the five with
08:45metal clasps, apart from the high-end Whoop MG, and it costs $199 to buy outright, the same as the
08:51Garmin.
08:51There's no subscription element here, which is great, apart from Polar's completely optional fitness
08:56program software, which works out an adaptive training program for you. It's a nice-looking device,
09:00with high-quality fabric bands and stainless steel elements on the side, weighing a total of 29 grams.
09:06Apart from the Whoop, the Loop was the first device released out of the four I listed here,
09:10and it's definitely the most premium feeling and looking. Whoop actually tried to sue Polar
09:14for trademark and trade dress infringement in October 2025. Sensor-wise, it's got many of the
09:20same tools as everyone else, LED optical heart rate sensors, accelerometer, and so on, but no blood
09:26oxygen sensing, which means it's limited in tracking fitness and recovery. It's also got the lowest
09:30water resistance rating out of the bunch, but it's fine for swimming in a pool. Hardware-wise,
09:35it looks great, and its auto-activity detection works well, but Polar's software experience is
09:40lacking, which is a common frustration for us users of the Polar Heart Rate Chest Strap. It's a very
09:45stripped-back experience that feels like an old-school website, and while that's got some charm,
09:49it's not the most usable app in the world. So, that's my assessment based on our time spent with each
09:54device, and after testing all of these devices side-by-side, I can confirm they're roughly in the same
09:59ballpark as each other in terms of accuracy, with around 8bpm average heart rate deviation between
10:05the WHOOP, the lowest, and the Fitbit, the highest, with the others falling somewhere in between.
10:09Previous testing has confirmed each one is within an acceptable margin of error from the Polar H10
10:15heart rate monitor for me to recommend them. So, my top choice? If money is no object, I'd go for
10:20the
10:20WHOOP. If you're after a cheap fitness tracker, I'd opt for the Google Fitbit Air, and if you want
10:25something in between, I'd choose the Garmin. Do you agree with our list? Have you got a different
10:28ranking? Drop a comment below if you've tried any of these trackers, and we'll see you next time on
10:33TechRadar.com