Compare the Garmin Venu, Garmin vívoactive, and Garmin Lily

The Garmin Venu is a complete lifestyle smartwatch. You can read and answer your smartphone notifications and messages. You can also call the smartwatch and control it with your voice using the voice assistant. You can also store music and podcasts on your Venu. That way, you can listen to them more easily while you work out. You can pay contactlessly via Garmin Pay.

The vívoactive 5 and the Venu 3 look like each other, but the vívoactive misses some functions that the Venu 3 does have. These are the voice assistant and call function. The vívoactive 5 does have all other functions, like storing music and contactless payments. You can also read and answer all your smartphone notifications, of course.

The Garmin Lily is less extensive than the other smartwatches. You can read text messages, calls, and smartphone notifications, but you can't answer them. Because the screen is quite small, everything is a bit harder to read. You can make contactless payments with the Lily, but you can't store music on the watch.

The Venu has the most extensive sports functions and readings of these 3. You can accurately track your GPS and altitude during your workouts, and you have many sports profiles. You also have sleep tracking and nap detection. The heart rate monitor is the same as the more expensive Garmin watches, like the Fenix 7.

The vívoactive is very different from the Venu 3 in 2 ways. The first difference is the older heart rate monitor. This way, you measure your heart rate less accurately than with the Venu 3. The vívoactive 5 also doesn't track stair steps and altitude differences during your workout. That means you can't track how you perform on hills or bridges while you're running or biking.

Just like with the Venu and vívoactive, you can track your steps, heart rate, energy levels, sleep quality, and stress level with the Vivosmart. But you do it less accurately and extensively. The Lily Active series has a built-in GPS. Other Lily models don't have this. Lily smartwatches don't have a built-in altimeter, just like the vívoactive. This means you don't know exactly how you perform on hills.