Garmin has just announced a completely new series the Garmin Lily. This watch immediately answers a severe gap in Garmin’s line-up which has been in demand for years. The Garmin Lily is designed first and foremost for women who would like a smaller watch face and thinner strap. This design is akin to something closer to a jewellery watch than your typical smartwatch designs.
The Garmin Lily Classic and Sport are available to order here. All compatible accessories and bands are listed on the product pages for these watches.
Quick Summary – is this a good watch?
The Lily fills a gap in the market but not without some sacrifices. The Garmin Lily comes in a small housing and narrow band, but due to these hardware constraints, it loses out on many advanced smartwatch training and health features. That said, the Lily wasn’t designed to be a powerhouse smartwatch it was designed to be stylish with useful, albeit basic daily health features. In that regard, the Lily more than fulfils its purpose.
This is a quick summary of the key highlights for the Garmin Lily Smartwatch.
Pros |
Cons |
| 5 Day Battery Life | No GPS without connecting to your phone |
| 34mm Watch face and 14mm Band | No advanced Golfing, Cycling, Swimming features. |
| Gym Profiles for Training | |
| Wrist Based Heart Monitoring and Pulse Ox (Advanced Sleep Tracking) | |
| Health Tracking for Stress, Sleep and energy levels |
Realistically if you’re considering the Lily ask yourself if you would make use of athlete level health and fitness tracking and how seriously you take your fitness metrics? If you’re looking for a capable everyday fitness tracker, then the Lily will be for you. This stylish watch is a very affordable designer watch.
What's the difference between the Garmin Lily and Garmin Lily Sport?
There's no difference apart from different bezel colours and bands.
How does it compare to the other Garmin women’s watches?
Essentially the Garmin Lily is on par with a Vivomove 3S, and unlike some of Garmin’s other smartwatches, the Lily is fully touchscreen with a small ‘virtual’ button at the base of the unit. You’re not going to get the advanced athletic features seen on the forerunner, fenix 6s or vivoactive 4s series watches. Still, you do get a smartwatch more than capable of health and fitness tracking that is one of the smallest options currently available. It’s also an exquisite design, just look at that screen animation. Each Lily model colour has a different designed lens style that helps create the animation effect.
Below is an in-depth breakdown of what I would classify as Garmin’s current most popular female watches within the same bracket that focus more on everyday health tracking and aren’t specialised like the forerunner or fenix 6 watches.
Garmin Lily vs Garmin Vivomove 3s vs Garmin Vivoactive 4s (Differences Only)| General | Garmin Lily | Garmin Vivomove 3S | Garmin Vivoactive 4S |
| Lens Material | Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 | chemically strengthened glass | Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 |
| Bezel Material | anodized aluminium | stainless steel | stainless steel |
| Case material | fibre-reinforced polymer | fibre-reinforced polymer | fibre-reinforced polymer with polymer rear cover |
| Quick Release bands | Lily Bands (14mm) | yes (18 mm, Industry standard) | yes (18 mm, Industry standard) |
| Physical size | 34.50 x 34.50 x 10.15 mm | 39 x 39 x 10.9 mm | 40.0 x 40.0 x 12.7 mm |
| Fits wrists with a circumference of 110-175 mm. | Fits wrists with a circumference of 110-175 mm | Fits wrists with a circumference of 110-175 mm | |
| Colour display | no (16 level grayscale) | No | Yes |
| Display size | 1.00” x 0.84” (25.4 mm x 21.3 mm) | 0.35" x 0.72" (8.9 mm x 18.3 mm) | 1.1" (27.9 mm) diameter |
| Display resolution | 240 x 201 pixels | 64 x 132 pixels | 218 x 218 pixels |
| Display type | TFT LCD | OLED | sunlight-visible, transflective memory-in-pixel (MIP) |
| Weight | 24.0 g | The case only: 24.5 g | 40.0 g |
| With silicone strap: 38.6 g | |||
| Battery life | Up to 5 days (excluding Pulse Ox sleep tracking). Learn More. | Smartwatch mode: up to 5 days | Smartwatch mode: Up to 7 days |
| Watch mode: up to 1 additional week. | GPS mode with music: Up to 5 hours | ||
| GPS mode without music: Up to 15 hours | |||
| Memory/History | 7 timed activities; 14 days of activity tracking data | 7 timed activities; 14 days of activity tracking data | 7 timed activities, 14 days of activity tracking data |
| Clock Features | |||
| GPS Time Sync | No | No | Yes |
| Analog hands | No | Yes | No |
| Sunrise/sunset times | No | No | Yes |
| Health Monitoring | |||
| Pulse Ox Blood Oxygen Saturation | yes (spot-check and optionally in sleep) | yes (spot-check and optionally in sleep) | yes (spot-check, and optionally all-day and in sleep) |
| Sensors | |||
| GPS | No | No | Yes |
| GLONASS | No | No | Yes |
| Galileo | No | No | Yes |
| Barometric altimeter | No | Yes | Yes |
| Compass | No | No | Yes |
| Gyroscope | No | No | Yes |
| Thermometer | No | No | yes (with a separately sold accessory) |
| Ambient light sensor | No | No | |
| Daily Smart Features | |||
| Connectivity | Bluetooth® | Bluetooth® Smart and ANT+® | Bluetooth®, ANT+®, Wi-Fi® |
| Connect IQ™ (downloadable watch faces, data fields, widgets and apps) | No | No | Yes |
| Connected GPS | Yes | Yes | N/A |
| Plays and controls watch music | No | No | Yes |
| Music storage | No | No | up to 500 songs |
| Garmin Pay™ | No | No | Yes |
| Safety and Tracking Features | |||
| LiveTrack | Yes | No | Yes |
| Incident Detection during select activities | Yes | No | Yes |
| Assistance | No | No | Yes |
| Activity Tracking Features | |||
| Floors climbed | No | Yes | Yes |
| Gym & Fitness Equipment | |||
| Available gym activity profiles | Strength, Cardio, Elliptical Training, Stair Stepping, Yoga, Pilates and Breathwork | Strength Training, Cardio Training, Elliptical Training, Stair Stepping, Yoga | Strength, Cardio and Elliptical Training, Stair Stepping, Floor Climbing, Indoor Rowing, Yoga, Pilates and Breathwork |
| Cardio workouts | No | No | Yes |
| Strength workouts | No | No | Yes |
| Yoga workouts | No | No | Yes |
| Pilates workouts | No | No | Yes |
| On-screen workout animations | No | No | Yes |
| Training, Planning and Analysis Features | |||
| HR Broadcast (broadcasts HR data over ANT+™ to paired devices) | Yes | ||
| Respiration rate (during exercise) | yoga and breathwork only | yoga only | yoga and breathwork only |
| GPS speed and distance | yes (Connected GPS only) | No | Yes |
| Auto Pause® | No | No | Yes |
| Advanced workouts | No | No | Yes |
| Downloadable training plans | No | No | Yes |
| Manual lap | No | No | Yes |
| Custom alerts | No | Yes | No |
| Touch and/or button lock | No | No | Yes |
| Auto-scroll | No | No | Yes |
| Activity history on the watch | No | No | Yes |
| Physio TrueUp | Yes | No | Yes |
| Running Features | |||
| Available run profiles | Running, Treadmill | Running | Running, Indoor Track Running, Treadmill Running |
| GPS-based distance, time and pace | yes (Connected GPS only) | Yes (Connected GPS only) | Yes |
| Run workouts | No | No | Yes |
| Foot pod capable | No | No | Yes |
| Golfing Features | |||
| Yardage to F/M/B (distance to the front, middle and back of green) | No | No | Yes |
| Yardage to layups/doglegs | No | No | Yes |
| Measures shot distance (calculates exact yardage for shots from anywhere on course) | No | No | Automatic |
| Digital scorecard | No | No | Yes |
| Stat tracking (strokes, putts per round, greens and fairways hit) | No | No | Yes |
| Garmin AutoShot™ | No | No | Yes |
| Green View with manual pin position | No | No | Yes |
| Hazards and course targets | No | No | Yes |
| PinPointer | No | No | Yes |
| Round timer/odometer | No | No | Yes |
| Automatic club tracking compatible (requires accessory) | No | No | Yes |
| Outdoor Recreation | |||
| Available outdoor recreation profiles | No | No | Skiing, Snowboarding, XC Skiing, Stand Up Paddleboarding, Rowing |
| Back to start | No | No | Yes |
| Total ascent/descent | No | No | Yes |
| Cycling Features | |||
| Alerts (triggers an alarm when you reach goals including time, distance, heart rate or calories) | No | No | Yes |
| Available cycling profiles | Biking | Biking | Biking, Indoor Biking |
| Compatible with Varia™ radar (rear-facing radar) | No | No | Yes |
| Compatible with Varia™ lights | No | No | Yes |
| Speed and cadence sensor support | No | No | Yes |
| Swimming Features | |||
| Available swim profiles | Pool Swimming (Basic) | Pool Swimming (Basic) | Pool Swimming |
| Pool swim metrics (lengths, distance, pace, stroke count, swim efficiency (SWOLF), calories) | No | No | Yes |
| Stroke type detection (freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly) (pool swim only) | No | No | Yes |
| Basic rest timer (up from 0) (pool swim only) | No | No | Yes |
| Time and distance alerts | No | No | Yes |
| Underwater wrist-based heart rate | No | Yes | Yes |
Summary
As you can see, the differences stem almost entirely from ‘advanced’ training features or specific activities like Golfing/Swimming. If you’re not after Garmin’s more advanced health tracking and activity tracking features, then the Garmin Lily will be a perfect match.
