A delicate smartwatch with a striking display: Garmin Lily Sport review

Garmin hides the fact that the bottom of the screen is cut off by overlaying the monochrome touch LCD with a discreetly colored pattern. The pattern turns out different for each of the six case colors and remains visible even when the watch is turned off. This means that the surface of the Lily will never turn dark, in contrast to all the typical smartwatches with a black display.

The sensors of the Lily smartwatch are unspectacular, offering little more than measuring heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and movements. In particular, the Lily lacks a GPS and barometric sensor for tracking routes and differences in elevation. NFC also did not fit into the delicate smartwatch. 

In addition to swiping in order to flip between widgets, and the soft key that triggers the back function among other things, the operating concept also includes a double tap on the touchscreen. This activates the display when your arm is resting on a table and you don't want to raise it. When in training mode, it starts and stops the workout. The widgets include the info screens for heath monitoring, coming appointments, weather info, and notifications, and in addition also a remote control for the smartphone player. 

The Lily signals incoming calls with the caller name if that is stored in the contacts, and offers accepting or rejecting the call. If you use the watch in combination with an Android smartphone, you can also send a preset SMS, saying that you will call back later, for example. If you accept the call, you then have to use your smartphone to talk.

The Lily is obviously a watch for women, and in addition to a period tracker, it also offers a pregnancy calendar developed by Garmin. Furthermore, the Lily offers reminder notifications to move, tracks active minutes, determines calorie usage, records the heart rate, and analyzes the stress level. You can also manually record your liquid intake during the day and include the daily analysis in the smartphone app.

On the other hand, the limited hardware also leaves some gaps. Since the smartwatch does not include a barometric sensor, it does not recognize elevation differences, and therefore also cannot show the floors climbed, which provide a measurement in other fitness trackers for the elevations climbed in addition to the distances covered. There is also no GPS, and if the fitness tracker shows a distance at the end of the day, Gamin determines an approximation using the step lengths that it has optionally determined beforehand.  

For manual measurement of the blood oxygen saturation, there is a widget that keeps its last measurement in the display. Usually that is the last measurement during sleep, since the Lily automatically measures it several times at night, also including it in the sleep protocol. Garmin does not record power naps during the day.

From the sleep quality or nightly rest, Garmin determines a sleep index that is only shown by the app, though. Depending on the nightly rest, stress level, load from the last activity, and heart rate variability, which is a measurement for the general state of health, Garmin then computes the energy reserves, which is called Body Battery. This scale serves as an orientation if you are not sure whether your body has recovered sufficiently after your last workout.

For manual recording of your training, Garmin offers a total of 13 sport types, but only accepts seven of them into the training selection of the smartwatch. While you cannot replace walking and running, you can individually configure the remaining five. Since it lacks GPS, you have to take your smartphone with you to record your route when biking or running outdoors. On the other hand, Garmin's cardio training supports interval training workouts such as HIIT with rep cycles and rest times. During weight training, the Lily can optionally count the number of reps, and you only have to confirm them at the end of the set. Professional training is also possible in the pool, since in contrast to many other sport watches, the Lily is also able to measure the heart rate under water.

Those who already own a Garmin wearable might already know LiveTrack: Using an invitation link via mail or social network, friends can follow your training via a tracking web page in Garmin's portal, as long as the smartwatch is also connected to the Internet via the smartphone.

Since there is no button for starting, pausing, or ending the workout, a double tap on the display will trigger those functions. In our test, this worked at least as well as the usual button on the side to end the training. However, after ending the workout in our test, the display remained turned off for several seconds, before the double tap was able to reactivate it. Another weakness concerns the Bluetooth connection, with was dropped occasionally. So in order to be able to use the GPS of the smartphone (Connected GPS), the Lily had to be manually reconnected several times. While this can be done using the actions menu, it unnecessarily wastes time. Outdoors, the brightness and its automatic adjustment left nothing to be desired.