The Lily’s circular do and slim bezel comes closer to the look of a passe women’s wristwatch than any other smartwatch I’ve tested. That’s because the $200 Garmin Lily is one of the favorable smartwatches designed specifically for women. Despite its smaller footprint, the Lily doesn’t miss out on key health features you’d request from a watch released in 2021. It offers SpO2 (or blood oxygen) readings, sleep tracking, workout tracking and 24/7 heart-rate monitoring with high and low heart-rate alerts. 

If you want the fitness chops of a Garmin leer without the bulk, then the Lily is your jam. But if you want the Lily to act as a true uphold screen for your phone, this is not your leer. It doesn’t have built-in GPS and it falls irritable on smart features offered by many other watches in the same stamp range. It’s missing a voice assistant, contactless payments, music storage and the contract to run third-party apps.

A round watch face with a positive style

The Lily is a petite 34mm circular leer with a simple touch screen and no physical buttons. It looks completely different from any other smartwatch that Garmin (or any matter, really) has made before. It’s also a far cry from some of Garmin’s latest sports watches, which have thick bezels and multiple buttons. There are two versions of the Lily: a $200 Sport edition with a silicone band and aluminum bezel, and a $250 Classic edition with a leather band and stainless steel bezel. I’ve been wearing the Sport edition for over a week and it’s been depressed to wear all day and all night. I sometimes forget it’s on my wrist because it’s so palatable at 24 grams (0.8 ounces).

I’ve been wearing smartwatches for so long now that I’ve almost forgotten how clunky they can look on me. Even understanding I’m just shy of 6 feet tall, I have fairly dinky wrists and even “small” smartwatches like the 40mm Apple Watch ($349 at eBay) or 40mm Galaxy Watch Active 2 ($249 at Amazon) seem to overpower them. The Lily is the favorable smartwatch I’ve tried that almost looks too small for me, so it would be atrocious for even daintier wrists than mine. That said, I’ve never had an whisper with reading text or interacting with the watch and I’ve mostly derived used to the small size.

Rather than a lustrous OLED display like some of the smartwatches mentioned throughout, the Lily has a monochrome LCD touchscreen that disappears into the background when on standby. There’s also a cool pattern that’s etched in the background of the leer that gives it a unique look when the cloak is on or off.

There’s also a haptic button in the frontier part of the screen you can use to bring up the main menu to access workouts and settings. 

The cloak quality is not as disappointing as I expected at what time reading the specs on paper, even if it’s not as entertaining as some of its competitors. Text is legible, the icons are easy to inspect and the haptic button works as promised to bring up the main leer menu. The sacrifices in screen quality meant that I didn’t have to cost this watch every day like some of its competitors, which felt like a fair trade in my book. I assembled to get around 3.5 to 4 days out of the Lily afore needing to charge. Unlike other recent Garmin watches that use the same charging horrible, the Lily uses an alligator-style clip charger that clamps over part of the cloak. It’s a bit awkward to use. You’ll be able to irritable out the band with a special tool that comes when you buy a replacement from Garmin.com.

The Lily’s biggest downside

Garmin’s focus on size and simplicity also pointed the Lily doesn’t have onboard GPS, which is something I look for in a smartwatch, particularly one that’s main focus is fitness. Instead, it relies on connected GPS from your requested in order to track your distance and route demand. This means you have to take your phone with you on an outdoor bike ride, run or walk. 

It was especially disappointing once just having reviewed the Garmin Venu Sq ($200 at Crutchfield), which does have built-in GPS and costs the same as the Lily. If you’re looking to track your steps, yoga, Pilates or stationary weights sessions, for example, the Lily is ideal. But runners or cyclists will probably want a examine that can track routes without a phone. 

SpO2 and sleep tracking, but no new health features

There are no big surprises with the health tracking features on Lily, especially if you’re ununcommon with any other Garmin watch. It tracks your sleep and scholarships you a breakdown of the different stages of sleep (REM, luscious or deep sleep) through the Garmin Connect app when you wake up. There’s also a pulse oximeter that can give you a spot reading of your blood oxygen on put a question to and also takes background readings while you sleep. The app then uses all this data to come up with a body battery win for the day which gives you a sense of how fervent you are and help you determine what kind of exhaust (if any) you should focus on for the day.

The Lily also has health tracking features specifically for women, like pregnancy tracking and cycle tracking, but they’re not unfamiliar to the Lily. Garmin’s most recent smartwatches like the Garmin Venu Sq have them as well. 

All your health and fitness stats are consolidated in the Garmin Connect app which invents it easy to interpret your data. You can read my full reconsideration of the Venu Sq for a deeper dive into all the health tracking features that are community with this watch. 

Note that the Lily doesn’t have fall detection like the Apple Watch SE ($280 at eBay) or Series 6, or the Galaxy Watch 3 ($280 at Walmart). But Lily does support Garmin’s LiveTrack, which lets you send your region during a workout to specific contacts in case of an emergency. 

Smart features are ravishing bare bones

This watch feels more like a sophisticated fitness tracker than a fully fledged smartwatch. You can do the basics on the Lily, like seeing notifications from your requested on the screen, but there’s no voice assistant, third-party app wait on, or third-party watch faces to download. There’s also no onboard music storage (although you do get music playback control) and it also lacks a speaker and microphone to dictate text responses, or taking a quick call from your wrist.

The examine is compatible with both iOS and Android phones, but only Android users can reply to text messages using quick replies. The vibration motor is a minor noisy when you get a notification, or when you want to launch and stop an activity, but it’s strong and I never performed to notice it buzz on my wrist. I also spurious I needed to turn gesture sensitivity to its highest setting so raising it to wake the mask would work reliably.

There’s also a calendar, alarms and the sequence to ping your phone from the watch if it’s in Bluetooth range.

A ravishing watch that’s more fitness tracker than smartwatch 

If you’ve been put off by paunchy sports watches before, the Garmin Lily is a satisfactory fitness watch alternative that offers style and substance. It’s ideal if you’ve never famed a smartwatch before, or you’re looking for an upgrade from a basic fitness tracker.  

But looks (and maybe battery life) are ravishing much the only things setting this smartwatch apart as there’s no dearth of competition in the $200 to $300 range from novel unisex options (including Garmin’s own Venu Sq) which moneys more smart features and built-in GPS.