Garmin Bounce LTE Kids Activity Tracker In-Depth Review: 2 Months Later!

Here's everything you need to know about the Garmin Bounce LTE Activity tracker, and how well it works in real life.

0:00 Pricing, Size, Battery, Overview
3:20 LTE/Cellular: Location/Messaging/Tracking
11:12 Activity Tracking, Games, General
17:08 GPS Sport Tracking
19:38 Worth it or not?

Garmin is continuing both their kids activity tracking product line, as well as their LTE adventures, in a new device that combines both of those: The Garmin Bounce. The Bounce is essentially a Vivofit Jr. kids activity tracker that’s been given a huge screen, combined with both GPS & LTE capabilities for kid tracking, and even a mic & speaker for audio messaging. The intended age range is 6-12 years old, though, like most kid things, you can under/over-shoot that a bit depending on your kid.

In our case, we’ve been using a few of the Bounce units for a few months now. I’ve had two of our (oldest) daughters using them 24×7, as well as both my wife and I taking turns wearing them to understand the features a bit more from an adult standpoint. However, as a family all three daughters have had Vivofit Jr. activity trackers for many years, so we’ve already got a pretty good feel for how that side of the equation works.

As noted, there are basically two sides to the equation here: The activity tracker piece (including built-in GPS for workouts), and the LTE location tracker & messaging piece. And then of course, layered atop all that is the Garmin Jr. app. In this review, I’m going to dive into all those pieces, one after another. If you’re unfamiliar with the site, I do in-depth reviews of sports technology products – digging in deep to find both the good and the bad.