I'm looking at fitness trackers / smart watches again and going insane...

I hate shopping for electronics. There's too many options and none of them are quite what I want and most tech is ugly and ugh...

The Garmin Lily is genuinely pretty and clearly designed for women ✅ but it's CA$400 for a device that's probably a great fitness tracker but pretty dumb as smart watches go.

@faithisleaping I'm enjoying my Garmin Venu 4 I got recently. What do you think you'll miss from the smart features?

@luana The Venu and the Lily are totally different devices. The Venu is an actual smartwatch. It also costs 2x as much.

What do I think I’d miss? I’m honestly not sure and that’s part of the problem. If I had a better idea of what exactly I want, it might be easier to prioritize and narrow down the options.

I think, roughly:

• Fitness tracker with heart rate and O2 monitor. Bonus points for GPS.
• Integrate with Apple Fitness so I can get it all in one place. Though if Garmin has a banger app, that might override Apple.
• Looks good with clothes that didn’t come from Lululemon.
• Smart watch, maybe? This is where I’m really not sure. I’ve never had one so I don’t know what I’d want or miss. I think I want notifications and some app control might be nice. I’m really not sure, though.

@luana For the first 3, the Lily looks great. But it’s very much in the semi-smart category. About the only thing it offers beyond a few fitness apps is notifications.

@faithisleaping what smart features would you want to use that aren't on the Lily?

The silver smaller Venu (comes with a lavender band by default) looks really good imo

I havent downloaded the Garmin app, I'm using it with GadgetBridge, but I think the Garmin app should sync with Apple Fitness fine

Honestly I disabled the watch notifications feature, as I started feeling it was quite invasive to have notifications in my wrist (even before, when I had an Apple Watch)

@luana I don't know. I've never had one so I don't know how I'll use it or what I'd miss. Maybe a lot? Maybe nothing?

@faithisleaping ye idk, I basically only use fitness/health tracking even back when I used an Apple Watch