As a big fan of smart watches I recently checked out the Fitbit Sense and found myself loving the ways it helps keep you from being sedentary for too long. Now I wanted to see what a Fitbit could do for my seven year old, and Fitbit has answered with the Fitbit Ace 3.
Childproof technology
Obviously the smartwatch \ fitness tracker for a child would need to be a little bit sturdy. After all if it couldn’t handle active children it wouldn’t exactly be fit for purpose.
In the few weeks it has been in use the watch has bounced off plenty of surfaces as my kid insisted on doing a lot of indoor exercise and his wrist managed to catch a lot of doorways. Given he is related to me that is a genetic issue, not a watch issue. But the rubber surrounds did a good job of protecting the watch from my genes.
The watch is said to be swim proof and it got wet a lot. How long it would last with regular swims is anyone’s guess, especially with what we learned from the recent water resistant story on Fair Go. So far so good at the moment though as the watch hasn’t drowned yet.
Simple yet engaging
The first thing we noticed and enjoyed out of the box was the watch faces. Because it has the elongated shape, the watch faces aren’t as snazzy as the ones that you can get on the Sense or the Versa. This is absolutely fine because what Fitbit has done is design simple clock faces that have animations on them like a monster, racoon, or rocket ship.
The simplicity is key because you don’t want another screen distracting you kid, but you do want something to engage them. Things like the rocket launching in the morning and travelling through space throughout the day is engaging but because there isn’t a lot going on it isn’t distracting.
With a weeks worth of battery in a charge, we didn’t wind up with it on the charger at night so you can capture those sweet sleep metrics if that is your jam. Or you can still take it off if that is too creepy or if your child has a short attention span and will get distracted changing clock faces or playing around with the timer.
This may come from a real example, but again it is a fault with my genetics not the watch.
Gamify exercise.
If you need a way to make your kids do something that they aren’t normally into, the easiest way is to make it a game. Though sometimes that can be as much work as the task itself. The Fitbit Ace 3 however makes exercise a game with no extra work.
As I sat writing my review about the Fitbit Sense I saw my son do more exercise than I have seen in … well ever outside of sports practice. He has done laps of the house, squats, pushups, lunges, and some weird exercise where he keeps his feet on the ground and tries to get his stomach as low as possible.
All he did was see the metrics and he wanted to smash them.
An all round great device for kids.
If you want a smartwatch that isn’t overly loaded with apps to distract your under 13 year olds then the Fitbit Ace 3 is a pretty good bet. You can creep on their sleeping patterns, set fitness goals, and get them to receive things like texts on their wrists and can control the majority of this from the app on your phone.
The watch helps engage kids with movement without going overboard with the features adults are into like heart rate. It is perfectly designed for its audience and can help kids engage with fitness.
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