You have choices if you don’t want to give your child a smartphone but yet want them to be able to communicate as they grow up.
The best smartwatches for kids track your child’s location, send secure messages, and protect your child from unknown callers. They accomplish all of this while also providing entertaining features that encourage children to wear the gadget.
For parents who must maintain a relationship with their children, the options may seem limited. Younger children may find smartphones distracting, while older children may find GPS trackers intrusive. With features that are both kid- and parent-friendly, smartwatches achieve a balance between the two.
Table of Contents
- No 1 Fitbit Ace 3
- No 2 Xplora X6 Play
- No 3 TickTalk 5
Top 3 Best Smart Watches For Kids In 2025
No 1 Fitbit Ace 3
The latest Fitbit Ace is designed for kids aged six and up, and offers both activity tracking and sleep tracking. It’s fun, tough and water resistant, so it can handle pretty much any eventuality, and with around eight days between charges, it has plenty of stamina too.
You or your children can set a range of activity goals that offer game-style rewards for reaching a certain number of steps or active minutes, and the Fitbit app has a Kid View that enables them to see their stats but not the rest of the family’s fitness data.
Although the app isn’t particularly kid-focused it works well enough and the numbers proved to be powerful motivators for our own young testers. The Fitbit Ace 3 doesn’t come with lots of flashy features such as movie tie-ins or cartoon characters, and we think that’s a good thing; it doesn’t look like a childish device and that proved to be a big plus for our testers.
The Ace 3 is good-looking, comfortable and tough enough to cope with even the most exciting adventures.
Pros
- Tracks activity and sleep
- Good battery life
- Comfortable, waterproof design
- Stylish, swappable bands
- Can receive text notifications
Cons
- No location/GPS tracking
- Short charging cable
- No heart rate monitoring
No 2 Xplora X6 Play
The sucessor X6 Play. Xplora’s concept revolves around creating mobile devices for children who are too young for their own smartphones.
In this case, we are talking about a small compact mobile device with limited features that is worn on the wrist, rather than a full-fledged smartwatch. The fact that it is designed like a watch is clever, as it eliminates the risk of the child misplacing the device.
The product is intended for children who need a mobile device but for whom a smartphone is not deemed suitable, perhaps because they need to be able to communicate when they are heading home from school without getting distracted by YouTube along the way. Therefore, the set of functions is deliberately limited and carefully curated.
Pros
- High resolution screen with animations
- Superfast 1,2Ghz processor
- Long lasting battery power
Cons
- Call & Message your loved ones
No 3 Tick Talk 5
The TickTalk 5 on concrete from a height of six feet; the watch still worked fine afterward and the screen didn’t show any cracks or scratches.
It carries an IP67 rating for dust and water resistance, which means it should survive the occasional slide into home plate or swim at the local pool.
Comfort is another story. Because the watch is so bulky and heavy, it might overpower a child’s wrist. The maximum wrist size the TickTalk 4 can accommodate is 7.5 inches, which was large enough to fit my 14-year-old daughter’s wrist, but the design is quite rigid. Specifically, the band is fixed at a perpendicular position to the watch face, which means the watch will never lie flat on a surface.
For some kids, the watch face may end up hovering slightly above their arm while the band squeezes either side of their wrists. This can create an unnatural and uncomfortable sensation for the wearer. And, unlike many other smartwatches, you can’t swap out the band.
Pros
- Supports voice calls, video calls, and texting
- Affordable monthly plans
- Durable build
- Two cameras
- Free iHeartRadio Family plan
Cons
- No geofencing features
- Big, chunky design
- Wristbands can’t be swapped
Final word: Best kids smartwatches balance fun and freedom
The best smartwatches for kids fall somewhere between “fun gadget” and “safety device.” In addition to the games and entertaining features, kids adore having a direct line to their loved ones. Parents enjoy granting children greater autonomy while setting reasonable limits.
From our tests with parents and kids alike, we found the Tick Talk 5 came out on top for its user-friendliness, price, and ability to graduate into a similar ecosystem when your child’s ready for a phone.
We also loved the Xplora X6 Play for its pricing and the Fitbit Ace 3 for its unprecedented cyberbullying and content protection.
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