The Kids' Smartwatch That Lets You See, Track and Protect — Without Giving Them a Smartphone

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My daughter Lily turned 8 in September and started walking to school on her own for the first time. The school is eight minutes away. I know every house on the route, every crossing, every shortcut. And yet — every single morning, I'd watch her turn the corner and then spend the next thirty minutes completely unable to think about anything else until I heard she'd arrived safely.

I know how that sounds. I know it's irrational. But I also know I'm not the only parent who does it. That low-grade dread that sits in your chest until you get confirmation — parents who've felt it know exactly what I mean.

My first solution was a cheap smartphone. That lasted three weeks. She got distracted by YouTube on the way to school. Her teacher had to ask her to put it away twice in the first week. Then one afternoon she showed me she'd accepted a friend request from an account neither of us recognised. I took the phone back that same evening.

A colleague at work had bought a popular kids' GPS watch for her daughter — it cost nearly £140. GPS and voice calls, nothing else. "I can hear that she's okay," she told me one afternoon, "but I can't see her face. When she sounds upset, I don't know if she's just tired or actually scared." She said she regretted it almost immediately. That conversation stayed with me.

Then at school pickup, a mum I'd barely spoken to mentioned the imoo Watch Phone Z3. She'd had one on her son's wrist for four months. "He wears it to swimming lessons," she said, almost as an aside. I'd been told repeatedly that kids' GPS watches weren't waterproof enough for the pool. That detail caught my attention immediately.

I looked it up that evening. Within 48 hours, I'd ordered one.

The morning it arrived, Lily put it on and refused to take it off. She called me from the kitchen to announce she was in the kitchen. She thought that was the funniest thing she'd done all week.

The real test came the next afternoon. I opened the imoo app as she left the front gate. A dot appeared on the map — Lily, moving down our street. Turning right at the junction. Crossing at the lights. Pausing briefly outside the corner shop (I made a note to talk to her about that). Arriving at the school gate, on time.

I put my phone down and made a cup of tea. I hadn't realised I'd been holding my breath until I finally exhaled.

The Features Nobody Told Me About

The feature I didn't expect to love as much as I do is Security Guard. You connect the watch to your home Wi-Fi network, and the moment Lily walks through our front door, my phone buzzes. No call needed. No message from her. Just a quiet notification: "Lily has arrived home."

It sounds like a small thing. It really isn't. Those thirty seconds between "she should be home by now" and "she is home" used to feel like minutes. Now they don't exist. She walks in, puts her bag down, and my phone already knows — before she's even taken her shoes off.

I also didn't expect how much the video calls would change how we talk. With a phone, I'd get a voicemail or a short text. With the Z3, she calls me face-to-face — from her wrist, while she's still walking. When she finished football on a Wednesday and wanted to tell me about her goal, I could actually see her face light up. When she was nervous before a class presentation and called me on the way in, I could look her in the eye and say "you've got this." That's different to a phone call. And there's one detail that still surprises me: during the video call, her real-time GPS location appears on screen below her face. I can see where she is and see she's okay at the exact same moment.

The swimming was the moment I realised this watch was built to a different standard. Lily has lessons every Thursday. The third week, I forgot she was wearing the Z3. She came home, dried off, did her homework. I noticed it on her wrist over dinner — still on, still tracking, still fully functional. IP68-rated to 20 metres means it handles full submersion, not just rain or splashes. That's a real difference. For a kid who lives in the water from April to September, it matters enormously. And she's never once had to take it off.

One afternoon I got a photo notification. Lily had used the Z3's 2MP camera to photograph a blackbird in the park and sent it straight to me through the app. Then a picture of her friend's dog. Then a slightly blurry one I think was supposed to be a squirrel. That tiny window into her afternoon — without apps, without social media, without any of the things I'm not ready for her to have yet — was more than I expected from a kids' watch. The 8GB storage means she can fill it with moments like that for months before running out of space.

Her teacher brought it up at parent's evening. She'd noticed the watch and been initially sceptical. But Class Mode — which I set through the app to restrict functions during school hours — meant it had never disrupted a single lesson. During class, Lily can still reach me in an emergency. But the watch doesn't beep, buzz, or distract her when she's supposed to be learning.

"I wish every parent had one of these," her teacher said.

The SOS feature is one I hope we never need. If Lily is ever in real trouble, she draws a C on the locked screen and it instantly calls me and sends my phone her live location. The gesture is simple enough for a child to do under stress, specific enough that it won't trigger accidentally. I've tested it. It works in seconds. I'm glad she has it. I hope it's always just a reassurance.

What Makes the Z3 Different

The battery impressed me more than I expected. I charge it every other night — sometimes every two nights. It has never died on Lily mid-journey. Given how often I forget to charge my own phone, that says something about how well the power management works.

The one feature I most underestimated was Stranger Rejection. Before the Z3, I'd never really stopped to think about the fact that any number could reach a child carrying a phone. With the Z3, only the contacts I've approved can call or message her. Unknown numbers are blocked completely, automatically, without her having to do anything. It sounds obvious. In practice, it removes an entire category of worry I hadn't quite put into words.

Lily is nine now. She walks to school and back every day. She goes to the park on Saturday mornings with her friends. I check the GPS dot once a day, maybe — just to glance. Mostly I don't think about it.

That's the thing nobody tells you about finding the right kids' watch. It doesn't just give you peace of mind. It gives your child room to grow into the independence they're ready for — while you quietly know they're safe.