Hi, Reader!

Today's newsletter is something new, but highly requested: a realistic review of two gadgets our family has been using for a while: The Gabb Watch for kids and the Skylight Family Calendar.

If you've followed me on instagram for a while, you have seen me talk about how we aren't a low-tech family but we do have a lot of boundaries and precautions around the tech we use and don't simply upgrade or add gadgets to our lives because their popular - especially when it comes to our kids.

These 2 gadgets have been in our family routine for 6 months to a year and I wanted to let the novelty wear off before I gave a full, honest review - so here we go!

Gabb Watch

Features We Use Most Our 10 year old got this smart watch for Christmas last year and it's still working great for us! He wears it anytime he goes somewhere other than school without us like basketball, birthday party, neighbor friends house, play date, bike ride, etc. In our new neighborhood, the boys have LOTS of friends and want to be out playing all the time. With the watch, they can text me when they move from one friends' house to another, call to ask if it's ok to play video games, etc. and I can send him a text when it's time to come home for dinner!

• As parents, we can use the Gabb app on our phones to do the following:
  • See his live location if the watch is on.
  • Set boundaries to notify us if the watch leaves a specified zone like the school zone or home zone
  • option to receive a notification when the device is turned off or on
  • I choose who the contacts are in his watch, he can call or text anyone in the contacts
  • He can NOT text or call a number that is not already in the contact list that I set up
  • Has a calculator, step counter, alarm clock, etc.
  • Can set tasks to check off for them (but we don’t use it for that)
  • It can vibrate or ring and he can choose the sound and volume.

Cost

• We bought it during a black Friday sale last year so the device itself was free.
• Current Black Friday Sale: 50% off the device and waived setup fee.
• We pay $24/month total: $14.99/mo for plan, $5/month for device protection, $4/month for taxes and fees
• We’ll be getting a second watch for our second son’s 9th birthday next month and the plan is $12.99/mo since it’s our second device on same plan.

What we like about it

• This helps us balance our competing priorities of communication, independence, trust with protection from early exposure to the pressure and content of internet interactions or making devices feel more appealing than the people and activities in front of them.
• Screen is small and uninteresting. I like this - it isn’t a temptation to be on it, typing a lot or playing. It’s the right amount of functional/boring that he uses it for texting or calling, but isn’t distracted by it.
• I like seeing his location as he gets older and gains more independence. I see that he made it to his friend’s house in the neighborhood for example. Or if he’s getting a ride home from a playdate with a friend, I can see that they’re on their way.
• He can call if he needs to speak to us directly or text - he can choose to type out a text or record a voice memo that gets texted to me.
• ​The cost feels fair for the service provided.
• Our oldest is going to middle school next year. We don’t plan on switching him from a watch to a phone until 8th grade or so - even then, it won’t be a social media/internet connected phone.
  • I like that Gabb has 2 phone options as well so we could switch him from a watch to a phone later on while keeping the same safety features and cost.

What we don’t like about it

• The watch can be glitchy. There was a time when it said it had no signal and we tried resetting but it didn’t work. Kyle had to chat with support to get it hard reset then it worked.
• From Milo's perspective, the watch is too small.
• The battery life is not great - if he wears it for a full day and does a lot of texting/calling, the battery will die before the end of the day.

Skylight Calendar

Features We Use!

I bought the 15” Skylight Calendar at Costco in June. I have it displayed in our butler’s pantry area. I had been on the fence about it for a long time but we were getting more and more involved in activities and the phone calendar just was NOT cutting it anymore. Size and Display: It comes in a 10”, 15”, or 27” diagonal size. It includes a stand for displaying it on your table or countertop as well as a wall mount for installing on the wall. It can be installed or displayed horizontally or vertically. We have it vertically because that’s how it best fit the space.

• I wanted it easy to access but not front and center on display (my kids are always tempted to click around on a screen just because it’s there so I didn’t want it to be too easily accessible)
• Why I bought at Costco: the only difference is that the calendar includes one year of the Skylight Plus subscription instead of one month like it does usually - the price was the same.
• Skylight Plus is not a dealbreaker either way to me. With it, you can use your calendar as a digital frame when not using the calendar (like a screensaver mode), use the meal planning feature more fully to save dinners and grocery lists and assign them to meals (I don’t use this feature at all), and use the Sidekick AI assistant to do things like forward and email from school with event details that it will automatically add to your calendar. Editted to add: You must have a plus subscription to use the star rewards! I didn't initially realize this since we've always had a plus subscription.​
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• Calendar: Visually display the family calendar with color coding for each person of the family
  • Sync the skylight calendar with calendars like google or outlook so that anything you add to your google calendar will show up on the skylight and vice versa
  • When I add an event, I can assign it to one profile or multiple! I really like this feature so that the kids can see who is involved. I also have a "profile" called Whole Family so the kids know if something is teal blue, it applies to our whole family

Here's an example from our calendar to show the color coding. The green H profile is "Hill Family" google calendar - so those are automatically populated on our skylight from our google calendar.. The Ruby Christmas Program event was created on skylight but I can select that it sync with google so that it displays on my phone google calendar as well!

• Routines and Chores: Set up routines and chores for kids with a different profile and schedule for each person.
  • Routines can be things like brush teeth, shower, do your homework - you can assign them to different days as well as morning/night
  • Chores can be assigned to multiple profiles or individual ones with any frequency.
    • For example, our older 2 boys unload and load the dishwasher once a day. I have it set up so that they don’t have to do that on Sundays, but the other 6 days of the week it alternates who unloads and who loads. So Shepherd is assigned to unload on M/W/F and load on T/R/S. Each day, when he checks his chores on the skylight only that day’s chores appear.

Rewards: Chores and routine tasks can also have stars assigned to them that each profile can accumulate for completing tasks and chores. The stars can then be cashed in for any reward you create! I made up rewards like 10 extra minutes of video game time, a gas station drink of your choosing, stay up 30 minutes late, and we recently added a bigger one: 50 stars can be turned in for $5. The skylight display shows them how close they are to achieving these rewards. I can also add stars to their account that isn't attached to a specific reward. I actually use this all the time! It's like our family currency: I can ask them to do a major task outside of their normal expectations and say "I'll add 3 stars to your account if you clean out the van for me.". They love this!

• Visual display for young kids: on both the tasks tab and the rewards, you can assign an icon/emoji to it that will display alongside the name. Ruby can’t read at all yet and Jude is just starting in the last few months. Both of them are still able to use the system to see what they need to do and earn rewards because they know what the symbols mean.
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• Meal Planning: I admittedly do not use this feature at all as my iPhone note system works well enough for me that I was not interested in trying something else. I’m also not in need of automated grocery lists and assigning specific meals to specific days (especially breakfast and lunch). For anyone who prefers to have these details listed out ahead of time and automate their groceries, etc. this is a feature that once some time is put into setup (like recipes or meals that you make regularly), then it could help keep you organized!
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What we like most about it
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• Takes the pressure off me and Kyle to answer every question about the calendar or their chores. We had found ourselves constantly having to answer the exact same questions about "how many days until" "when do I get to" and now there's a kid-friendly calendar they can use! We had also failed at any other chore chart or system (pen and paper always lost immediately by us and the kids!) and this one has stuck - we've used it for almost 6 months at this point!
• We use it every single day for the chores! In the afternoon, once the kids have had a snack and rested for a bit I’ll tell them: “It’s time to do your chores!” and they all do them at the same time. The kids have video game time on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. They know they can’t start their time until their chores are checked off.
• The kids like the visual animation of little stars on the screen added to their account each time they complete a task.
• Several of my kids are very interested in the calendar and what we have going on. They can look at this tab to see how many days away something is, change the display between today/this week/this month, and not ask me so regularly. :) It took some getting used to at first to remind them “you can go check the calendar!” when they wanted to ask me about the schedule.
• I like that it's not always on: You can automatically have a sleep mode schedule so the whole screen is completely off from 9pm-7am for us!

What we don’t like about it
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• I like the idea of the Sidekick AI assistant for snapping photos of invitations, forwarding emails, etc. but when I do this, I have a lot of difficulty consistently syncing that event with our other calendars on google (which kyle and I both use as our primary calendar on our phones).
• This isn’t specific to the calendar, but the good and bad of having a screen at their level that they are encouraged to use is that sometimes they also end up inadvertently changing the settings or the display. Ruby has added fake events to our calendar on multiple occasions. :)
• The photo screensaver is another thing that’s great in theory and doesn’t work great in reality. We’ve tried a few photos on there and they’re always cropped weird or very zoomed in so we just don’t use that feature.

Cost

• Normally $279 (that’s what I paid) - currently on sale $60 off for $219 for 15” which is a little over 20% off. One month of Plus included - $79/year after that
• Costco price is the same, the Skylight plus account is one year instead of one month. I did have to contact support to get my one year trial of Skylight Plus up and running as the box said it included a code but there was no code to be found. :)

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​TL;DR: Are either of these gadgets essential to life and happiness? For sure not. Have I found them to make our lives easier in a few routine ways: definitely. I'm generally skeptical when I see something promoted too much online. In these two cases, I'm glad I chose to give them a try and that they've stuck around in consistently making our lives easier!

Please reply if you have any questions about either one!

Gabb Watch

Skylight Calendar

PO Box 211, Morton, IL 61550
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