Garmin says Lily is ‘the smartwatch women have been waiting for’

Garmin has released a new smartwatch called Lily, and its main selling point is that it’s designed by women, for women. The Sport Edition, which is aluminum and has a silicone strap, costs $ 199, while the Classic Stainless Steel Edition costs $ 250 and comes with a leather strap.

Garmin claims it’s “the smartwatch women have been waiting for,” which seems based on its size and design, which are very avant-garde. However, as critic Lily Katz of Android Authority points out in its review of the Lily, the watch may have given up a few important features to achieve these looks.

Image: Garmin

One of Lily’s biggest selling points is that he’s small. It’s circular, with a diameter of 34.5mm, while the smaller 40mm Apple Watch SE is a 40mm by 34mm rectangle. By area, that means the Apple Watch takes up 1360 square millimeters on your wrist, while the Lily only takes 935. By my calculations, that means the Lily will cover 31% less of your wrist. It’s Garmin’s smallest smartwatch, and I imagine it would look comically small next to the company’s rugged Fenix ​​watches.

The watch is circular, to look more like a “classic” non-smart watch, and it has a patterned background. The screen is touchscreen, but monochromatic, which seems a bit lacking when similarly priced offerings from Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung all have color displays. That said, it’s probably to help preserve battery life, as Garmin claims it should last up to five days, which is pretty impressive considering its size.

If the watch strap design is important to you, however, you might want to look elsewhere: Lily straps are exclusive, and it doesn’t look like Garmin is selling any more in their store. Also, you can’t mix and match the bands – the colors match the case.

Image: Garmin

Garmin focuses a lot on tracking fitness and wellness with its smartwatches, and the Lily can track steps, workouts, sleep, stress levels, blood oxygen saturation, menstruation and more. pregnancies. Of course, none of these things are unique to this smartwatch – most of Garmin’s other smartwatches have fitness tracking, and there are at least two more that offer period and pregnancy tracking.

This means that you have to decide if you like Lily’s looks enough to compromise. The Lily doesn’t have GPS, offline music, or Garmin Pay built-in like Garmin’s Venu Sq, which retails for the same price. There are also other $ 200 smartwatches from other brands that are more feature-rich than the Lily, but for some they may not look as good. A smartwatch could have all the functionality in the world, but be totally useless if you find it too ugly to wear.

There aren’t many competing smartwatches as small as the Lily either, so buyers concerned that something is taking up most of their wrist may also be interested. It’s worth considering which features you’re willing to ditch and whether you’re willing to deal with some of the other caveats reviews have found. The watch is now available on the Garmin website.