We’re taking a look at the new Garmin VivoFit junior, which is an activity, sports and health tracker for kids.
There have been several different attempts at making fitness or activity trackers for kids but this is Garmin’s first attempt and what they’ve done is really just taken the adult VivoFit and shrunk it down to kid’s size. You have a little pod that’s inserted into the rubber band. You can get the band in varying sizes and colors and of course order replacement bands.
You don’t just get a size down version of the VivoFit. The VivoFit Jr. 2 actually does have some kid friendly features that make this Garmin kids watch easy to use.
Let’s talk about some of the technical specifications of Garmin kids watch and how it performs overall.
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Of course, the Garmin kids watch comes paired with an accompanying app called the VivoFit Jr. 2 app. VivoFit Jr. 2 app works really well. It’s very simple to use. Kids can use it, but it is designed for a parent or an adult to use. It allows the VivoFit Jr. 2 Garmin kids watch to communicate via Bluetooth to the app and allows the app to pull in all of the data that’s being collected such as how much sleep your child is getting, how active they are, how many steps they’ve taken for the day.
All of the information for each day is on one screen and you can just swipe between the days to see how your child has done each respective day. The app allows you to make chores for your child which will show up on their wrist to remind them of what chores they have to do. They can do that chore and then they can earn coins or earn reward points that they can then cash in.
Check the Price of Garmin VivoFit Jr. 2 at Amazon
If you don’t know what kind of chores you want to give your child, Garmin kids watch has a bunch of pre-sets that you can put on the watch itself or you can of course add your own. Now, as far as the rewards go, again, there are rewards that kids can earn for doing chores or being so active. Garmin has a list of pre-setrewards that you can give to your child.
Or of course, you can also add your own navigation of the VivoFit Jr. 2 pretty easily. You just have one button that you push to go from your child’s name and the time to the date then to how many steps they’ve taken for the day and then how many minutes or how active they’ve been for the day.
Then to their task list or their chores list and then to the rewards that they’ve earned as well. Then it goes back, of course to the time and then your child’s name, they can long press in order to synchronize.
You can also set a timer for various activities like brushing their teeth, and Garmin kids watch also has a built-in stopwatch or basically a timer that you can just set in case you want to tell them that they can play video games for 30 minutes or something like that.
Get Garmin VivoFit Jr. 2 in $49 from Amazon
The VivoFit Jr. 2 app allows you to have multiple children with multiple devices all in one app so that’s a great feature. Garmin kids watch also allows parents that have a Garmin connected wearable to take their information there, you know, synchronizing on Garmin connect and pull that into the children’s app to compete against their kids to see who’s taken the most steps for the day.
There’s a little app called adventure trails that allows users to see who’s walked the farthest down this animated trail. Kids actually really enjoyed this feature, being able to, at the end of the day, see if they beat their parents on how many steps they had taken for the day. So that’s a neat feature that kids actually really enjoyed.
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additionally, I wanted to take this and see how strong of a or durable of a device, how tough of it of a device this was because this is going to be worn by kids. Of course this is waterproof smartwatch for kids. And so that’s an important feature as a parent. If your kid jumps into a pool, bathtub, it takes a shower or whatever.
This is waterproof Garmin kids watch. I threw Garmin VivoFit Jr. 2 against our floor probably a dozen times to see if I could break this. Garmin kids watch held up to that kind of abuse. I did notice after a couple of days of my very active son wearing it. The screen did have a little bit of a scratch.
Now it’s not a glass screen. It’s a plastic screen which is what you want because plastic’s gonna hold up better than glass but it is going to be prone to scratches. Of course, none of these features are going to matter if this isn’t something that your kid is going to enjoy wearing and using. And I found that both my five-year-old and my 10 year old both really enjoyed using it.
Get Garmin VivoFit Jr. 2 in $49 from Amazon
So they loved seeing how many steps they had taken for the day. They liked being able to interface or interact with the adventure trails application, the VivoFit Jr. 2 application, the one touch button was something that was simple enough for both of them to use and navigate.
This Garmin kids watch was definitely motivating for children to do their chores, to make sure that they went to bed on time, to make sure that they were active. And so if you’re looking for something to motivate your kid to keep them active, to track their overall health and fitness or sleep, I give this my parent recommendation.
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And you can order this Garmin kids watch in a variety of different colors and different band sizes. Garmin kids watch currently has 4.5 stars out of five on Amazon so it’s getting great reviews. So definitely check this product out.
Get Garmin VivoFit Jr. 2 in $49 from Amazon
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