Garmin Lily vs Lily 2 Series — Stylish, Petite Smartwatches with Health & Fitness

If you don’t want the size and bulk of one of Garmin’s many popular sport watches but still want the robust 24/7 health & wellness benefits — among other features this popular tech brand is known for—the elegant Lily 2 might be just the smartwatch you’re looking for.

Garmin released the Lily 2 Series on January 8, unveiling the elegant smartwatch along with other new products at the CES 2024 in Las Vegas. Unlike most Garmin watches purpose-built for sports, training, and mission-oriented efforts, the Lily 2 is a petite smartwatch designed to put style on the wrist for everyday life while offering a wide variety of wellness and activity tracking.

Updated from Garmin’s 2021 debut of the original Lily, the Lily 2 adds several features across the health, activity, smart, and aesthetic categories. 

For those who are not familiar with the previous Garmin Lily, we’ll catch you up on who this watch is designed for. And for those who are, we’ll fill you in on what’s new about the Garmin Lily 2 series. And we’ll even compare it to a few other smartwatches you might have your eye on.

Ready? Let’s get to know this Garmin watch that’s as unique as the wrists it was designed for.

Watch a Quick PlayBetter Video to See How the Garmin Lily 2 Works!

Garmin Lily 2 Classic Smartwatch with Garmin Pay™

As with the original Garmin Lily, there are two models with two different price points to choose from. Both models now feature metal bezels and cases. We’ll get into more style-detail in the Lily vs Lily 2 comparison section below.

The first is the Lily 2 Classic priced at $299.99. This elegant smartwatch features a leather band and comes loaded with Garmin’s contactless payment solution. By adding your supported cards into your Garmin Pay wallet, you'll be able to enjoy all the rewards and benefits of your physical cards, right on your wrist. Here is a list of Garmin Pay participating banks. 

Additionally, the Lily 2 Classic smartwatch comes in two colorways: 

First, Dark Bronze with Mulberry Leather Band

And Cream Gold with Tan Leather Band

Garmin Lily 2 with Silicone Band

The second model in this Garmin watch series is the Lily 2 priced at $249.99. While this smart tracker maintains that small and stylish signature look, it is a touch more sporty with a silicone band.

This Lily 2 option is also $50 less as it comes without the leather band and is not loaded with the Garmin Pay contactless pay widget.

Out of box, this Garmin Lily 2 variant is available in these two colorways:

Cream Gold with Coconut Silicone Band

Metallic Lilac with Lilac Silicone Band

Garmin Lily vs Lily 2

In a nutshell, here’s what these watches basically have in common:

• Same case design: 35 mm (14mm band design)
• Smartwatch with 24×7 activity tracking for steps/distance/calories
• Optical heart rate sensor for 24×7 heart rate tracking (Garmin ELEVATE Gen 4)
• PulseOx sensor for sleeping SpO2 tracking
• Tracks respiration/breathing rate 24×7
• Tracks stress and sleep automatically
• Sports tracking with Connected GPS (no internal GPS)
• Sport tracking modes
• Displays smartphone notifications, calendar appointments, weather
• Has live tracking, including safety and incident alerts
• Includes female health tracking for both menstrual cycles and pregnancy tracking
• Battery life of up to 5 days 
• Tracks VO2MAX based on workout data
• No barometric altimeter for floors climbed
• Unable to connect to ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart heart rate straps
• Unable to broadcast HR via ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart to other apps/devices, such as a Peloton Bike
• No on-watch music storage/playback; but can control music on your phone

And these are the features and updates that make the Garmin Lily 2 stand out: 

• Features a metal case vs original Lily’s plastic case
• Lily 2 features standard 14mm band design vs previous 14mm proprietary design
• Adds Sleep Score and Sleep Details on watch widget
• Adds incident detection and safety alerts
• Adds Garmin Pay (contactless payment) to the Lily 2 Classic model
• New sport profiles: HIIT, Row Indoor, Walk Indoor, Meditation
• Adds Dance Fitness Feature, with Dance Types: Afrobeat, Bhangra, Bollywood, EDM, Hip Hop, Latin, Line Dancing, Pop & Jazz, Video Game, Cardio
• Priced at  $249 for Lily 2 with a silicone band and $299 for Lily 2 Classic Leather ($50 increase per model from the original Garmin Lily)

Garmin Lily vs Lily 2 Style Comparison

Known for its petite and elegant design, this series of Garmin smartwatches is designed to compliment smaller wrists with big style for a fashionable display on your wrist. The Lily 2’s unique liquid crystal patterned lens, with a quick tap or turn of the wrist, reveals a bright touchscreen display (there are no buttons on this Garmin watch).

The major change here is that Garmin opted to make the Lily 2 Series compatible with Quick Release bands, so that you can change up your style with ease as you go through your day or week. 

Also, the Garmin Lily 2 case is now aluminum, giving it a more refined look and feel over the previous plastic case. The new refreshed colorways and band options make it easy to compliment your look wherever you are in your day.

Have a more classic style? You might opt for the leather band on the Garmin Lily 2 Classic. This savvy fitness smartwatch is $50 more than the Garmin Lily 2, which offers a hint of sportiness with the silicone band. 

From a practical standpoint, if you like to shower with your watch on, take regular swims, or get in some sweaty workouts, you will want to have a silicone band. You can purchase extra 14 mm Quick Release bands here.

Color palettes for the Garmin Lily 2 Series of smartwatches include:

• Dark Bronze/Mulberry Leather (Classic model)
• Cream Gold/Tan Leather (Classic model)
• Cream Gold/Coconut Silicone 
• Metallic Lilac with Lilac Silicone Band

Available Smart Features

The key change in smartwatch features with the Garmin Lily 2 is that the Classic model comes with Garmin Pay. Simply add your supported cards into your Garmin Pay wallet, and you'll be able to pay right from your wrist—a real convenience for anyone on the run, literally or during their busy day. 

Additionally, the Lily 2 series allows for real-time setting sync with the Garmin Connect™ app. This means you can use the Garmin Connect app to make certain device setting changes, such as updating display settings, or adjusting sounds and alerts. The app uses the Bluetooth connection to your Garmin Lily 2, and a feature called Real Time Settings, to communicate directly with the connected watch about any setting changes.

Garmin Lily 2 vs Lily Health & Wellness

Like all Garmin watches, both the Lily and Lily 2 are swarming with this tech company's well-known and integrated health features. No other watch makes such excellent use of health data to give you the most feedback about your overall wellness, allowing you to track and improve when you like.

Here’s what you can expect from this luscious lineup: 

• Body Battery^™ energy monitoring: Monitor energy levels throughout the day to help find the best times for activity and rest.
• Sleep score: Receive a score for last night’s sleep quality, plus insights on how to do better. 
• Fitness Age: Want an estimate of how fit you are compared to your actual age? Consider the fitness age value a helpful reminder that healthy choices and regular physical activity can help you feel fresh and revitalized. And remember, if your fitness age is older than your actual age, even small steps in the right direction can have a substantial impact on how you feel.
• Women’s Health: Log periods and symptoms (including mood, discharge, physical symptoms and more) while receiving guidance based around nutrition, training and general health throughout the different phases of your menstrual cycle. If you’re pregnant, you can pause your cycle predictions and get displays of your baby’s gestational age and size, providing weekly education relating to exercise and nutrition during pregnancy and offering even more logging options from the other cycle types.
• Also keep track of different sleep stages, heart rate, stress, Pulse Ox, and respiration.

Activity & Fitness on These Garmin Smartwatches

Do you like to move it? Is your fitness style as eclectic as your actual style? The Garmin Lily 2 has added several new activities for you to shake up your workout routine, including these new sport profiles:

• HIIT
• Row Indoor
• Walk Indoor
• Meditation 

And dance fitness feature that includes these dance types that’ll make you wanna move: 

• Afrobeat
• Bhangra
• Bollywood
• EDM
• Hip Hop 
• Latin
• Line Dancing
• Pop & Jazz
• Video Game
• Cardio

Lily vs Lily 2 Battery Life

In this area, the Garmin Lily 2 remains the same as the original Lily. Both series get up to 5 days in smartwatch mode. 

Garmin Lily vs Lily 2 Price

Here’s what a new Lily 2 will cost you compared to the previous Garmin Lily fitness watch: 

• Garmin Lily Sport — $199.99
• Garmin Lily Classic — $249.99
• Garmin Lily 2 — $249.99
• Garmin Lily 2 Classic — $299.99

Basically, you’re looking at a price increase of $50 per model, respectively. However, when you think about what you get—Garmin Pay (on the Classic), sleep score, real time Garmin Connect App sync, a higher-quality metal case, lots more activity profiles, standard Quick Release bands, and a refresh on color options—it feels like there’s a lot of added value in the new Garmin Lily 2.

Garmin Lily 2 vs vívoactive 5

Do you want more sport and activity features on your Garmin? How about a level-up in battery life? And does a bright AMOLED screen win out with you over the liquid crystal display of the Lily 2? 

Then you might want to consider the vívactive 5. 

The Lily 2 was designed with stylish and petite smartwatch experience in mind first. A smaller watch usually denotes less features and less battery life. The Garmin vívoactive 5, when compared to the Lily 2, makes that obvious transition into the Garmin watch feel. 

First of all, it’s got built-in GPS, whereas the Lily 2 requires connection to your smartphone for GPS tracking. The vívoactive 5 gets up to 11 days of battery life in smart mode, has that eye-catching full-color AMOLED touchscreen display that Garmin watches are becoming known for—but also offers button operation. This is something to consider if you do a lot of activities where precise control over navigation on your watch is preferred. And all around, the Garmin vívoactive 5 offers a LOT more activity, sport, and workout profiles, plus additional training, planning, and analysis features like downloadable training plans, recovery time, and HRV status.  

It also includes a few more health tracking features, such as Sleep Coach, Nap Detection, meditation, and Health Snapshot. And you’ll be able to load music on your watch for phone-free listening. 

For the same price of $299.99, the Garmin vívoactive 5 adds a lot more value in terms of technical features—and more battery life. But it’s a little bigger than the Garmin Lily 2 and does not have that distinguished elegant style purposely designed for smaller wrists. 

Garmin Lily 2 vs Garmin Venu 3/3S

The Garmin Venu 3/3S has some standout upgrades compared to the Lily 2 and the vívoactive 5—as it should, considering it is a $450 smartwatch. 

This Garmin watch strikes the perfect balance between fitness watch and smartwatch, by adding features like a built-in speaker and mic so you can take and make calls from the wrist and use the voice assistant on your phone for a variety of verbal commands. You can also receive text images on your display, which is a stunning AMOLED display that comes in two sizes: the Venu 3 with a large 1.4” display and a Venu 3S with a 1.2” display—the same size as the Garmin vívoactive 5 GPS watch.

Unlike these other two Garmin watches, the Venu 3 Series has a barometric altimeter so you can get floors/stairs climbed (nice if you are a hill runner or walker). You will also get animated workouts on the display, which are as cool on the AMOLED screen as they are helpful. And you get even more activity profiles than with the vívoactive 5. 

By the way, both the Venu 3/3S and the Garmin vívoactive 5 offer golfing features, such as yardages to the front, middle, and back of the green; yards to layups and doglegs; digital scorecard; Pinpointer; Garmin Autoshot; Green View with manual pin placement; and more! If you enjoy golf and have seen the prices of golf watches, you’ll know how cool it is to have all this in your fitness smartwatch. 

Like the vívoactive 5, but unlike the Lily 2, you can store music on watch and enjoy built-in GPS. It also has all the robust health monitoring, with a few more to offer like skin temperature and a jet lag advisor.

The Garmin Venu 3 Series also distinguishes itself here with a battery life of up to 14 hours in smartwatch mode.

However, if you want advanced training features, preloaded full-color maps, loads more battery life, and multi-band positioning (the most accurate GPS), you’ll need to look to the $500+ price range of Garmin watches, including the Forerunner 965, the fēnix 7 Pro Series, and the epix Pro (Gen 2) Series.

Garmin Lily 2 vs Fitbit Sense 2

It’s true, the Fitbit Sense 2 has a lot to offer for only $249. Especially with built-in GPS.

It’s loaded with a daily readiness score, loads of exercise modes, and active zone minutes for fat burn, cardio, and peak heart rate zones to help with your workout goals. You won't get on-watch maps, but you can access Google Maps, plus get Google Wallet or Fitbit Pay on your wrist. And you can get call, text, and app notifications as well.

It does get up to 6 days in smartwatch mode, but if you use the built-in GPS continually, it only gets 5 hours.  

However, if you are looking for an elegant smartwatch experience, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of an accessory on your wrist. It has a bulky 1.5” x 1.5” square display with the plasticky look and feel of a generic fitness watch.

If a small, elegant smartwatch is the priority, the Garmin Lily 2 is more likely your style.

And if you want the kind of features that the Fitbit Sense 2 offers, you can opt for the Garmin vívoactive 5, which offers more reliable GPS, a lot more battery life, an eye-catching AMOLED display, and an overall higher quality build and formfactor. 

Garmin Lily 2 vs Apple Watch SE

Want a supersmart watch that's as confident, savvy, and versatile as you? Plus relatively affordable? The Apple SE will definitely put a sleek and smart experience on your wrist—but does it have everything you want and need for health and fitness tracking? Maybe. It's a fast, popular watch that has the well-known activity rings, and you can pair it with the Apple workout app to get personalized metrics (you will have to purchase the Apple Fitness+ membership). You also get heart rate information, sleep stages, and the option to have cellular on your wrist. This smartwatch can strap a veritable iPhone to your arm, but the health and fitness tools are limited compared to Garmin watches—little more than data that does not get compared to your history or make recommendations about how to improve, adjust, or recover.

Then again, so is the Lily 2 Series. It does the least of all Garmin watches in terms of offering training analysis and helping you track and improve on your progress.

But again, if you are looking at the Garmin Lily 2, you care about style. And while Apple Watches are a familiar fashion statement—it’s a generic and ubiquitous accessory that likely doesn’t fit the small yet elegant smartwatch you are seeking for the statement you want to make with your look.

If you are an Apple person, you likely already know it. And you probably wouldn’t be looking at the Lily 2 Series. That being said, this and all Garmin watches are perfectly compatible with iPhones. 

Garmin Lily 2 FAQs 

• When did the Garmin Lily 2 come out? Garmin released the Lily 2 on January 8, 2024.
• Does Garmin Lily 2 have GPS? With the connected GPS feature, your watch uses the GPS antenna in your phone to record GPS data for walk, run, or bike activities. The GPS data, including location, distance, and speed, appears in the activity details in your Garmin Connect™ account.
• Can Garmin Lily 2 read text messages? When your watch is paired with the Garmin Connect™ app, you can view notifications from your phone on your watch, such as text messages and emails.
• Can Garmin Lily 2 answer phone calls? When you receive a phone call on your connected smartphone, the Lily device displays the name or phone number of the caller, and you can accept or decline the call. NOTE: To talk to the caller, you must use your connected smartphone.
• Can Garmin Lily 2 play music? The music control widget allows you to control music on your smartphone using your Lily device. The widget controls the currently active or most recently active media player app on your smartphone. If no media player is active, the widget does not display track information, and you must start playback from your phone.
• Can I wear my Garmin Lily 2 in the shower? Avoid swimming or showering with the leather band. Exposure to water or sweat can damage or discolor the leather band. Use silicone bands as an alternative. The watch itself (without leather band) is rated 5 ATM, Swim, which means it withstands pressures equivalent to a depth of 50 meters and can handle splashes, rain or snow, showering, swimming, diving into water, and snorkeling.
• Does Garmin Lily 2 show texts from an iPhone? When your device is paired with the Garmin Connect app, you can view notifications from your smartphone on your device, such as text messages and emails.
• Does Garmin Lily 2 track heart rate? The Lily 2 device enables you to view wrist-based heart rate data. 
• Is the Garmin Lily 2 a touchscreen watch? With a flick of your wrist, the stylish patterned lens reveals a bright touchscreen display, and when you're done, the display disappears.
• Does Garmin Lily 2 vibrate? Yes, you can set it to vibration alert. NOTE: A higher vibration level decreases battery life.

Is Garmin Lily 2 Worth It? Who’s It For?

So who should consider buying the Garmin Lily 2? Well, let’s face it: sport watches, even some of the coolest, most expensive Garmin GPS smartwatches are just that—sporty. And also, the higher the price tag, the more technical features they have built-in and the more amazing things they can do. 

But what if you are a woman who is particular about her look? Who puts careful consideration into how she accessorizes her identity, because she feels confident about letting the world know who she is? One who wants an everyday watch that provides a wealth of health and wellness features, only the necessary activity apps, and all the right smart features.

But she is not willing to sacrifice elegance and style to a bulky smartwatch. 

The Garmin Lily 2 is for the woman who knows who she is and that this is the smartwatch she wants on her wrist, with her throughout her day. You’ll know if this is your smartwatch.

If it’s more technical and training features you’re after, we recommend you jump over to our collection page to check out all your options. PlayBetter always offers FREE 2-day shipping and FREE 60-day returns on watches. Happy shopping!