As an adult, We’ve all become accustomed to the gamification of fitness trackers: all the fun little incentives to increase your step count and get you moving. It’s amazing to see a child experience fitness gamification for the first time, especially since most kids have too much energy to begin with.
Ace LTE, Fitbit’s new kids smartwatch, encourages kids ages 7 to 14 to use its combination fitness tracker, location sharer, and communication device with a proprietary gaming studio called Fitbit Arcade. The child can unlock activity-based games with a certain number of steps and has a limited time, so they can only play a few minutes at a time.
It also has an eSIM with built-in LTE connectivity, so you and your child can text and call each other, and you can locate each other on Google Maps. Tap to pay via Google Wallet will also be available soon. This watch solves a lot of problems for me and my elementary school aged children. However, I’m not sure that Google’s beta testers have adequately prepared their software engineers for my two sons, who, if they see that it takes 1,500 more steps to unlock a game, will run around the house at top speed for 20 minutes They even get them.
Mild or Spicy Sauce
The Ace LTE smartwatch comes in two color combinations: Spicy Pebble and Mild Pebble. Both have a stainless steel case with plastic buttons and a woven polyester strap with a plastic clasp. It’s about 41 by 45mm wide, so it’s sizable, but nothing that my 7 and 9 year old boys feel would be unwieldy. The only time my son wants to take it off is when he plays the violin. It’s a Fitbit, so it works with both Android and Apple phones.
Photography: Adrienne So
It has a 5 ATM rating, meaning it can withstand the pressure exerted by 50 meters of water. However, while it offers some protection, it does not have a dustproof rating. The display is made of Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with an OLED panel that is bright enough to see in natural light. It also comes with a protective plastic bumper; I asked my daughter if she wanted to take it off so her watch would look a little bigger and she said no.
It may be a kids’ smartwatch, but it’s a Fitbit and it has the full suite of sensors: an accelerometer, an optical heart rate sensor, a magnetometer, an ambient light sensor, and a gyroscope. Several people have asked me, in disbelief, if I believe it’s true when they say my son is accumulating between 16,000 and 20,000 steps a day. All I have to say is that you wouldn’t ask me that question if you could see it on our diving board.
At the end of a full day (6:30 a.m. to about 7:30 p.m. for my kids), the battery drops to about 13 or 20 percent, which is a little less than the 16+ hours it advertises. Google, but it works for us. Every night, I put it on the charger after they go to bed at 8 pm, and they are always fully charged when I go to bed around 10 pm.