Garmin Lily 2 Active review: Petite powerhouse

The Garmin Lily 2 Active is a bit of a surprise release. The wearable was launched less than ten months after its predecessor, released in January 2024. In all honesty, the Lily 2 Active should probably be called the Lily 3, as it's packed with new features, including one of the most requested ones: the built-in GPS.

Keeping all the good bits that made the Garmin Lily 2 an excellent wearable for people with small wrists, the Lily 2 Active is well worth considering as an upgrade. It's a fashionable yet functional smartwatch, packing impressive tech without looking like your average Garmin watch.

How does it compare to the best Garmins and other wearables in T3's best running watch guide? Should you get one if you already own the Lily 2? Let’s get acquainted with Garmin’s Lily 2 Active smartwatch.

Garmin Lily 2 Active review

Price and availability

The Garmin Lily 2 Active was launched in September 2024 and is now available to buy at Garmin. It comes in three colour options: Lunar Gold/ Bone, Silver/ Purple Jasmine, and Jasper Green. I wore the Lunar Gold/ Bone, which is a really sophisticated combination.

Starting at £299.99/ $299.99/ AU$499, the Lily 2 Active is now available at Garmin UK, Garmin US and Garmin AU.

This makes the Lily 2 Active only £15/$20/AU$29 more than the Lily 2 Classic and £38/$50/AU$74 more than the standard Lily 2. Considering the advanced features, including built-in GPS, expanded sports tracking, and physical buttons, this additional cost feels more than reasonable for what you’re getting.

Design and build quality

At first glance - the Lily 2 Active is almost the spitting image of its predecessor, the Garmin Lily 2 Classic. It’s still a lovely slim design with a 34-millimetre liquid crystal display and a petite strap.

Like before, the strap can be changed thanks to the easy-release button. Simply remove the strap with a slide of the bar and pop on different bands for the ultimate personal accessory. There are now 11 colours to choose from, including a tan or Mulberry leather or the more sporty Lilac silicone strap.

Much like the Lily 2, the watch still has the same monochromatic hidden touchscreen that doesn’t look like a watch screen at all. In fact, when on your wrist, you won’t see any stats—until you flick your arm. Give it a quick turn, and you’ll see all your data magically appear on the screen before disappearing again. Why is this, you may ask?

Well, Garmin wanted to create a watch that blends fashion with functionality. The Lily 2 Active gives the appearance of a lifestyle watch, but it’s actually well-equipped as a serious sports watch. And with a 9-day battery life, you can certainly wear this fitness-focused wearable every day and still be raring to go for tracking your runs, cycles, or Padel tennis.

To wake up the watch, you can turn your wrist or squeeze one of the buttons - yes, actual buttons for easy navigation.

This new feature on the Lily 2 Active has been designed to help you navigate the watch; the upper right button is your yes/OK button, and the lower right button is your return/back button.

Like most Garmin watches, the upper right button leads you to your activities where you press to start/select a sport mode. However, there’s also a tiny little circle at the bottom of the screen. This touch area acts as a quick-access button to be customized and go directly to a given screen (such as the watch face).

And, if on the watch face, you can tap it to flick through the various metrics at the top, like the battery percentage, your steps or the weather. Next, if you swipe to the left/right, you’ll go through your widgets. Here, you will find metrics like your step count, heart rate, phone notifications, sleep score, stress level, Body Battery, HRV Status, and plenty more, which allow you to tap in even further for extra stats.

To help me get an overview of my stats I set my watch face to display the time, date, calories burnt and my steps. You do however have the option to go more simple and just have the time, with your heart rate on display - or the time with the weather and calories burnt; whatever you want to see, it’s your choice.

Features

The updated Lily 2 Active tracks 15 new sports, including HIIT, indoor rowing, golf, and meditation, and it has a built-in GPS. With the watch's predecessor, you had to take your phone with you when recording runs and bike rides out of the house, but the Lily 2 Active finds the GPS through the watch, and it seems to track activities accurately, too.

It also has all of the basics we’ve come to expect from the best fitness trackers and best smartwatches on the market, including 24/7 heart rate monitoring, sleep tracking and workout tracking.

You’ll get to use Garmin’s Body Battery feature, which monitors your energy levels throughout the day to know when your body is charged up and ready for some activity—or otherwise drained and needing to adapt your training so you can recharge and not overtrain.

It has Bluetooth and ANT+ connectivity for data syncing, smart notifications, and music control. Unlike some Garmin smartwatches, it does not store or play music, but you can control music on your watch.

Garmin Pay also lets you make contactless payments, while the Move Alerts remind you to keep moving throughout the day.

I also used the hydration function to track my water intake by simply pressing the add button every time I had a glass of water. There’s also a new meditation feature to help you reduce stress and anxiety—oh, and a nap detector, which automatically logs your naps with a post-nap summary on how that particular nap benefited your body and ideally the time and duration you need for restorative naps.

Workout tracking

To start a workout, press the top right button, select a workout, and scroll through the activities until you find your sport. As a runner, I used this feature the most and found that it picked up the GPS signal very quickly—no more excuses to procrastinate by the front door.

The distance and pace covered were also accurate, and I set the watch face to display my heart rate zone - and beep at me when above or below my selected zone. During my run, I could also have two different data pages that are customisable and that I could flick through with a whole range of data fields on it; I had my heart zone, distance and pace on one, and a timer, lap distance and lap time on the other. This was pretty simple to set up using the Connect app.

After your workout, it will connect to Strava and display all your stats and workout automatically – all you have to do is wait for the kudos to roll in.

For the more serious athletes, they’ve also added sensor pairing, which means you can now pair your heart rate sensor, cycling cadence sensors, or a Running Footpod. You can also broadcast your heart rate via Bluetooth to other third-party apps like your Peloton or, in my case, my Bowflex BXT8Ji JRNY Treadmill. The watch is easily connected to the sensors for accurate HRV tracking.

Garmin has also included its latest Training Status and Training Readiness features to explore insights into your recovery and readiness for your next workout. VO2 Max and daily suggested workouts helped me fine-tune my training regimens - and I took advantage of the Garmin Coach when training for the Alton Towers 10km, which offered me a customised training plan according to my weekly schedule and fitness levels.

I was able to pick my training days, the days I wanted to cross-train, the days I wanted to run and even which days I wanted to do my longest run. The whole thing was easy to set up; I went on my Garmin Connect app, and my coach used all my key health metrics, such as heart rate, blood oxygen saturation (Pulse Ox), respiration rate and Body Battery, to help me plan my training for the next nine weeks.

As always, my training didn’t go according to plan, but that’s okay. Coach Amy adjusted this by considering my schedule and stats. Life got in the way, and you missed a day of training? That is no problem; my training was automatically adjusted to suit me. Overall, this feature was pretty impressive, and the best bit is that it's totally free.

Female cycle tracking

Like the predecessor, the Lily 2 Active offers women’s health tracking, which allows you to track your cycle as well as both physical (like fatigue or bloating) and emotional symptoms (think, mood swings and brain fog) throughout the month. Some of these data points can be tracked via the watch, while others require entry via the phone app. I found the app predicted my cycles pretty well - and the more I logged my data over time, the more accurate my cycles and fertility predictions became.

This feature helped to give me a full 365-day view of my health, fitness, and hormones—and even gave me advice on how to manage my hormones during certain phases. Who knew that eating more fibre-rich veggies during my follicular phase would help to balance out hormone increases? Oh, and during this phase, I should switch to lower-intensity workouts with more recovery time than usual. Knowing where I was in my cycle helped me to adjust my training and give myself some grace when I needed it.

Battery life and charging

The watch is charged with a simple magnetic clip and despite the new in-built GPS, the battery did a good job of lasting 9 days as promised. The watch took just over an hour to charge fully and surpassed the 5-day battery life of the previous version. During my testing, I went a full two weeks without needing to recharge, even after logging GPS-tracked runs, which gave me plenty of time to make the most of all its features including the Garmin Pay contactless payments, which was simple to set up on the connect app and now comes as standard (it was previously only the Garmin Lily 2 Classic Model).

Should you buy the Garmin Lily 2 Active?

With not much difference in price between the Lily 2 and the Lily 2 Active, the extra upgrades are well worth the extra pennies. Garmin has managed to cram in so many new features including the all-important GPS, and training coach without ruining the visual aesthetic of this watch or its minimalist feel. In short, the watch looks no different but it’s performance is so much better.

Verdict

The updated Garmin Lily Active 2 is best because it performs and is chic, minimalist, and handsome-looking. You can train and track while wearing a small and stylish watch that blends in and doesn’t stick out as a bulky sports watch.

From its 34-millimetre liquid crystal screen to its comprehensive range of GPS and training tools, the Lily Active 2 is designed for those who love training but don’t want to be all about training; they have a look and want a watch that will effortlessly sit on their wrist and do all the right things—when they need it, too.

It’s tiny, elegant, and has plenty of options for those looking to start or enhance their fitness journey.

I'd recommend it to those looking for a watch that looks stylish yet quietly and accurately tracks all your personal and basic metrics behind the scenes.

Also consider

If you like the idea of a high-quality, beautiful-looking smartwatch with a hefty battery life and all the Menstrual cycle data, sleep tracking, and round-the-clock health tracking, the Withings ScanWatch 2 is a stunning-looking alternative with a 30-day battery life and a joy to wear.

The Apple Watch Ultra 2 also has a choice of girlie straps and tracks everything from your ovulation and female cycles via wrist temperature data.

Want to stick to Garmin watches but like a bigger screen? The Garmin Forerunner 165 Music has an 11-day battery life, female health tracking, and a colour screen with – you guessed it – an in-built music player. It’s a similar price but sits bigger on your wrist and has audio prompts.

The Huawei Watch GT 5 will also help you to keep tabs on your workouts, fitness levels and sleep health without compromising on exactitude.