Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had been debating getting my son and daughter (10 and 7) some kind of non-phone communication device / gps tracker. I was thinking I'd just disable access to the browser on a cheap Apple Watch, but a) it's not that straightforward and a smart kid can circumvent it, b) Apple decided that only Series 4 or later can share with one iPhone, and c) I suddenly realized that silly decision by Apple made me have to buy 2 Series 4's, and that was not in my budget, especially for a 7 year old. So I did a ton of research. I looked at quite a few watches and was finally torn between the TickTalk4 and the CosmoJr2, so I bought both as a comparison. I gave my older kid the TT4 ($160 + $24 / mo) and the younger the CJ2 ($60 + $15 / mo if you buy the annual plan). Honestly, the results were very interesting. Please look for my review of the CJ2 under that product. I don't want to take up space here reviewing another product, but the short of it is, CJ2 is pretty easy to setup, works as advertised, and after ironing out a few nonsensical setup instructions my younger daughter was able to start bugging anyone I put in her contacts with phone calls at 6am (I didn't know). So it works, and it's easy for a child to figure out. Also, the battery and the speaker are good. What I didn't realize is, there is NO video calling (like FaceTime). Hmmm... don't know why I didn't see that prior to purchasing. So the TT4 is by far the superior product. It has more features and is closer to a real phone than the CJ2. It does have video calling and it works surprisingly well. The calls are crisp, and big bonus, you get a bunch of stories, songs, and other child friendly content (like Avatar: Last Airbender and SpongeBob) as radio podcasts. That said, the amount of time it took to set it up... let's just say if you want to give your kid a working watch/phone, you'll need to set aside at least an hour. I'm a software developer (videogames) so I know the importance of guiding a person through complex setups, and overall I'd say TT4 does a reasonable job. However, they don't set your expectation early on about the following -- you don't realize you have to setup an account for the watch, an account for the parenting app, and an account for the cell service. While I understand because of the unlocked nature you can't include the cell service in my next point, the account for the watch should have auto populated the parental account and vice versa. The fact that you had to do it twice essentially meant you must do it 3 times. This can be torturous, especially if you do it in the wrong order. Setting that aside, the watch is actually quite good. It hits the sweet spot of features vs functionality, and it removes my worry of my kids surfing the internet, etc... it also uses a simple authentication scheme to allow or not allow people to call your kids. There's plenty online that reviews each feature, it suffices to say the watch does what it advertises and does it nicely. I still have two issues to deal with: 1) the volume on the speaker is incredibly low, almost silent. I've tried everything and can't fix it, so I've reached out to their tech support. I'll update this review once they contact me and rate their response and the outcome here. I just hope it's not a faulty speaker because I don't want to go through that setup again, and 2) the battery life has to be carefully managed. With everything turned ON, the watch drained to 50% within 4 hours, which means basically an 8 hour battery life. Now, you really don't need everything on, so I'm sure it will last 12. Given what it's doing (the gps is likely the largest drain, but that's the thing you don't want to turn off) I guess the battery endurance isn't terrible, but it's not great. Finally, the pricing for the cell service is a bit misleading. They say $10 a month in the literature, but in fact that's for a 1000 minutes only, which is just so year 1990, right? If you want unlimited data/text/and service it's $20 per month. Not a lot compared to my cellphone's service, but it's double what they say, and I guess I'm annoyed about that. But CJ2 isn't much better... all their prices require an annual payment upfront. So I'm probably just annoyed. Overall, a good watch. If you're wondering which I'd choose between the two I compared, I think the TT4 is a better solution in terms of safety, features, video calling, and other features missing from the CJ2. But, I could've bought 3 CJ2s for the TT4, and I do take that into account. In the end, I think you get what you pay for. It's not an Apple Watch, which will make the experience and your appreciation horribly skewed if you go into this expecting that. But if you temper your expectations and realize this is just a way for you to track your kids' location, contact them via voice, text, or video calling, and give them and you hope in case of an emergency, you'll appreciate the design and execution of the product. It's IPX67, so splashes are ok, but no submersion which means not at the pool. Keep that in mind. Summary: A solid watch for our youngins. I'd recommend buying it. Hope this helped your decision. :)