Pinwheel, a technology company known for providing child-friendly devices, has introduced a new smartwatch specifically tailored for children aged between 7 and 14. The Pinwheel Watch aims to help parents keep connected with their kids without the safety concerns associated with smartphones. Priced at $160, the smartwatch comes with a $15 monthly subscription and became available last week for purchase on the company’s website.
Designed to look modern yet kid-friendly, the Pinwheel Watch features a screen slightly bigger than an Apple Watch, a built-in camera, voice-to-text messaging, GPS tracking capabilities, interactive mini-games, and robust parental management tools. Its standout and possibly most divisive feature is an integrated AI-powered chatbot, called “PinwheelGPT”.
According to the company, PinwheelGPT is carefully developed as a safer alternative to typical AI chatbots and is intended to offer children a resource for answers about everyday topics such as schoolwork, social situations, and general curiosities. Recognizing potential parental concerns with AI chatbots generating misinformation or supplanting in-person interactions, Pinwheel emphasizes protective measures in the chatbot’s design. The company confirms that its AI identifies and restricts sensitive or inappropriate subjects, guiding kids instead toward conversations with adults in their life. Limited testing demonstrated its ability to avoid inappropriate or violent topics successfully.
Moreover, parents have complete access to real-time and previously deleted interactions their children have with the chatbot, allowing them to intervene whenever necessary. Founder Dane Witbeck, himself a father of four, assures users that the AI can be disabled entirely through parental controls if desired. He further adds that the company refrains from using any data gathered from minors or adults to train its AI models.
Alongside PinwheelGPT, the watch allows children to make voice-controlled calls and send texts, conduct video calls, take selfies, and utilize apps such as a voice recorder, calculator, calendar, and simple games resembling popular classics like Tetris.
Parental functionalities are centralized within the Pinwheel “Caregiver” app. This platform grants parents the ability to approve contacts with a “Safelist,” block certain phone numbers, create schedule-based contact restrictions during specific times (such as during school hours), and monitor messaging, including receiving automated summaries of their child’s text conversations generated by AI.
The release of the Pinwheel Watch signifies an important strategic expansion for the company, which first gained traction by launching a child-safe mobile phone in 2020. With the new smartwatch, Pinwheel looks to further differentiate itself in the increasingly crowded wearable tech marketplace, particularly against popular brands like Apple and Fitbit. Unlike competing products like Fitbit’s Ace LTE, which prioritize fitness tracking and GPS location services, Pinwheel places its core emphasis on creating a secure, educational, and controlled child-appropriate communication device.
Currently available in the U.S., UK, Canada, and Australia, Pinwheel plans further international expansion. Its watch will reach Amazon shelves later this summer, though a precise release date has not yet been announced.
