How much does a child’s phone watch cost?

There are a lot of phone watches on the market so it’s worth looking around carefully. We can say with a fair degree of confidence that the watches we see at the lower end of the price spectrum do tend to be troublesome, and although the website might promise a whole pile of exciting features, getting them to work, and stay working reliably is often difficult. 

We see phone watches starting from as little as £15 and going up all the way to a kid’s Apple Watch with all the bells and whistles for up to £700. Realistically, for a first phone alternative and a primary-school-age phone watch you will be looking at £100 to £150 for a reliable well-made device that won’t end up failing and being discarded quite quickly. Above that bracket you’re looking at something closer to an adult’s Smart Watch, which would do the trick but possibly not ideal for a younger child.

A topic we often hear is the battery life on a phone watch. It’s sometimes difficult to remember to regularly charge devices – this is a skill that needs to be learned – so battery life of the phone watch is something to find in the documentation. Whatever it says, halve it!

All kids phonewatches will need some sort of connection to the outside world in order to be contactable and tracked using GPS geolocation. This will usually be a SIM card provided by a mobile network such as ParentShield. Every phone-watch will be different, so there will be a few things to check in the watch manufacturer’s literature to ensure that you get the right SIM for the child’s watch.