As a dad who set up a cellular Apple Watch for my oldest son to keep in touch before he got a phone, I know how useful — and sometimes frustrating — watches as phones can be for kids. It’s convenient and more distraction-free to use a phone-enabled watch for daily communications from a distance, and it eliminates concerns about losing a phone. That’s why I was thrilled Google’s new Fitbit-branded kid watch, the Fitbit Ace LTE, comes with cellular connectivity. For $230, this is pretty much the perfect Apple Watch alternative for kids.
Or, I should say, almost. My younger 11-year-old son was thrilled to wear and test the Fitbit Ace LTE. He doesn’t have a phone yet, and he’s loved previous Fitbits for their daily step-tracking goals, which motivated him to take long walks and get more active. He’s been wearing the Ace LTE for nearly a month now.
In that time, he’s kept it with him almost constantly. He tracks his steps and activities and plays little games as a reward — but not too much that it becomes a distraction. He’s called me from walks, while at the pool and from downstairs to say hi.Â
But, he wants to add his friends so he can call them. The Fitbit Ace LTE has a hard time with that. I’ll explain.
Like
Vivid OLED display
Clever mix of fitness and included on-watch games
Cellular subscription for calling and messaging
Made for younger kids
Water resistant for swimming
Don’t like
Needs charging every day or two
Calls can only be made via phone-installed Fitbit Ace LTE app
Overly restrictive contact management means kid friends can’t be added for calls
Hardware-wise, a big win
The Fitbit Ace LTE is a really wonderfully designed watch, more like a Pixel Watch in square form than a traditional Fitbit. The squircle design feels like the older Fitbit Versa but with a lighter, smoother feel. The display is a bright OLED, and the onboard chipset is the same as the one inside the Pixel Watch 2, which makes graphics and animations look really smooth and sharp.Â
Besides the included LTE connectivity, the watch has an accelerometer and gyroscope, GPS, optical heart-rate tracking and 5ATM water resistance for swimming. It also has a Gorilla Glass 3-covered screen, which is scratch and impact resistant. There’s an included screen bumper/protector too, which is wise considering kids smash things around.
The Ace LTE can also do mobile payments in theory, but the Google Pay tap-to-pay feature isn’t activated yet. It should be soon, though.
The Fitbit Ace LTE has fitness, games, phone service and a variety of swappable straps. But it’s specifically made for kids.
A few plastic buttons on the side launch games and phone/messaging shortcuts, but the rest of the watch works with touch controls. There are just a few basic functions, but besides tracking activities, playing games and making calls, there are onboard timers, stopwatches and alarms.
Snap-on velcro straps pop on and off pretty easily, and Google included a clever marketing twist where extra straps also unlock new watch face animations and in-game extras. Separate straps are $35 each.
The watch charges with its own proprietary magnetic charger, which is the same as the one on the latest Pixel Watch 2. Battery life lasts up to two days, but kids will need to remember to charge it at some point.
Watch this: Fitbit Ace LTE Hands-On: The Apple Watch Just Got a Competitor for Kids
Games and Fitness: Yes and yes
The most brilliant part about Google’s Fitbit-infused watch is its big dose of gamified ideas. I used to love how the Nintendo 3DS, a handheld console from years ago, could track steps and turn that activity into currency that unlocked extras in games. I wanted that idea to emerge in fitness wearables for literally decades, and the Fitbit Ace LTE is the first watch I can think of that’s done it.
The Ace’s fitness tracking goals produce ticket currency, and it’s these points that get spent on game upgrades or extra things for an in-watch avatar called an Eijie that you build a little home for and give accessories to, like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing.Â
The Ace LTE has pre-installed games with motion controls, and playing these games unlocks rewards once activity currency has been collected.Â
I didn’t play these games very much, though, because I wasn’t wearing the watch all the time. My kid did. So here’s how he describes it. “I really like the games on it, and you can play the different levels of them or different things in the game by doing steps or movements. That’s a good way to motivate. I also like the Noodles, because they’re all pretty cute, and I like the animations when it comes to the end [of a goal],” he told me.Â
That skeleton dog stretching around the display edges? That’s the fitness progress “noodle.”
Noodles are Fitbit’s name for the activity progress bar, which wraps around the watch display — they’re animated and have a victory animation at the end, depending on which Noodle is picked. Some look like pixelated snakes or spooky dogs.
I don’t see him playing games on the watch all the time anymore like I did during the first couple of weeks he wore it, but he always likes wearing the watch, and he gets excited about meeting the fitness goals.
My kid playing the Pollo 13 racing game. He loves fiddling around with it.
Google has six games on the Ace LTE right now. Smokey Lake is a fishing game that uses hand motions to cast and reel in random fish. Pollo 13, a racing game with chickens that uses hand-tilt movements to control the Mario Kart-like tracks; it’s one of my son’s favorites. Another favorite is Kaiju Golf, a monster golfing game where you swing your arms to putt. There’s a puzzle game called Otal’s Secret, a dance game called Jelly Jam and a space action game called Galaxy Rangers. Google is promising more games that will appear for free over time, and there’s also an Animal Crossing-like world called Bit Valley where your Eejie lives.
There are parental controls in-app to limit distractions: much like the Apple Watch, games can be shut down during school time. I like how the phone app allows me to manually reactivate access on the fly, too, just in case my kid has free time after school that he’d like to play and pings me to ask.
The Fitbit Ace phone app is where contacts are managed, along with location tracking services. You need the app to call the watch or for the watch to call you, though.
Phone service with more than a few catches
All the games are included in Google’s subscription service for the watch, which also includes LTE phone calls, messaging and location tracking. The $10-a-month plan (being offered at a discount for the first year currently) is handled by Google inside its Fitbit Ace LTE app and isn’t the same as a regular phone plan. You can call your kid and your kid can call you but only from within the Fitbit Ace app.Â
I had to add myself as a trusted contact from the app, which lives on a parent’s phone and handles your kid’s watch contacts, shows fitness goals and tracks their location. Unlike the Apple Watch, which can be turned into a kid-ready wearable within a parent’s Watch app on their phone but can still make standard phone calls and text messages to anyone added as a contact, Fitbit’s extra level of safety requires that anyone added as a contact for your kid have a Google account.
Anyone who wants to get a call from the kid wearing this watch also needs to install the Fitbit Ace LTE app on their own phone and set themselves up as a contact. In that sense, the watch’s ability to make calls feel more like an app-to-app walkie talkie than a true cellular number.
I love that the Ace LTE allows for calls and texts as well as quick voice messages. So does my son, who regularly sends me little voice pings telling me what’s going on at the town pool or on a walk around the block. On a boat trip with my sister a month ago, he went ashore with his cousins and told me where he was on his watch while I stayed aboard.
“The texting, I like how there are words you can click on and the regular text by tapping letters, and I think it’s really cool that there’s not just voice type but a voice record so you can send voice messages instead of just calling. It’s like a mix between texting and calling… it’s a quick, easy way to check in,” he said.
But there are downsides. Because calls run through Google’s phone-based Fitbit Ace LTE app, which runs on iOS and Android, incoming calls are received almost like calls from apps like Signal; they can be answered, but on your phone screen, they’ll have a different interface for answering and controlling audio. Also, these calls can’t be received on a cellular watch like the Apple Watch.
“It should be easier to connect with other people so you can text and call them. I also think the texting app should be compatible with Apple Watches, not just iPhones,” my son said.
Also, at the moment, there’s no way to add kid contacts at all. We haven’t been able to add another friend who also has a Fitbit Ace LTE, because Google accounts for kids under 13 managed under Google Family Link are currently blocked from being added to the Fitbit Ace LTE. It’s a baffling move that Google’s product reps say is being looked at (hopefully calls between kids can be enabled soon). It’s a problem because while the Ace LTE is great for helping parents stay in touch with kids, it’s not so great at helping kids stay in touch with each other… or allowing younger siblings to add each other as emergency contacts.
A game of Kaiju Golf. The Ace LTE is great for games, fitness fun and basic calls to parents and guardians but lacks smartwatch extras that the Apple Watch has…and it can’t be set up to call kid Apple Watches, either.
After a month-plus of seeing my kid use the Ace LTE, it’s clearly a watch he loves. He’s 11, and at some point, he’ll graduate into using a phone. In the meantime, it’s just enough for him, and it’s fun without being too distracting. It’s more thoughtfully designed for kids than the Apple Watch, especially for fitness.
But, I have a real issue with the watch’s limited support for contacts for kids, and its lack of Ace-to-Apple-Watch communication. More importantly, so does my son. He told me the other night, with a sad look on his face, that he often wished this Fitbit was more of a full watch like the Apple Watch. He’d like to run more apps, and he’d like to talk to his friends. What’s the point of a watch like this, he said to me, if you can’t talk to your friends?
I hope Google solves these, because it limits the Ace LTE’s appeal as a true phone alternative for kids old enough to want to do more than just play games, be active and make calls to adults. The Apple Watch has music and maps and more features, things that may not be important for younger kids but will matter if you have a preteen who prefers a watch to a phone. Still, it’s a great start, and I hope Google keeps improving it. The kid watch space needs better options, and this is definitely one of them. But it could be a lot more.
