Garmin - vivofit jr. Activity Tracker For Kids - Broken Lava

My 7 year old wanted a "fitbit" but when looking for one, I found this Garmin fitness tracker designed for kids. It has limited functionality but is geared for kids and he loves it. It tracks "steps" (though I'm not convinced it's very accurate) as well as "activity" time, with a goal automatically set for 60 minutes of daily activity. And it displays the time of day. It also allows me to award coins for chores or tasks. It's easy to customize - I can choose from a long list of chores or create my own, then assign values to each chore, as well as the rewards that the coins can be redeemed for (so if he earns 10 coins, he gets to choose dinner one night, etc.). It syncs to an app that I keep on my phone, so we regularly check his daily steps and activity level, and he really strives to get to his goal. It also tracks sleep, which we can review in the app. And it's waterproof so great for swimming and bathing. He is really loving it!

I was looking for a step tracker and watch that my young kids could navigate through and understand on their own and the vivofit jr. accomplished that. They love its features. I like that it's not completely tied to a smart phone. You need the app during initial setup and if you choose to use certain features (goals, rewards) but it's not mandatory for what my kids enjoy--counting steps, having a watch, timer, etc. The only unknown is the battery. It is not rechargeable and is supposed to last a year. I am curious to see if it lasts that long and how easy it will be to replace. For now my kids love it so I am very pleased with it.

As much as I loved the idea of this, as did my 9 year old son, it did not fit him. We did plenty of research on fitness trackers and was excited to find one geared for kids. When he tried it on it was too snug for him and he said it was uncomfortable. My son has a very slender build to him. Unfortunately, it had to go back. He loved the idea of earning and the settings on this as well as you can wear it swimming! I know that you can buy a regular wrist band accessory to replace the band with if that helps anyone, I just did not want to spend more money than I should have on this item. I gave it only 3 stars for all of the great things this tracker could've done for us.

I have a Fitbit tracker and my son saw how involved I was in tracking my daily steps and staying active. He wanted to compete with me but I couldn't really find something in the Fitbit that worked for him. This Garmin doesn't have to be constantly recharged like my fitbit, it handles water much better and keeps my son active in competition with me for daily steps even thought the Garmin and Fitbit run on separate apps. The only downfall was after 5 months the band broke and we had to order a new one. Costs about 20 on Amazon so getting a new band as opposed to a new Garmin was the way to go. Overall a great buy and love to see how excited my son is about exercise and healthy competition.

This is a good activity tracker for the kids. The wristband is a bit small for kids. My 5 yr old is average size but it fits him pretty snuggly. The description says that it’s for kids 5-9 yrs. I don’t think it’ll fit my kids by the time he’s 7-8. The step counts might be a bit off counting more for less. However, the nice thing is it’s kid-friendly, keeps my kid interested in doing more activities to earn points/rewards which is the whole purpose of coughing up quite a bit $$ for a device for kids. We’ll come back to provide more updates since my kid only has it for a week.

Bought this as a Christmas gift for my 7 year old son. He loves the activity counter, he has been more active since he received it. Reaching his goal & exceeding it is a great motivator for him. I love the sleep tracker, it helps me monitor the quality & duration of his sleep. The band is easy to sync and my son enjoys getting the points for doing his chores. You can even set rewards...which I didn't realize when I purchased it. The band fits his wrist fine, we've had no problems. Overall I would definitely recommend this band. Pretty cool for a kiddie toy. But it has more of a big kid look which my son loves. (He has the black band)

Bought this for my son's 8th bday. His older sister has a more expensive fitbit and he wanted something similar. We were afraid he'd lose/damage/forget to charge something more expensive. This was a perfect solution. It doesn't require charging and was less expensive than the fitbit. He almost never takes it off and likes to use it for step counting and as a watch. There are other functions on it as well that are supposed to motivate him to complete chores, but the thrill of that feature only lasted about a week. Don't have any real complaints, other than its still a little pricey if you don't buy it on sale.

I am sad that I cannot give the Vivofit Jr. zero stars. The first one I had worked for 2 weeks. I was able to exchange it for a new one which worked for about 4 days. I replaced the battery which fixed the problem for another 4 days. I checked the warranty and discovered that I can send it to Garmin to be fixed as long as I pay for shipping. It makes no sense that they sell worthless products and then expect you to pay more so they can "fix" it. As a side note, I have a Vivofit HR which works nicely as a way to see texts on my wrist but is terrible for fitness tracking. I will never buy another Garmin product.