Garmin Lily 2 review: Classy but capable

It’s well known that Garmin makes an extensive list of high-end fitness watches. While some of its devices feature less sporty designs, most scream, “I’m a fitness or adventure watch!” There are jokes and memes in the fitness and outdoor worlds about the type of people who wear their Garmin watch as a daily wearer. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit it, but I am one of those people — or I was until recently.

Beyond its highly capable fitness watches, Garmin offers a smaller selection of more fashion-focused smartwatches. These are intended as an option for daily wear when you want a more formal-looking watch. They may provide less advanced fitness features but still function as capable fitness trackers. One such watch is the Garmin Lily 2. I’ve been wearing the Lily 2 Classic for a few weeks and have been impressed by this little watch.

Price, specs, and availability

The Garmin Lily 2 is available in two configurations, one without Garmin Pay and one with, and multiple colorways. Pricing ranges from $250 to $300, depending on the configuration.

Design, materials, and fit

So lightweight you’ll forget it’s on

Garmin designed the Lily 2 specifically for women or anyone with small wrists who wants a more discreet watch. My wrists are so small that I can wear children’s watches, and the Lily 2 looks right at home there. I went with the leather band, which is much narrower than all of my other watches, making it less noticeable on my wrist.

The watch weighs only 21.5 grams with the leather strap and slightly less with the nylon. It’s so lightweight that I sometimes forget it’s on my wrist, something that never happens with my larger watches. The grayscale liquid crystal display offers a 240 x 201-pixel resolution with a 1 x 0.8-inch size. It’s small but large enough to see a good amount of information. The case has been upgraded from plastic to anodized aluminum in this second iteration of the Lily, making it a bit classier.

One of the unique aspects of the Lily 2 is the patterned lens. Instead of a clear glass display, the Lily 2 features a design resembling etched glass beneath the Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lens. Each color features a different pattern. The one I’ve been wearing, Cream Gold, has an Art Deco look, while some are simpler and more modern.

The patterned lens elevates the watch’s appearance, especially when the display is off. Unfortunately, I found that it made the display hard to see in certain light. I would have to rotate my wrist just so instead of being able to glance at it quickly. It wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me, but it was admittedly annoying at times.

Beyond looks, Garmin built the Lily 2 with useful health and fitness tracking sensors. It features Garmin’s optical (PPG) sensor for measuring heart rate, a blood oxygen saturation monitor, an accelerometer, and an ambient light sensor. That heart rate sensor isn’t Garmin’s newest one with a wrist temperature sensor, which is a little disappointing.

Features

The small size doesn’t mean the feature list is also small

It wouldn’t be a Garmin watch without a long list of features. Even as a more basic smartwatch, the Lily 2 has plenty going on. First and foremost, it offers smartwatch capabilities. The watch connects to your phone via Bluetooth, allowing you to receive notifications from your iPhone or Android device.

Beyond smartwatch functions, the Lily 2 can also track your sleep. It tracks your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, respiration, and movement to provide insight into your different sleep stages each night. Garmin then applies a Sleep Score to that information, giving you a broad picture of how good (or bad) your sleep was. That information pairs with stress tracking to provide Garmin’s Body Battery score, which can help you better prioritize rest or activity.

The Lily 2 also offers a range of activities for tracking. New activities have been added to this second version, including HIIT, indoor rowing, and indoor walking. A new Dance Fitness feature can track various dance types, such as Afrobeat, Bhangra, Bollywood, EDM, Hip Hop, Latin, and more. There’s also the standard strength training, walking, yoga, running, and more. There aren’t as many activities as Garmin’s more advanced fitness watches, but it hits the most common ones.

The Lily 2 also provides some safety features that the first version did not, including Incident Detection. These require you to have your phone on you since the watch doesn’t have cell service, but it gives me more peace of mind when on a run or walk. Finally, as a female-focused watch, the Lily 2 provides women’s health tracking right on the watch itself.

8:58

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Performance

Most of the features perform well, but not all

The Lily 2 relies on a touchscreen without any physical buttons on the side of the bezel. That means that you swap and tap to interact with the watch. There is a little circle at the bottom of the screen that acts like a button and provides some haptic feedback when you press it. That pseudo button is how you access the activities and settings or return to the previous screen. I’ve had some issues with the touchscreen not being responsive enough and occasionally having to tap or swipe a few times before it picks up on it. Accessing the top item in the settings menu is extremely frustrating, requiring many taps before it finally opens. It’s not the worst touchscreen I’ve used, but it’s definitely not the best, either.

Garmin promises up to five days of battery life for the Lily 2, but that depends on your settings and how you use the watch. I’ve gotten roughly four days per charge while tracking multiple activities per day. The Lily 2 uses the same clip-style charger as the previous version, which differs from Garmin’s other fitness watches. It uses a USB-C charging end, which is the way of the future, but all my wall hubs use USB-A, so I had to buy a new hub for this watch.

In terms of data accuracy, I found the sleep information to be hit-and-miss. That is generally the case with all sleep-tracking devices for me, though. While I didn’t do an exhaustive comparison, the heart rate data seemed pretty accurate for my workouts.

Instead of built-in GPS, the Lily 2 relies on connected GPS, meaning it uses your phone’s location information. That means that if you want to track your distance, pace, and route on an activity, you’ll need your phone. Phone GPS isn’t as reliable as multi-band systems found in watches, so if you are training or focused on hyper-specific data, the Lily 2 won’t be the best option for workouts. However, each connected GPS device handles connected GPS differently, with varying levels of accuracy. The Lily 2 is the most accurate connected GPS device I’ve used across any brand or device type.

One of the things I was surprised to see on the Lily 2 was the automatic rep detection during strength workouts. That’s typically a feature of more expensive watches, but the Lily 2 was able to accurately pick up how many reps I did of activities that involve arm movements, such as bench press, deadlift, and seated rows. It even seemed closer to picking up accurate numbers for core strengthening exercises compared to my epix Pro, which was surprising.

Verdict: Is the Garmin Lily 2 a winner?

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the Lily 2. The size is ideal for those of us with small wrists, and look-wise, it’s a nice change of pace from Garmin’s more aggressive fitness watches. I like being able to wear it when I’m a bit more dressed up and not have it look out of place.

Despite the comparatively reasonable price, it is still plenty feature-rich, with mostly accurate data across the various sensors. It is capable of tracking the most common types of activities, though it will be limiting for some. The Lily 2 definitely won’t serve as a replacement for Garmin’s more athlete-focused watches, but for those who want a simple and attractive watch that doesn’t totally skimp on fitness features, the Lily 2 fits the bill.