Venu 2 Series

Garmin Venu 1, 2, or even one of the newer Vivoactives would be great. You can get a Venu 2 for probably about $100-$130 on Facebook Marketplace right now. You can also get one of the older Garmin Forerunners for about the same price as well, if not a little cheaper

Lots of comments here about needing to charge the AWU either daily or multiple times a day. I had the 1 and now the 3, and I charge on average every 3rd day. And I use mine for everything - 20+ hours of workouts every week, phone calls, messages, Apple Pay. My last Garmin (Venu 2 Plus) would last about 8-10 days on a charge. I used to switch between the 2 for workouts/daily use but ditched the Garmin completely about a year ago. I find my phone use is way down when I use the Apple Watch.

I'm 5'2'' I have the Venu2S and it's a perfect size for my small wrists. This is a feat considering every round smart watch I've used so far has had both a strap that was too long, and a watch body that was too large. It comes in a gold and rose gold model, as well as a cream and black option, and is quite inexpensive as far as Garmins come. It supports vo2 max but not lactate threshold (but that can also be calculated manually or using an online calculator by plugging in the run data from your watch).

Not lactate metrics but it does have vo2max. I can see it on my garmin connect app.

I moved to a Garmin Venu 2 a few years ago after using a Fitbit for a while.  The Venu series is an excellent general fitness tracker that still has more features than my Fitbit did, without the huge price tag and *probably* un-needed features of some of the top-end Garmins.

Venu 2 Plus, got it second hand for 50 Eurosat as a replacement for my broken vivoactive 4. Since I started running a lot more then before last year I'll go for the forerunner 970 this year, but I'll wait until the prices go down a bit