With the Garmin Bounce, Garmin has launched into a new era of smartwatches for children. Like many smartwatches for grownups, it also doubles up as a fitness tracker, but fitness is not the only thing it tracks – the Garmin Bounce uses an LTE connection, so parents can locate and communicate with their children.
Garmin already has a range fitness trackers for kids, but the $149.99 Bounce is its first LTE smartwatch for kids, and is designed to offer their parents an alternative to shelling out on a smartphone.
So while the little’uns are taking advantage of the Garmin Bounce’s health features – such as tracking sleep, steps and active minutes, and logging activities such as walking, running, biking, and pool swimming – parents will be taking advantage of its ability to track their child’s whereabouts and send alerts whenever their child leaves a designated area, all of which is controlled though an subscription to the Garmin Jr App.
The app also means parents can introduce an element of gamification into activities, allowing kids to unlock rewards for achieving goals.
The Bounce’s battery life is estimated at two days on a single charge.
LTE Smartwatches have been a big hit in China, but they’ve been slower to take off in the West. Already available in the US are the Sprint WatchMeGo, Verizon’s GizmoWatch 2 and T-Mobile’s Timex Family Connect. But with all those watches you have to sign up to a particular carrier to take full advantage of their capabilities. You can use the Bounce with any carrier as long as you subscribe to the Garmin Jr App, though it’s considerably cheaper than using the Family Setup on an Apple Watch.
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