Garmin Lily Smartwatch

I purchased the Garmin Lily mainly to help with stress management and organization. After using it for almost two years, here are my thoughts about its main features:

BODY BATTERY
The body battery is the single most useful feature on the watch. It estimates the amount of energy drain and re-charge throughout the day. I use it to eyeball my sleep quality and how stressful or intense my day was. I also use daily trends in my body battery to help me predict when my period will start. It is a good synthesis of my heart rate and stress stats over time, which helps me visualize the impact of exercise and mindfulness techniques.

PERIOD TRACKING
I’ve used other period tracking apps like Clue before, and Garmin’s period tracker is a lot more accurate. I have regular periods, but Clue’s predictions were normally three or four days off. From my experience, Garmin’s predictions usually are spot-on, or deviate by only one day. Compared to Clue, the Garmin app allows you to indicate when you think you’ve ovulated, and Garmin actually uses this information to adjust its predictions. You can also log symptoms on both the watch and app, but I’ve never had my data synchronize correctly whenever I do it through the watch. If I enter data through the watch, it ends up overwriting the symptoms of the previous day with the current one, so I just enter through the app instead. The interface and data visualizations for period tracking also need improvement, but generally the convenience and accuracy of this feature is a plus for me.

SLEEP TRACKING
Sleep tracking is terrible on this watch. I don’t know if this is true of all Garmin watches, but it has trouble detecting when I’m awake in the middle of the night, or when I fall asleep or wake up. To improve sleep tracking, you should set the time you usually fall asleep, rather than when you actually get into bed. Even then, the predictions are lousy. I believe the Garmin algorithm uses my waking heart rate as a baseline, so its predictions for the same night change at different times during the day. It is possible for me to manually adjust when I think I fell asleep or woke up, just so I have a semi-accurate record of sleep duration. Most of the time, I ignore this feature and just look at body battery or recorded movement during sleep to figure out how restful the night was. Some Garmin watches give you a Sleep Score for each night, but the Lily does not have this feature.

STRESS TRACKING
I’ve had no qualms with stress tracking on this watch. The Lily is even able to (accurately) alert me when it detects high stress and gives me the option to start a breathing exercise. I mainly use stress tracking to measure the impact of a breathing exercise or meditation, because I can track the stress changes before and after the activity. It is also fascinating to see how stress is affected by my period.

PULSE Ox
The Lily is one of the few smartwatches on the market that can continuously measure blood oxygen levels during sleep. However, just by how finicky the sensor is, I doubt that the readings are very accurate. You can measure pulse ox on-demand through an optional widget, but I could never get it to work. You have to stay very still for at least half a minute, and it usually fails to read anything. I have pulse ox turned on during sleep just to collect additional data, but I don’t really use it for anything other than to satisfy my curiosity. The blinking light can get quite bright and occasionally wakes me up in the middle of the night, but not enough to be a nuisance.

HEARTRATE MONITORING
The heartrate tracker appears to be accurate for this watch. I like that you can view your heart rate in real-time. For some watches, you have to wait a couple of seconds until it shows you a reading. I use heart rate to help me manage stress levels and monitor the impact of exercise and mindfulness activities, so the watch works well with biofeedback techniques.

COMFORT
One of the reasons I went with the Lily is because of its small size. It’s not heavy or bulky, and it fits comfortably on my wrist. There are plenty of adjustment holes and loops on the band, so it should work well with very small wrists. The band itself is not too thick. Compared to other watches, it’s easy to forget it’s there. I went with the silicon band and have not experienced any adverse skin reactions in the two years that I’ve used it.

USABILITY
The watch face is smaller than most Garmin watches. For me, it’s a little larger than my thumb. I have no problems using the touchscreen, but I can see how it may be difficult if you have larger fingers. There are no buttons on the watch – interaction is done purely through the screen. The screen is monochrome, so everything is black and white, but still bright and easy to see (even in the sunlight) with the auto brightness feature. Gesture detection is not the best. Sometimes when I raise my hand, the watch face doesn’t automatically turn on. You may have to exaggerate your movements to get it to work, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. You can just double tap the screen to wake it up.

APPEARANCE
The Lily’s appearance is what distinguishes it from other Garmin watches and other smartwatches on the market. Considering that most Garmin watches have all the same features as the Lily (and more!), you’re really paying extra for the size and appearance. The patterned touchscreen looks lovely in direct light. I don’t mind that the screen is monochrome. I think it gives it a classy, understated feeling. But I was really disappointed with the Lily color that I selected. The “tan” band on the rose gold option isn’t actually tan. It’s light grey.

DATA SYNCHRONIZATION
I like that you can disable the Bluetooth on this watch. Not all smartwatches have this feature and some people are concerned that exposure to Bluetooth radiation can cause adverse health effects. The watch can store recorded biometrics onboard and synchronize whenever you enable Bluetooth and connect back to your phone using the Garmin Connect mobile app. I also like that Garmin offers an alternate way to synchronize your data with the Garmin Express desktop app, whenever you charge your watch. It is tricky to install without an IT background, but worth it whenever Garmin Connect is experiencing an outage. I also like that Garmin has options to view your data in the browser. There are a lot more features and data visualizations available, as well as fully customizable dashboards.

CHARGING AND BATTERY LIFE
I estimate that the battery life on this watch is about 3 days. Over a 24-hour period, I normally see a drain of 25-35%, with pulse ox turned on at night. I don’t usually have problems with battery life because it charges quickly. I normally take it off once a day for about half an hour and I’m all set. The charger is a clip-type charger that you connect to the USB port on your computer.

NOTIFICATIONS
The Lily can stay connected to my phone for up to 15 yards (my estimate), so if I’m downstairs and my phone is upstairs, I can still get notifications about text messages or incoming calls. With an Android at least, I can even answer calls and respond to text messages (using a selection of generic responses) all from the watch. The Lily can also be synchronized to my calendar. Another nice feature is the “morning report,” which gives me a cute summary of the weather, events, and health stats for the day whenever I wake up.

WIDGETS
The Lily is not compatible with Garmin Connect IQ, so you can’t add any custom widgets from the store. I’m a little disappointed about this, but it makes sense given the price and size of the watch. The widgets that are available are just what you need (calendar, weather, music playback (no onboard music storage), etc.).

ACTIVITIES
The Lily is limited in terms of available activities. While it does offer a “Breathwork” activity, it is only for 5 minutes (called “Relax and Focus”). There are no advanced breathwork exercises, like “Tranquility,” which helps get you ready for sleep. Some Garmin watches also have a dedicated “Meditation” activity, but the Lily does not (I use “Yoga” instead). You also can’t create your own custom workouts. Lily doesn’t have onboard GPS, so for some activities, you have to be connected to your phone to record GPS data (although it’s not required to start an activity). It’s not a deal breaker for me, but if you’re into fitness tracking, this watch may not have all the features you want.

I loved this product as a whole and I had few complaints. Overall, I recommend but a few things could be a challenge for some people. The sleep tracking and activity tracking were terrific. I have a sleep disorder and use a sleep machine that already tracks my sleep but it was interesting to see just how well they agreed. Also, based on my activity on the health app and the Garmin app, they were quite similar.

In terms of sleep tracking, I wish Garmin would track my naps as well, haha. Also, for whatever reason the pulse ox aspect of my device was faulty. In terms of charging, I wish they used something a bit more common. A while ago I lost my Garmin charger and it was frustrating to buy a new one because the stores I went to didn’t stock replacement chargers.