Xplora Smartwatch – Find out why we love this watch

You will need to download the Xplora app so you can link and manage the smartwatch, once set up and linked you can then monitor your child’s activity through the app.

To use all the features Xplora has to offer on their watches you will need to use a sim card. Xplora will send you out a GiffGaff sim card with your new watch which is what the girls use in theirs and we currently use the £6 goody bag which gives them 500MB of data, unlimited texts and calls.

The data is strictly used for the GPS feature so you do not need to worry about your child being able to access the internet.

You can add pre-approved numbers to the watches through the app which means the girls can only call and text the contacts that I have set up for them through their watches. They can not see anyone’s mobile number and they can definitely not see their own mobile numbers so they cannot give them out.

The camera on the X5 smartwatches is really good, better than I thought it would be. The camera is on the front so they can only take selfies, I get random pictures of them sent to me even when they are upstairs which is quite random and funny.

Now, this is the feature that I was looking forward to the most.

The door knocks every day with one of their school friends asking if they can play out and I dreaded it and always said No. My reason was that I wouldn’t be with them to protect them and keep them safe and I wasn’t comfortable with that. We have a lot of children playing out the front I felt so bad stopping them because of my own anxieties until one day I said, Ok. I was outside every two minutes checking them, making sure I could see them and that they were safe.

They know they are not allowed to cross the road and they know their boundaries but that still didn’t stop me from going out and checking on them. When their smartwatches arrived, I felt relieved because one of the features is the tracker so I was very eager to see how it all worked.

Please be aware that without a sim card this feature will not work.

All I have to do is go into my Xplora app and swipe to which child I want to check on and I can see where they are. I can see the pin moving as they move around the boundaries I have set them. You can also set up a safety zone where you will get an alert if your child comes out of the said zone and an SOS button on the side of the watch just in case god forbid they need to use it which will alert your phone.

I am looking forward to using this feature in the summer holidays when we go on days out and moving forward when the girls go no school trips again.

This is what I was talking about at the beginning of the post. I ditched the bikes because we wanted the steps and that is because we get rewarded for walking. HOW, you ask?

For every 1000 steps, you take you are rewarded with 1 Xplora coin which you can save up until you have enough Xplora coins to buy something from their Goplay store. The shop restocks and opens every Friday at 4 pm and you can buy real stuff like scooters, trampolines,  Instax camera, clothing and smaller items like puzzles, binoculars, footballs etc.

When you first get your new Xplora smartwatch, they give you a code for Xplora coins on the side of the box to start you off, make sure you add them.

You can win bigger prizes by joining these campaigns, It will cost you 1Xplora coin to join any new campaign. You can get a daily reward which will help you towards your overall distance just by checking in every day but other than that you don’t need to do anything else except for walk as it will monitor is all for you. There is an option to buy boosts using your XCOINS but we don’t do that as were are saving all of ours to buy something in the store.

This is another great feature that I love.

I asked the girls headteacher if they can wear them to school and she said yes as long as they don’t fiddle around with them. Well, they can’t in school mode, all they can see is the time and that’s it until it unlocks at 3.20 pm I have set mine to lock from 8.30 am to 3.20 pm Monday to Friday however in this time, it can still monitor their GPS location and steps.

Since Covid, we have not been allowed to physically take our children round to their outside classroom door so we have had to leave them at the gates and watch them go through. There have been times where I have watched them go through but second-guessed myself because there are so many children going through at the same time. I just log onto my app, refresh the location and I can see they are in school. This has been such a relief for me.

The watches are also waterproof until 1.5m/30 min so if they do accidentally put in in water, you don’t need to panic and the screens are gorilla grass and have a protective cover on. My girl’s screens are scuffed a bit now from all the wear and that’s okay because you can buy replacement screen protectors on Amazon.