Garmin Lily Review: Verdicts, Price, Specificatoin, Availability and User Experience

Garmin HRM-Pro Review

Two-minute evaluate

The Lily is a smartwatch designed particularly with women in thoughts, by women. It has a slimmer profile, extra engaging face, and thinner band than any of Garmin’s earlier gadgets. Unfortunately, regardless of pushing the corporate‘s helpful female-focused options to the fore, it is missing some key instruments that we might anticipate finding on a contemporary watch at this worth level.

Features like menstrual monitoring are out there in your wrist by default, and sending an emergency alert to a contact is a easy matter of repeatedly tapping the touchscreen. but it surely‘s an actual disgrace that the Lily is lacking on-board GPS, which has been a cornerstone of Garmin’s devices because the firm was founded. There’s also no NFC, so you can‘t use Garmin Pay to make contactless purchases; an actual disappointment in a watch designed for everyday put on.

We like the idea of the Lily, but it surely seems to be a bit of behind the instances. Serious sports activities watches like the Garmin Instinct and Polar Grit series are critically chunky and ‘masculine’, however that’s not what the Lily is.

Instead, it is a comparatively feature-light smartwatch, which is not one thing that market is actually lacking. Devices just like the Apple Watch and Amazfit GTS series do extra, and are gender-neutral – engaging and fashionable, and slender sufficient to simply slip underneath a sleeve. They may also be loaded with whichever instruments you want, together with interval monitoring. There’s merely no want for a gendered smartwatch any extra.

If Garmin might take the Lily idea (neat, compact and good trying) however add the intense sports-tracking smarts you’d discover within the Forerunner series, it will be rather more particular – even when the value was a lot greater.

Price and availability

The Garmin Lily launched in January 2021 within the US and UK, and will be launched a bit of later in Australia.

The Lily Classic with an Italian leather-based band prices $249.99 / £229.99 / AU$399, and the Lily Sport with silicone band prices $199.99 / £179.99 / AU$329.

Design

• Narrow band in leather or silicone
• Bright touchscreen display
• No physical buttons

The Lily is designed as a smartwatch for girls, however Garmin hasn’t merely gone down the ‘pink it and shrink it’ route. Instead, it is created a whole new design that’s fully totally different from its earlier gadgets.

There are two choices to choose from: the Lily Classic, which has an Italian leather-based wristband, and the Lily Sport, which has a silicone strap more typical of smartwatches and health trackers. Both are out there in three colorways (together with impartial shades and delicate purples), and the bands might be swapped for various choices bought individually.

One of the obvious variations between the Lily and a typical health tracker is the width of its band; it is a lot narrower (simply 14mm) and significantly shorter (designed for a wrist circumference of 110-175mm). Longer bands might be bought on-line, however solely in leather. It’s very snug, even at night time, and we simply forgot we were wearing it.

Another of the Lily’s notable options is its surprisingly bright TFT LCD show. The watch’s designers have good use of the 16-shade grayscale palette, with totally different shades used to separate totally different on-screen parts, and point out whether or not a component is loading.

There’s a number of effectively designed faces that you may select from on the system itself, although we’d have appreciated to see an analog possibility, particularly because you‘re unable to obtain extra from the Garmin Connect IQ retailer.

When not in use, the show is significantly engaging, with a patterned metallic design that’s a welcome change from the standard clean grey, and makes it look extra like a bit of knickknack.

Raising your wrist unlocks the display screen, although we discovered this typically did not work as meant. You can regulate the watch’s gesture sensitivity if you run into the identical subject, however keep in mind that this may scale back the watch’s battery life.

The Lily has a water resistance ranking of 5ATM, that means it can be submerged to depths as much as 50 meters for 10 minutes – high quality for pool swimming and showering – and is charged by way of a USB clip. This attaches firmly and would not accidentally pivot and lose connection (an issue we have skilled with another clip chargers previously)

Smartwatch features

The Garmin Lily is not appropriate with apps and faces from the Garmin Connect IQ retailer, however you may choose and select from a variety of widgets that are accessible with a faucet and a swipe of the display screen.

App notifications seem with mild haptic suggestions and might be checked and dismissed by swiping down. Swiping down additionally opens Lily’s settings menu, Find My Phone (which is extraordinarily loud), alarm, music participant, and don’t disturb mode.

Tapping the menu button (indicated with a circle on the backside of the face) provides you entry to exercise monitoring, and swiping left or proper lets you see the hydration widget, your every day exercise and health stats, and the interval tracker.

Garmin has been making huge steps ahead in ladies‘s health, with the addition of interval monitoring and, extra recently, being pregnant monitoring to its app. The Lily pushes these options to the fore, that means you now not have to delve into Garmin Connect to log signs throughout your cycle.

The Lily operates on the belief that you’ll at all times have your phone on you, so though there is no on-board music storage, you should use the Lily to regulate music playback in your telephone, with play/pause and skip buttons, and a show of the current monitor and artist. It’s easy, however works effectively.

The Garmin Lily can measure deep, light and REM sleep during the night time, and you can see a report of how effectively you rested within the morning. There’s additionally a pulse oximeter, which checks SpO2 ranges throughout sleep and can be used to carry out spot checks. Many equally priced gadgets solely report SpO2 throughout sleep, so if you happen to‘re fascinated by checking it as a measure of health, this would possibly tip the balance within the Lily’s favor.

There are irregular coronary heart price alerts (each high and low), and if the watch detects that your coronary heart price is significantly excessive (because it did after we might completed an internet exercise class), it’ll lead you thru a five-minute respiration train to decrease it.

Fitness tracking features

• Seven timed activities
• Connected GPS only
• Livetrack and emergency contact alerts

As talked about before, certainly one of our main criticisms of the Garmin Lily is its lack of on-board GPS. It does, however, provide related GPS, which piggybacks in your telephone‘s navigation when you stroll, run or cycle. In our checks, this worked effectively – time and distance are clearly displayed during your exercise, and you’ll see a map of your exercise within the Connect app as soon as you’ve got completed.

There’s one huge disadvantage although: any notifications you obtain throughout an exercise will seem over your present distance, which might be very irritating as they take fairly a very long time to clear.

There are seven timed actions to select from, which is fewer than most Garmin gadgets, however covers all of the basics. You can take your choose from indoor and out of doors operating, indoor and out of doors biking, free cardio, energy coaching, swimming, and strolling. This is not a tool you’d select for area of interest pursuits like alpine skiing or climbing, so this small choice is smart.

The Lily can retailer up to 14 days of monitoring data, although since lots of its options depend on a connection to your telephone, your exercises are prone to be synced instantly.

Set up an emergency contact in the Garmin Connect app, and if you happen to run into bother when you‘re out, you may ship that a notification by tapping the watch’s screen repeatedly (no must navigate by way of menus or keep in mind a mix of button presses in an emergency). Your contact will obtain a textual content message containing your GPS co-ordinates, which they will open in Google Maps to see precisely where you are.

There’s additionally Livetrack, which permits a pal or member of the family to observe your progress when you‘re outdoors. It works effectively and produces an correct map that your contact can observe utilizing Garmin Connect on their own phone. Just keep in mind to show it off when you‘re executed to keep away from draining the battery.

Companion app

• Health and exercise metrics shown clearly
• Lets you monitor traits in historic knowledge
• Huge collection of exercises and coaching plans

Garmin Connect is a jewel in Garmin’s crown; a feature-packed health app that provides you as a lot or as little element as you want, and receives common updates that make it much more helpful.

Pairing the Lily is easy: simply set up the app and create an account you do not already have one, then faucet ‘Garmin Devices’ and observe the on-screen directions, coming into the PIN displayed on the watch’s face when prompted.

If you determine to put money into the Lily for everyday put on and stick to a extra conventional sports activities look ahead to exercises, the app has no bother dealing with all of them; simply select which one will likely be your major system, and the app will collate data from all of them in a single handy dashboard. Stats from Garmin good scales and heart price monitors can even be listed, supplying you with an entire image of your health.

Unlike Fitbit’s companion app, there is no must pay a subscription to unlock superior options. All your historic exercise and biometric knowledge is at your fingertips, so you may simply monitor it for traits that might help you make way of life changes.

You additionally get free entry to an enormous vary of exercises to observe. Just faucet the ‘Training’ possibility, choose ‘Workouts’ and choose ‘Find a exercise‘ to flick through an intensive catalog of various choices that will actually push you. You can filter by exercise, problem, muscle teams, targets (resembling constructing energy, fats loss or flexibility), and period.

You will not have a Peloton-style instructor shouting encouragement, however you will be guided by way of every exercise with audio cues and looping video clips displaying you correct approach.

There are additionally coaching plans out there for operating and biking, which is able to make it easier to obtain targets like working up from sofa to 5K, operating your first marathon, or using a century.

You may even log and monitor the damage of your trainers, bikes and different gear, so you already know when it is reaching the top of its life and needs to be retired. It’s all very well thought out, and clearly designed by individuals who stay for sports.

It’s only a disgrace that the Garmin Lily would not put more precedence on train as effectively. There’s undoubtedly a spot in the market for a critical sports activities watch that’s slim and unobtrusive, however this is not it.

Buy it if

Don’t buy it if