** GPS Tracking & Safety – As a Grandparent I am glad that Gizmo has this feature for obvious safety concerns. However, I can can send text messages of any kind on my smart phone to my Grandson, but ONLY through the GizmoHub App. How cool is that?Īdditionally, twenty pre-approved (by parents), pre-set, text messages can be sent from the Gizmo to parents. Numbers not on the list cannot get through. Through the Verizon GizmoHub App parents can choose up to ten trusted and reliable phone numbers of their choice that can call the kids. This Gizmo features two-way communication, voice or text. ** Communication – As far as Grandma and I are concerned this is the most important feature. Why do I think Gizmo is a great watch for my Grandson? As a Grandparent this Verizon Gizmo gives me a 'peace-of-mind' that my Grandson can contact his parents or us at any time, or, wherever he needs too regardless of wherever he is. So, having this wonderful watch strapped to his wrist eliminated that issue. Unfortunately, at my Grandson's school cell phones were routinely being stolen out of the kid's back packs. LG makes this Smart Watch for Verizon specifically for kids and with parents and Grandparents in mind. Texting feature is also really neat but texts have to go through the GozmoHub app which isn't quite as convenient as normal texts but does allow you to control who can and cannot send text messages to your child.Īfter much research my wife (Grandma) bought this watch as a Christmas present at Best Buy for my oldest Grandson, who is now in Middle School. Water proof wise it seems to be improving by generation but you still need to have your kids be careful with it. Other than that it works great, allows you to keep track of and stay in contact with your kids very effectively with only a $5/mo fee increase through Verizon. So, buy at your own peril if your kid is a water baby like mine. I keep hoping it'll improve but I'm not holding my breath. My guess is the water gets stuck inside and effects vibration of the speaker diaphragm. You can still have a conversation but the clarity of the words are heavily degraded. This latest version survived a jump into a chlorinated pool but the speaker is pretty degraded now. I bought the previous version of this product used and it completely died after being placed in a bag with a wet towel. That being said this watch is NOT waterproof.
The watchband needs to be replaced as it's pretty flimsy but the good news is the band is a standard size and only costs about $5-10 to replace. It seems like it will break easily and it was hard for my son to put on. I replaced it (ordered it online) right away before it had an opportunity to break. It is a lot less expensive and unlike an iPhone, I can strap it to my kids when they go out to ride their bikes and not have to worry about them dropping an iPhone or losing an iPhone.įinally, the original watch band is junk. It is not an substitute for a real phone so it is not fair to compare it to a real phone.
With all of this said, it is a kids phone watch. You can only load a very limited number of contacts (10 I think) it would be great if it could hold 20-25 contacts especially if friends also have the device.
With this said, they can send voice recordings instead of texts, I am not sure if this device is different than the older ones, but the older ones didn’t seem like the manufacturer could change the functionality with an update (like Apple does). Pros - better than the older models in terms of the ability to switch the bands to a generic band, 4G vs 3G (i did some research and I think Verizon is going to stop supporting the older models in 2021), there are more options in the app with this device and the data is quicker to load with the new device (even in the same app), you can actually add this device to your account and you cannot add the older gizmo models (because they are 3g).Ĭons - texts can only be sent to adults via the app (if you don’t watch the app then you miss the texts), kids can only send pre-set texts and cannot input their own texts. This is better than the other two, but not perfect. We had the gizmo pal 2 and the gizmo gadget.