Garmin just launched a $200 screenless health band with no subscription. That one decision puts the entire wearable subscription model under structural pressure.
The sensor stack inside every biometric band costs $15-25 to build at scale. The subscription was never about hardware. It was about the intelligence layer. Garmin just commoditized both.
WHOOP is valued at ~$3B on ~1M paid subs at $239/yr. Oura has sold ~2.5M rings. Both face a buyer pool that is expanding fast but skewing price-sensitive, driven by the Hemsworth and Bryan Johnson effect.
The real question is not which band wins. It is whether a subscription can survive when a company with Garmin’s retail shelf space offers equivalent sensors for a one-time fee.
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