Fitness watch for 9yo

[JRorBobby]

I'd love some help please!

Simply don't know what to look for in a smart watch for my son. He's nine.

He's smitten with a friend's watch that COUNTED THEIR STEPS.

If anyone could tell me what was a surprise great feature, or features that sound great but really don't get used... etc

Currently looking at Garmin vivofit jnr as I own a lot of Garmin products already.

Budget £80 max

(I got him one a basic one three years ago but it was ridiculously annoying, needed too much input from my phone (so kids kept asking for my phone) drove me mad. )

Thanks!!!!

Sorry I've said smart watch, what I meant is a fitness watch... d'oh

Looking at this one currently from Garmin

www.garmin.com/en-IE/p/711538

My son has that Garmin one, he's 8. He loves the timers and stopwatch which he can do on the watch itself, and it does count steps and exercise. There's a slightly annoying daily goal alert that we have never figured out how to turn off.

I like that we can set alarms, eg at 7.25 every morning to remind him he should start brushing his teeth. Also if he needs to remember to take a school library book back at lunch or go to a club. Downside is it's not easy to check that you have set the alarm properly and the sync can be a bit temperamental; it does have to be set on the phone.

We also use the reward coins which go down well.

Overall we're happy with it but there are things that could be better. I'm told half his year who wear watches have the Garmin and the others 'the narrow one' which I assume must be a Fitbit but not sure.

If you have a garmin yourself go with garmin. Then you can do challenges on the app.

My youngest has acquired a junior 2 which he loves but I find it frustrating that I can't feed Samsung steps into the Garmin App or get the Garmin jr info into the Samsung App.
I'm considering fitbit for LO to see if I can get it to do what I'd want it to do.

Following!

Oh I hadn't thought of that! We can share challenges? He'd love that. Thanks :)

@PancakeClock really helpful, thank you. I wasn't seeing how to make that task feature relevant, but I can see how it could work for us now.

Do you use the ICE feature? I'm curious about that too.

Pretty much sold on the idea of the Garmin unless there's something else on the market I'm unaware of!

We have used ICE, it's just a short text field (long enough for a phone number) that you set on the phone and it shows when you scroll through the screens with the button on the watch. If it needed to be used by someone else, the person would need to know to look for it, but if your child got lost and an adult was helping them it's a good way for them to have your number to share.

My son has this one, it's works great and has an app. You can change the watch face too which he loves

I’ve ordered the garmin one for my DS, blue light has a good discount if you have access to a code.

They're not allowed them at my child's school - just a heads up.

My sons school is very much at your own risk.
I can understand schools saying no to watch phones that often have games built in but not the ones that are more like step counters.

I don't shave a blue light code but you've just reminded me I have a discount through my health insurance 👍

Decathlon are great quality watches.

The only kids watch i could see on decathlon website is the fitbit ace - or do they have more in store?

Just make sure there's no camera on it as some smartwatches aimed at children are vulnerable to hacking from dodgy types 🤦🏼‍♀️

Both the Garmin jr and Fitbit Ace are quite basic, No cameras on either.

Op one thing does your child have a tablet or even an old phone they can put the App onto? Both the Fitbit and Garmin work best if the child has the App on Child settings, while you have it on Parent settings