Joy Octopus Watch Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

Help your kid understand the importance of sticking to a schedule by using the app.

Xiomara Blanco/CNET

If your kid is envious of your fancy-schmancy Apple Watch, they should try on the Octopus watch for size.

It’s a smartwatch made for kids that charmingly looks like an Apple Watch, albeit smaller, more colorful and less expensive at $80 (converts to £65 and AU$110). Best of all, it’s purpose is to help kids become independent and learn self-disciplined.

You get a notification when your kid completes their chore.

Joy

Using the Octopus app on your Android or iPhone, you can schedule reminders on your kid’s Octopus watch to turn chores into a game.

When you schedule an activity or task, it pops up as a notification on the Octopus watch. After they’ve completed the task, they simply press the watch’s only button to clear the notification.

Meanwhile, you get an alert, too, when your kid crosses a job off the list, and this is where gamification comes in. The more tasks they finish, the more badge icons they get. It’s up to you if you take it up a notch with toys or ice cream.

And if they miss a task, you can sit your kid down and have a talk about responsibility and accountability, or whatever you do when your kid doesn’t finish their chores.

The Octopus-shaped night light kind of looks like the Snapchat ghost.

Xiomara Blanco/CNET

Designed for children 3 and up, the Octopus watch also helps teach the concept of time. It has three modes; one that links time to tasks (for younger children), one that teaches how to read a digital clock and one that teaches how to read an analog clock.

You can pre-order the Octopus watch in red, blue, lime green, pink and dark grey. Though it’s designed to look just like the Apple Watch, its plastic build keeps it cheap. An optional Octopus-shaped night light that also charges the watch is also available for $50.