The $149 Verizon Gizmo Watch 3, a GPS-tracking smartwatch for teenagers ages 3 to 11, improves upon the final technology with a speedier processor, a digicam for video calls, longer battery life, and Bluetooth for pairing with headphones. Extra essential, it provides improved GPS monitoring accuracy and expanded geofencing instruments for folks. The up to date tracker prices $50 greater than its predecessor, nonetheless, and it nonetheless lacks some options discovered on competing gadgets, akin to music apps. Even so, we discovered the Gizmo Watch 3 to be a worthy improve to the Gizmo Watch 2 and a greater various for youthful youngsters than the Apple Watch SE ($249).
A Child-Pleasant Design
The Gizmo Watch 3 is enticing, with a easy but trendy look. It measures 1.8 by 1.65 by 0.58 inches (HWD). It’s a watch designed for teenagers, so it would not are available fundamental colours like black or grey; as a substitute, you’ll discover the Gizmo Watch 3 in Teal Mint or Blue Clay.
We examined the Blue Clay mannequin. The body across the watch face is a wealthy, vibrant blue, whereas the band is barely extra pastel in shade. The watch band match comfortably round my grownup wrist, however you may change bands in a jiffy, because of the easy-swap mechanism on the underside of every strap.
The watch face is giant. It encompasses a 1.4-inch AMOLED show with 360 by 320 pixels and a thick bezel that may look too giant on a small little one’s wrist. The silicone band is smooth to the contact, and there aren’t any sharp corners across the watch face. This makes the watch comparatively snug to put on regardless of its dimension. It doesn’t really feel overly heavy, both, which is sweet. The Gizmo Watch 3 weighs simply 1.75 ounces—lighter than another youngsters’ watches just like the TickTalk 4 (2.4 ounces), however heavier than the smaller Apple Watch SE (1.27 ounces). My 15-year-old was capable of sleep comfortably whereas sporting the Gizmo Watch 3.
The physique is sufficiently big to deal with a 510mAh battery that’s speculated to final for as much as 3.6 days on standby (with 4.45 hours of speak time), in line with Verizon. My testing confirms the battery life is in step with the producer’s claims. I clocked the battery at 3.52 days on standby and 4.6 hours of precise use. Compared, the FitBit Ace 3’s battery lasts for as much as eight days, and the TickTalk 4’s enormous 1,000mAh battery lasts for round 4 days on standby—making the Gizmo Watch 3 solely common when it comes to battery life. The watch ships with a puck-style charger with copper pins that line up with pogo contacts on the underside of the watch.
As for sturdiness, the watch seems to be sturdy sufficient to deal with the on a regular basis trials and tribulations of being a child. It has an IP68 ranking, which makes it totally dustproof and waterproof. Which means it is up for enjoyable in the summertime solar, although Verizon warns towards sporting it within the pool or exposing it to salt water.
Setup and Month-to-month Plans
Making ready the Gizmo Watch 3 to be used took lower than 5 minutes. This doesn’t embrace the fleeting time it took to obtain the app (out there for Android and iOS) and cost the system totally.
I turned the watch on, scanned a barcode, and clicked a couple of checkboxes, and it was paired with my telephone in moments. Make sure you totally replace the watch’s software program throughout setup earlier than you try monitoring. The preliminary software program construct that ships on the watch wants some patching to work correctly. Fortunately it would not require giant, time-consuming knowledge transfers like a full-fledged smartwatch would possibly.
You must first create a profile to your little one. The mum or dad app helps a number of youngsters and Gizmo Watches paired on the similar time. After this step, you construct a contact listing for every little one, and away you go. Essentially the most concerned portion of the setup course of concerned me tweaking all of my parental management preferences.
Along with location, the principle display screen of the app reveals the step counter (which you’ll disable to avoid wasting battery), in addition to the battery life, the decision log, and the to-do listing. You’ll be able to entry the extra controls and options by way of buttons that line the underside of the display screen.
The app enables you to fill out a medical ID to your little one with data like ailments, medicines, allergy symptoms, and emergency contact information. This information will show on the Gizmo Watch inside the medical ID widget. That is actually useful, particularly for teenagers with extreme allergy symptoms.
The Gizmo Watch 3 is offered straight from Verizon for $149, although you may break that all the way down to $4.16 per 30 days for 36 months on a tool fee plan. You’ll additionally should pay a one-time activation price of $35. This isn’t the most cost effective youngsters’ GPS tracker on the market, nevertheless it packs a whole lot of expertise to your buck.
Verizon’s month-to-month plan for this system prices $10, which incorporates limitless nationwide 4G LTE knowledge plus 15GB of premium (high-speed) knowledge per 30 days. For those who exceed the month-to-month high-speed restrict, Verizon will throttle the watch all the way down to a most of 600Kbps for the remainder of the billing interval. The $10-per-month value is akin to different monitoring watches in the marketplace, just like the Cosmo JrTrack 2 ($14.99 to $19.99 per 30 days), the TickTalk4 ($9.99 to $19.99 per 30 days), and the Apple Watch SE with LTE ($10 per 30 days). The Gizmo Watch 3 will not be out there from different carriers.
Navigating the Watch
The Gizmo Watch 3 depends on the Qualcomm Snapdragon Put on 4100 processor, which is extra highly effective than the Snapdragon Put on 2500 within the Gizmo Watch 2. It has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage.
Efficiency was fast sufficient that the watch hardly ever missed a command, faucet, or swipe. Navigating the watch consumer interface is intuitive, and you may hand it to a toddler to handle independently when you arrange the entire parental controls within the app. Children can entry standard widgets, just like the step counter and messages, straight from the principle display screen for quick entry.
The Gizmo Watch 3 has a 5MP digicam for video calls and taking on-the-go selfies. The digicam high quality is spectacular for a watch, however don’t count on any filters or cool enhancing options. Youngsters can even do issues like examine the native climate, examine off their every day to-do listing (which you arrange collectively), or change their watch’s theme. Different apps embrace an alarm, a timer, and a calculator.
One part my daughter actually loved was the video games widget. There, the Gizmo Watch 3 has Tic Tac Toe, Puzzle (a slide puzzle), and Gizmo Says (just like the tabletop recreation Simon, by which you attempt to mimic a light-up sample). There are additionally leap challenges the place the watch duties a toddler to leap up and down a certain quantity of instances every spherical. The leap counter wasn’t constantly correct, nonetheless, and she or he’d have to leap double, generally, to satisfy the problem. She and her buddies nonetheless had enjoyable with it, although.
The most important criticism from me and my daughter about this watch is the shortage of a music participant or comparable software. The TickTalk 4 provides iHeartRadio Household, as an illustration, and the Apple Watch SE helps Apple Music. This makes the Gizmo Watch 3’s assist for Bluetooth wi-fi headsets a little bit of a head-scratcher.
Monitoring Your Little one
The watch usually depends on GPS and Wi-Fi to trace its whereabouts, with GPS taking up the lion’s share of the accountability when outside and Wi-Fi when indoors. If you open the GizmoHub app, you instantly see a map that reveals your little one’s location. By default, the service reveals the final identified location and sends alerts when your little one leaves or enters a predetermined secure area. The Gizmo Watch 3 helps extra geofenced areas than its predecessor, which permits dad and mom to fine-tune how they monitor their youngsters.
You may also select to trace your little one in actual time if you want. This lets you comply with them round on the map as they transfer. From the kid’s perspective, she or he can ship a check-in to share their present location, in addition to press the SOS button to generate a security alert that goes out to pick out contacts.
Verizon claims the Gizmo Watch 3 is healthier at monitoring than its predecessor. Mother and father can select to obtain notifications when their little one travels from one place to a different and, as a mum or dad of two teenagers, I used to be excited to see how the improved geofencing options have been going to carry out. General, the Gizmo Watch 3 didn’t disappoint.
The primary time my little one left the home, I didn’t see any distinction on the map for about 30 seconds to 1 minute. My heartbeat began to hurry up. I feared this was going to be one other slow-to-update youngsters’ GPS tracker. However her location refreshed a second later, and this minor delay was a one-time drawback when utilizing the real-time monitoring function. In any other case, the Gizmo Watch 3 constantly, shortly, and precisely tracked her location from that time ahead.
Calling, Video Chats, and Messaging
Mother and father can fully tailor the communications options of the Gizmo Watch 3. Considerably, the brand new watch helps as much as 20 authorised contacts, or double that of the Gizmo Watch 2.
The watch presents 4 totally different ranges of permissions for contacts: Guardian, Caregiver, Gizmo Buddy, or Calling Contact. A Guardian is somebody like a mum or dad or authorized guardian. Guardians can use the GizmoHub app to find the watch by way of GPS, place voice and video calls, or ship messages, in addition to handle and alter settings within the watch. A Caregiver is sort of a grandparent, nanny, or babysitter. Caregivers can use the GizmoHub app to name, message, and monitor the watch, too, however they don’t have as a lot entry and management as Guardians. Gizmo Buddies are, because the title implies, different youngsters with Gizmo Watches who can name and message your little one with parental permission. Final, Calling Contacts can solely name the Gizmo Watch. For safety functions, when your little one makes a daily voice name from the Watch, it reveals up as a singular and separate telephone quantity within the GizmoHub app (versus the mum or dad telephone with which the watch is paired).
If dad and mom wish to voice-call the kid’s watch, they’ll name the precise telephone quantity assigned to the watch straight. Video calls and textual content messages, although, are all dealt with by way of the GizmoHub app.
A Good Crack at Monitoring
The Gizmo Watch 3 is considerably cheaper and simpler to make use of for folks of younger youngsters than the Apple Watch SE. Additional, when you have a toddler underneath the age of 9, the Gizmo Watch is healthier just because your little one probably will not crack the parental controls, nor acquire entry to the web or social media. The locked-down nature of the Gizmo Watch 3 makes it an excellent starter system for younger youngsters because of its calls, video chats, and messaging instruments whereas giving dad and mom the peace of thoughts they want.
The Gizmo Watch 2 remains to be out there for $50 much less, nevertheless it would not have a digicam, lacks Bluetooth, is slower, and never as correct at monitoring your child. Lastly, for about half as a lot, the Cosmo JrTrack 2 ($59.99) is another for these trying to spend much less.
