#GIZMO GAGET HOW TO#
They can still get in touch in an emergency by holding down the flush SOS button for five seconds, though I thought that was a touch unintuitive and requires practicing it with your kid often, especially if they’re very young, to be sure they know how to use it. To me, the most key feature outside of GPS tracking is school mode, which limits your child to checking the time, sending you their location and checking their to-do list.
On the parent side, you get a lot of control over the GizmoWatch with the GizmoHub smartphone app. Surprisingly decent smartphone app with good GPS tracking That’s not to say they won’t find themselves preoccupied with it - I definitely pored intensely over a Richard Scarry book’s chaotic representation of a dog driving a sports car through a busy street scene as a kid - but there’s nothing to activate the addictive part of our brains that respond to so many mobile games that are essentially just legalized gambling for children. And that’s a good thing, especially for younger children. These options were enough to hold my daughter’s attention for a little while, but none seem designed to draw her attention back to the watch over and over again. There’s no way to type out responses on the GizmoWatch itself, but your kid can reply to your texts with audio recordings, preset messages and emoji, including, of course, the poop emoji. Through the GizmoHub app you can communicate with your kid using video calls, phone calls and text messages. Elsa makes frosty sounds, Darth Vader’s lightsaber fizzles to life and buzzes idly, Grogu makes … I don’t know, vaguely windy noises? I won’t lie to you it’s awful and tinny the way all battery-powered children’s toys are, and may inspire you to turn off the sound entirely. Swiping left reveals the watch’s menu system - a few screens with four large, gridded icons each offering basic features like a calculator, messaging, calling (voice and video), a camera, theme selection and a to-do list, and there’s even a controller-shaped icon, though I wouldn’t call what it presents “games.” It’s really just a grid of character icons that, when you select them, make noises.
Moving through the GizmoWatch’s options is easy and intuitive. They can also use that gesture to “check in” with you, which sends their current location, via a GizmoHub notification, to your phone. If there’s a new message, a little bubble peeks down from the top, encouraging them to swipe down to see what you’ve sent them. The GizmoWatch watch face is probably most similar to the Apple Watch’s Portraits face, showing the time superimposed over an image, except the picture is of a character from one of Disney’s many properties, which does a fun little animation before settling in a static pose. Solid interface with lots - but not too much - to do More on that later, though - for now, let’s talk about what works about Verizon’s smartwatch for kids. I was mostly interested in the GPS part, and though the bus was blessedly (mostly) on time this go-around, the watch was crucial on frigid Midwestern days, saving me from standing out in below-zero-wind-chill weather on icy days when the bus is most likely to be late.īut as with a lot of tech these days, especially stuff ironically targeted at concerned parents like me, there’s a big privacy cost that many will be unwilling to pay, and the trade-off isn’t obvious - it’s not like there’s a bullet point on Verizon’s product page saying, “We can see everything you do.” We’re all used to making similar trade-offs for the convenience offered by the gadgets that enrich our lives, but in the case of the GizmoWatch (and really, just about any other kid-targeted smartwatch). The $200 GizmoWatch is a GPS-enabled, cellular smartwatch with a very basic set of communication tools and some nice parental control via the associated GizmoHub app. A bus would make our lives easier, but it hardly seemed worth it.īut she really wanted to try it, and when I had the opportunity to try out a Verizon GizmoWatch Disney Edition, I decided to give it one more shot. I was a nervous wreck, unable to get in touch with anyone at the bus company or the school, and it was one of the most deeply helpless feelings I’ve ever had. The first time, the bus didn’t show up two days in a row, and the second time we tried, it was almost two hours late dropping off my child. We’d tried a couple of times in the past, once in pre-K and once at the beginning of this school year. Earlier this year, my kindergartener wanted to start riding the bus.
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