HEAD TO
HEAD
RELAY KIDS PHONE
Best for: Independent
elementary schoolers
If you’re not quite ready to
give your kid a smartphone,
the Relay is a perfect stepping
stone. The screenless commu-
nicator uses a cellular connec-
tion to let your family speak to
one another—Relay to Relay,
or from a Relay to the compan-
ion mobile app. You can also
check your kid’s whereabouts
by viewing the Relay’s GPS
location in the app. Younger
kids find it irresistible: My pre-
schooler gleefully shrieked,
“Mommy, I love you!” every
few minutes while I worked—
until I texted my husband to
confiscate the Relay. ($10
monthly subscription required)
JIOBIT
Best for: Preschool-age Prefontaines
The keychain-sized Jiobit is the easiest tracker to clip to a wriggly
kid’s belt loop, shoelace, or backpack. It uses a combination of Blue-
tooth, Wi-Fi, cellular data, and GPS to turn the companion app into
a real-life Marauder’s Map. When I toggled on Live Mode at a park,
I could watch onscreen as my preschooler sprinted out of sight,
turned around at an intersection, and walked back. In the app, you
can share your child’s location with trusted adults, create geofences,
get alerted when your kid goes out of bounds, and swipe between
multiple children—or dogs. ($9 monthly subscription required)
$129
$50
Hide
and
Seek
Small children (and sometimes
bigger ones) can be as slippery
as salmon. Keep an eye on them
with a kid-friendly GPS tracker.
—Adrienne So
030
GADGET LAB → SECURITY
STYLIST / AUDREY TAYLOR
