Lily 2 Active

Lily 2 Active because it was the smallest face that had the activities I do most frequently on the watch, meaning I don't have to correct my logging anymore! Also ANT+ to my indoor bike & treadmill is what took me to Lily 2 Active vs just Lily 2 (Vivosmart 4 to Lily 2 Active)

I use the [Garmin Lily 2 Active](https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1196650/) watch. I’m a very petite person and it has one of the smallest faces out there for a smart watch. It does constant heart rate monitoring, abnormal heart rate alerts, and has excellent sleep monitoring. It’s waterproof so I can wear it in the shower, which is nice since I like the water practically boiling. It’s about $300 but the price has been well worth it for me.

Garmin Lily 2 Active Had a Fitbit before. It was horribly overestimating calories burned and steps.  My Garmin is a fair bit more accurate (I've compared it with heart rate monitors and other devices, I was a test subject for a friend's sport science study on the topic with multiple devices)

Sorry, I don’t really fit the audience for your question but I’m gonna share my thoughts anyway. I had a Fitbit Charge 5 (aka basic tracker) for three years, during which time they replaced it once because it died from me wearing it swimming. It started falling apart this year so I decided to replace it with an upgrade. Over a period of several weeks I tried out two Garmin watches (Lily 2 Active and Venu 4) as well as an Apple Watch Series 11 and I ended up going with the Garmin Venu 4. There were some things I liked more about the Apple Watch but I really didn’t enjoy the way any of their health or fitness was set up. Everything is weirdly separated out, the calories were way overestimated, and I felt like the rings were an annoying gimmick. I’m not super athletic but I do exercise consistently and every time I wore the Apple Watch to work out I found myself wishing I’d worn a Garmin instead. The health and fitness feedback from Garmin has been really useful for me, and in particular I’ve found the stress tracking, body battery, and recovery metrics insightful as I try to maintain my exercise alongside a classic winter mental health drop. That being said, I would never pay full price for the Venu 4. I used an Optimity 20% discount and even with that I feel like it was a bit expensive for what it is. The design of the watch feels clunkier than the Apple Watch, and for something that costs over $100 more at full retail it definitely doesn’t have as many features. If I cared about stuff like answering calls or texts or just smart features overall I’d be more bothered by Garmin’s paucity, but I actually had a lot of that turned off on the Apple Watch too.

I was using a Fitbit Charge 5 with a premium subscription from November 2022 up until a few weeks ago, and have been in a big back and forth with a couple of Garmin devices (Lily 2 Active and Venu 4) and an Apple Watch Series 11. I’ll share my (limited) experience. Between the different devices, the Fitbit was best at capturing me lying in bed before falling asleep. Both Garmins and the Apple Watch only seem to start their sleep session recordings when I actually fall asleep and don’t capture how much difficulty I might have with falling asleep. The Fitbit was also best at recording me going back to sleep after waking up in the morning. The Fitbit had the greatest amount of awake time for each night, I think because it counted any restlessness as a full minute of being awake, whereas the Garmin app’s sleep breakdown separates that more. On the other hand, Garmin sleep tracking seems to overestimate how long it takes me to go back to sleep in the middle of the night, compared to both Fitbit and the Apple Watch. I haven’t looked too closely at differences in how the sleep scoring works between devices but I did notice that my scores were lowest on Fitbit because they accounted for both how long it took me to fall asleep and my heart rate while sleeping. But Garmin’s sleep tracking interface has some separation around your heart rate during the night, and there’s more focus on “stress” while sleeping, which is based on HRV readings. The sleep tracking in the Apple Health app is more bare bones than the other two, and the heart-related data is based on sampling throughout the night as opposed to continuous tracking. I don’t really like the sleep interface in the Apple Health app because it makes it hard to look at details for different days or really look at specifics of your data. The Garmin devices have by far had the most questionable SpO2 readings, though I’m not sure if this is an issue with their sensor, the fit of my watch band, or if they just have the most difficulty with my sleeping positions. Also when I did a sleep study with take-home equipment the Fitbit’s sleep stages matched the medical estimates pretty closely, but I wasn’t wearing anything on my head. My Fitbit usually showed my deep sleep on the lower end and REM on the higher end, but both Garmins show more deep sleep and less REM by comparison. The Apple Watch is in the middle. I hope this is helpful! It’s been hard to pick a Fitbit replacement because I got so used to the way the Fitbit tracked everything.

I really agree with your assessment about not having buyer’s remorse but the watch also not feeling like it’s worth the price. I had a period where I was testing out the Venu 4, a Lily 2 Active, and an Apple Watch Series 11. I ended up with the Venu 4 because the features made the most sense to me but I wish I felt more enthusiastic about it. A part of me is still considering selling it and going back to one of the other watches, but I do appreciate the extent of fitness insights it has even though I’m not an athlete.

I think my overarching problem with the Venu 4 is that I don’t feel like it has a strong sense of its own design language in the way the other Garmin watches do. Personally I hate the look of the bulky, tactical watches but those at least have a strong aesthetic throughline to them. I actually don’t really mind the flip phone style OS that it has because it makes me feel like the watch is quieter than a “real” smartwatch. But I do feel like it’s kind of rough around the edges in some ways. Some of the screens feel like PowerPoint slides and others feel like more thoughtful presentations of data. The thing that gets me more is the design of the case, particularly in comparison to the Lily 2 series but also just other circular smartwatches. It just feels so… bland? And the gaps between the metal and plastic parts of the case make the watch look cheaper. I’d love to know if there’s an explanation for that I’ve missed. For me the Apple Watch has better design language but it was too much “phone.” If they made a Lily watch with the Elevate 5 sensor (so ECG and better sleep tracking) I’d switch pretty quickly.

How do you compare the HRV data between the Apple Watches and the Garmin watches? I tried an Apple Watch Series 11 but it seemed to measure HRV differently.

I had the Lily 2 Active for about 7 months, then got the Venu 3s instead a few months ago. I also have small wrists and liked the look of it, but I found it really lacked customization and I missed having a colored screen. It’s a pretty basic fitness watch, which may be fine for some people. I got back into running this summer and wanted to do run/walk intervals and it didn’t have this feature which seemed like a pretty basic feature. I ended up giving it to my mother in law as she is trying to lose weight, but she isn’t an active person and just does walking. As far as what you want: it will find your phone, you can read notifications from your phone (can’t reply), you can control the music that is playing on your phone (advance or go back songs and adjust volume, but you won’t be able to control it during an activity which I was annoyed by. I can with the Venu 3s), it is waterproof (I believe up to 50 meters), the GPS is accurate (been a Garmin user for years and the GPS has always been great!), Health tracking was pretty accurate, but don’t read too much into the sleep tracking as its not great with Garmin no matter what device you have, I have an iPhone as well and had no problems with connecting to it, you wont be able to use any third party apps on it as it wont connect to the Garmin Connect IQ store (one of the “customization” complaints I have), the band can easily be switched out, I got up to 9 days of battery life depending on how often I used GPS. It might work great for your needs, but just know that it’s pretty basic. I absolutely love the Venu 3s. It’s way more customizable and has way more features. It’s slightly larger, but I honestly didn’t even notice the difference when I switched. I got the one with the soft gold bezel and dust rose band and it’s beautiful! I can still wear it for any occasion.

Since you plan on using it for running, you will want to stay away from the Vivomove trend as it does not have built in GPS. It has “connected GPS” meaning it will just use the GPS from your phone, which could be a problem if you don’t run with your phone. I have also read that the connection can be poor with this, but I have never personally tried it myself. I had the Lily 2 Active for about 7 months, but found it lacks customization and was a little too basic for my needs. I got the Venu 3s instead and absolutely love it! I was initially drawn to the smaller size of the Lily 2 Active too as I also have small wrists, but I honestly don’t even notice a difference between the two as it’s a pretty minor size difference. The Venu 3s could be another option for you if you don’t like the Venu 4 options. There aren’t many differences between the Venu 3 & 4. I have it in soft gold bezel with the dust rose band and it’s beautiful! With the Venu, you can download many different watch faces and apps from the Garmin IQ app. The Lily 2 Active only comes with certain ones installed and you can’t download others or add any apps. (One of the “lack of customization” issues) I do think the Lily 2 Active would be enough for your needs, just letting you know my experience with it!

If you are looking at the Lily 2 series then definitely go with the Active version as it has built in GPS. The standard does not. You’ll especially want this since you run and cycle. I had the Lily 2 Active for about 7 months, but decided to swap it with the Venu 3s as I found the Lily to be a little too basic for my needs and I missed having a colored screen. I have small wrists and wanted something I can wear daily as well and the Venu 3s is a perfect fit. The Venu series is more expensive so you could look at the Vivoactive 6 since it is the same price as the Lily 2 Active, but you’re going to get way more features with it. I would recommend comparing watches on Garmin’s website! They have a compare tool that lets you compare watches side by side which is very helpful.

The biggest thing for me was I started running again and wanted to do run/walk intervals and this wasn’t an option on the Lily. There just isn’t a lot of customization with it. There’s only a certain amount of watch faces to choose from too and only a couple that I liked, but I wasn’t able to make them show everything that I wanted to see on the watch face. I ended up gifting it to my mother in-law as she is trying to lose weight and she is loving it. She is using it track her steps and health metrics, but doesn’t do any activities except walking. I think it’s fine for someone who just wants to do that with some light exercise. The Venu 3s is by far a step up. It is slightly larger but I don’t even notice the difference. It’s still very lightweight and comfortable. I got the soft gold bezel with the dust rose band and it’s beautiful! The Venu 4 is newer, but the new features on it aren’t things I personally need so it wasn’t worth the additional cost, especially when I got it 20% off the 3s. The Venu 3 & 4 use the newest HR sensor, whereas the Lily has the generation older sensor.

The Garmin Lily 2 might be a great fit for you. Small and stylish but has good health tracking. Garmin watches last a long time so you get what you pay for. If you do want to use it to track any sort of outdoor activities (running, biking, etc), then I would recommend getting the “Active” version as it has built in GPS. If not, then the basic Lily 2 will work well. Just know that you can’t take phone calls or respond to texts through it. It will only give you the notifications.

If you currently aren’t wearing a watch to sleep, it does take some time to get used to. At least it did for me! Otherwise it’s going to be comfortable especially with its smaller size compared to other smart watches. I wear mine on my other wrist when I sleep because it’s common to get a rash if you’re wearing it 24/7 on the same wrist. I got a rash right away but once I switched it to my right wrist at night, I haven’t had that problem again. Gives my left wrist time to breathe.