What makes a wearable the best smartwatch for kids? Do kids need smartwatches in the first place? The answer is similar to whether or not kids need smartphones; no, they don't, but some parents will give them one anyway.
If you're looking for a wrist wearable for your little one, we tested and reviewed the ones we think are most suitable for the job below.
Similar to the best smartwatches and best fitness trackers, the best kids' smartwatches can monitor basic health and fitness stats while providing a fun way to keep your children active throughout the day through gamification (e.g. activity and sleep scores). Some have robust parental controls, while others let your kids be more independent.
Our current favourite smartwatch for kids is the Fitbit Ace 3. It builds on its predecessor with extended battery life, fresh looks, and added features like a heart monitor. It's perfect for keeping kids active and tracking their health and activity levels.
Top 3
The Fitbit Ace 3 improves on the Ace 2 with longer battery life (up to 9 days), fresh looks, and new features like a heart monitor. It's slightly chunkier and pricier but offers great longevity.
The Garmin Vivo Jr 3 is a kids' fitness tracker that unlocks games and adventures via a phone app. It tracks activity and sleep, lets parents assign chores, and includes emergency contact information.
The Moochies watch introduces kids to smartphone features without internet or social media risks. It offers 4G calling, messaging, GPS tracking, and an SOS feature, with a Class Mode for school.
Best overall
We loved Fitbit’s Ace 2 fitness tracker for kids, but the new version – the Fitbit Ace 3 - builds upon an already near-perfect tracker by adding lots more battery life. Yes, it’s slightly chunkier and pricier, but the Ace 3 boasts fresh looks and more features thanks to a heart monitor under the hood.
The biggest boost is battery life. While the Fitbit Ace 2 had five days of battery life, the new version has eight, which seems pretty conservative since the watch we’re testing is still going strong on day nine. While it packs a punch feature-wise, the watch also looks great, and because there are no specific character or movie tie-ins, it offers longevity. It may even be acceptable to teenagers (maybe).
Read our full Fitbit Ace 3 review.
Best Garmin
The Garmin Vivo Jr 3 isn’t just a fitness tracker for kids. It’s a handy wearable that unlocks games and adventures when paired with a phone app, which should get every miniature couch potato moving and delight constantly on-the-go kids too. As well as being fun for kids, the device allows parents to keep an eye on their kids’ activity levels, counting their steps and sleep, and of course, children can use it as a watch too.
The gadget is packed with features to help parents out too. When it’s connected to an app, they can view their kid’s activity and sleep, as well as see if a child has completed their goals, including ‘chores’. The watch lets parents assign tasks and chores and designate a reward virtual coin value, which can be redeemed by a child for agreed-upon rewards. They can also program the watch with their kid’s emergency contact information, which could be useful, although hopefully never needed!
Read our full Garmin Vivofit Jr 3 review.
Best for connected features
Australian brand Moochies designed this watch to act as a neat introduction to the world of smartphones and their connected features, without the stresses of kids navigating the dregs of the internet or social media accounts.
It offers two-way calling thanks to a built-in 4G sim card, which requires an up-front paid subscription, but this allows the wearer to make calls to a pre-selected list of safe numbers (set these via a free companion app), as well as send messages, emojis and voice notes.
Parents can set GPS tracking and geo-fencing features to keep an eye on the whereabouts of little ones, while an SOS option can send a live location and up to 30 seconds of voice recording at the press of a button.
Unlike others on this list that place gaming and interactive fun at the heart of the experience, Moochies is all about the connectivity and allows parents to keep in touch with kids without the worry of unlimited internet access or social media scrolling.
Thankfully, there’s a specific Class Mode that disables all features except SOS alerts for emergencies, so kids aren’t being sent to the head teacher’s office for messing with tech during school time.
Best for teenagers
The Apple Watch SE is a truly excellent smartwatch for adults and children. It looks great, and it's comfortable, making it perfect if you have a style-conscious teen. Where Apple has cut back for the more budget price, your child won't notice (unless they're really into taking ECG readings). It feels like the full-fat Apple Watch experience, with all the advantages that it brings in communication, fitness tracking, and health and safety features.
You'll also want to use Family Setup, which is particularly well suited to younger children, as it gives you more control over what they can do with their Apple Watch. Family Setup turns the device into a GPS tracker that also allows you to talk to them through the smartwatch. That's ideal if you want to communicate with them while they're out, such as by giving them a heads-up that they need to come home soon from visiting a friend.
Read our full Apple Watch SE review (see also: Apple Watch for kids – how to set up an Apple Watch for your child)
Best smartwatch for games
The second generation of the Tobi Robot smartwatch from Little Tikes comes packed with more features than ever, increasing the longevity of this fun and affordable wrist adornment for kids.
It is aimed at the six years plus market, but comes with a very user-friendly touchscreen that means even younger kids can get to grips with it easily.
The fun, interactive robot face comes pre-installed with over 100 expressions and acts as a virtual guide through the features, as well as a playmate.
The watch comes complete with lots of arcade games that can be played wirelessly with other Tobi 2 owners, as well as interactive dancing challenges and other healthy activities via the built-in pedometer.
Internal storage allows for up to 3,000 low res photos to be stored (or around 30 minutes of video), while a wave of the hand is all that’s required to take a snap thanks to a motion-activated selfies feature.
Granted, this is more of a toy than some of the other smartwatches listed here, particularly those from Garmin and Fitbit, but there are still features that you’d expect from a decent digital watch, including a calculator, stopwatch, timer, alarm clock, calendar and more.
Plus, parental controls can limit the amount of time kids invest in gaming and approve any wireless connectivity to keep everyone safe.
Best for safety
If you measure this watch simply by its features, the XGO2 is one of the leaders of the pack. It offers more flexibility than the Vodafone Neo when it comes to sending messages and making calls, making it the leader of all the kids' smartwatches and trackers we’ve tried when it comes to this feature. It similarly offers more security features than its competitors.
But the watch overall is a little lacklustre and joyless. It does a lot of things adequately, but little with any pizzazz. Photos are grainy, there’s little animation on the watch face, and the extras are pretty boring, so it feels quite pricey, not forgetting you’ll need to pay for a SIM too. If calls and safety are a priority, this watch is a good bet, but otherwise, there are more fashionable and fun options out there.
Read our full Xplora XGO2 review.
Best for small kids
VTech have created the ultimate kid’s smartwatch, which has a lot of cool features but won’t burn too much of a hole in your wallet. This watch has a camera for taking photos and videos, a motion sensor for tracking activities, and a range of games and apps to use. There are over 50 different 3D-effect clock faces- both digital and analogue, depending on your preference and you can download all your favourite games and apps to customise this kid’s smartwatch.
Best parental controls
This smartwatch from LeapFrog provides you with a virtual pet, just like the good old Tamogotchis from the 90s. You can feed and power your pet by completing activities or exercises to gain points. This watch is designed to teach your child core skills with a full curriculum that will have them learn how to tell the time and the importance of nutrition. There’s a range of games to play, but parental controls will allow you to limit the time your children spend playing so that they can focus during school time and bedtime.
How we test the best kids' smartwatches
We spend a lot of time reviewing the best smartwatches for children, so when it comes to recommending what kids' smartwatches to buy, you can be safe in the knowledge that we'll recommend the best options for you.
For a start, all of the smartwatches we review are reviewed by parents and used with their children. We'll usually spend a week or longer testing new smartwatches, and the review process is fairly straightforward – we strap them to the wrists of our children. This helps us see how reliable they are and whether all of the features work as advertised.
It also lets us test whether the smartwatches actually capture the attention and imagination of the children, as well as how comfortable the children find the devices.
If the smartwatches have any advanced features, such as GPS tracking or calling, we'll try these out to test if they work and if they're worth the extra money they no doubt command. Once the initial review period is complete, we'll publish a full review, give the kids' smartwatch a star rating, and add an abridged review to this guide.
How to choose the best smartwatch for kids for your children
There is a range of different features you can look for in a kid's smartwatch; some are purely for entertainment, whereas some have great learning development exercises, such as the LeapFrog LeapBand Activity Tracker or the VTech Kidizoom Smart Watch.
If you're an active family, then the Fitbit Ace 2 and Fitbit Ace are the latest kid's editions from Fitbit which can help motivate your children and track their activity. Finally, some kids' smartwatches are designed with safety in mind, including a GPS tracker which parents can monitor to ensure the whereabouts of their children at all times.
