Fitbit yesterday announced the Ace 3, the brand’s next-generation activity and sleep tracker for kids aged 6+. The wearable introduces more animated clock faces and new accessories to motivate kids and show off their personal style. With up to 8 days of battery life in a swimproof design, it can stay charged for longer. At R1 799, the Ace 3 will be available starting 15 March.
South African children were found to spend an average of just over 3 hours on screens per day (not including school work), with only a third of children meeting the screen time recommendation for their age. To offset this, Fitbit has redesigned its fitness offering to cater to kids.
The new wearable helps kids develop healthy habits by encouraging them to get active and get the sleep their growing bodies need. The device helps motivate kids to get moving to reach the 60 daily active minutes with reminders to take at least 250 steps per hour, with an option to customise during school time.
Sleep tracking, bedtime reminders, and silent alarms can help parents and kids work together to develop a consistent sleep schedule that gives kids enough time to rest and energise for another day. In the Fitbit app, kids can connect with parent-approved friends and family, engage in friendly competition via Family Face Off challenges, and celebrate milestones with virtual badges and trophies.
With new bunny, cat, martian, and spaceship animated clockfaces, kids now have more options to personalise their device. Kids can also match the wearable to their individual style with different accessory band options, and will soon feature the Minions as an option. With two accessory bands in Despicable Blue and Mischief Black, and more engaging Minions features and offerings coming soon, the iconic Minion characters from one of the world’s most successful animated franchises will soon be on-wrist to motivate kids to stay active.
While kids focus on getting active, parents can help keep their child’s privacy protected. To do so, Parents can set up a family account to access privacy controls and protections, which is strongly suggested for children ages 12 and under, and required for using the Ace 3. Through a Fitbit Family account in-app, parents are able to access Parent View where they can easily see their kid’s activity, manage what is shown on their kid’s app experience, and approve their kid’s friend requests.
Meanwhile, kids can monitor their fitness via Kid View, a focused in-app view that promotes the development of healthy habits by showing the data that matters most, like activity and sleep stats, as well as parent-approved friends, clock faces, avatars and badges. The Ace 3 experience is designed to meet the child privacy standards outlined by law where available, including COPPA in the United States and GDPR in Europe.
The Fitbit Ace 3 will be available at Fitbit.com, Hi Online, TAL, IC, Totalsports, Dis-Chem, eBucks, Superbalist and Momentum, with worldwide availability starting 15 March 2021.
It will retails for R 1 799 with classic, comfortable and secure silicone bands, in Black with a Sport Red clasp or Cosmic Blue with an Astro Green clasp. Coming soon, the Minions embossed silicone accessory bands will be available starting at R399.
