Gadgets designed for kids have some kiddish elements. That is for sure. Any style-conscious gadget user would not even take a second look, but not today, not with the Huawei Watch Kids X1 Series. It is unapologetically big, rugged-looking, and strangely, draws a grown man like me to it.
When it comes to smartwatches for kids, it is never an afterthought for Huawei. The electronics giant is relentless in the pursuit of “arming” your young ones with a smart wearable, and the Huawei Watch Kids X1 Series clearly has older children in mind. Like the first, the X1 retains the flip design to allow for a comfortable video call angle. And yes, it does video calls.
Actually, it does a lot more than that.
The new Huawei Watch Kids X1 [CH] and X1 Pro [CH] both come with a rotating and flipping watch body that can tilt up and down, as well as rotate 360 degrees. The idea is simple: let kids easily adjust the camera angle without having to twist their wrists into yoga poses. The watches are fitted with a 1.82-inch wide display, complete with an anti-glare heat-insulating protective film, along with a 5 MP front camera and a 13 MP rear camera. That’s right. As if having a camera on a smartwatch isn’t ridiculous enough, it has two.
Huawei is also going hard on the “parental peace of mind” angle. One of the headline features is the ability to continue locating the watch for up to five days even after it has been powered off. Leveraging Huawei’s massive device-powered “Find Network,” parents can still track the watch’s location through the Smart Care app. The watches also support indoor, outdoor, and even floor-level positioning. Huawei says more than 15,000 large venues across China support indoor precision positioning.
Video calling remains one of the key features here. Parents can switch between the front and rear cameras during calls to see both the child and the surroundings. Huawei’s AI voice noise reduction is also onboard to help reduce playground chaos, traffic noise, and whatever mysterious sounds children generate when grouped.
The watches support more than 30 global communication bands, too, allowing roaming support overseas. Kids can also add friends across different smartwatch brands simply by shaking the watch face-to-face. Thankfully, Huawei has not forgotten that unrestricted social features and children are usually a terrible combination. Parents can manage contacts, reject unknown callers, disable apps during school hours, restrict screen-on time, and control group chats.
The standard Watch Kids X1 already sounds overkill for a kids’ smartwatch, but then Huawei introduced the Watch Kids X1 Pro.
The Pro model takes the rotating watch concept and turns it into something even more ridiculous—in a good way. The watch body can actually detach from the strap and become a tiny handheld camera. Huawei literally calls it a “palm camera.” So yes, your child can now run around with a removable mini camera smartwatch hybrid thing.
The X1 Pro also gets more photography-focused software features, including more than 90 fun shooting effects, over 100 sticker styles, night mode, timed shooting, and 14 built-in filter styles designed specifically for children. It also comes with NFC support for public transportation and access control, along with an upgraded memory configuration featuring 2 GB RAM and 64 GB storage.
Both watches feature heart rate monitoring, emotion tracking, an adorable Penguin AI exercise companion, HarmonyOS ecosystem integration, magnetic charging, and an 850 mAh battery that can charge to 50% in just 20 minutes.
The Huawei Watch Kids X1 starts from 1,598 yuan [CH] (around 220 USD), while the Huawei Watch Kids X1 Pro starts from 2,298 yuan [CH] (around 315 USD).
Images: Huawei [CH].
