Watch for a 9-year-old that calls me and does nothing else — what did you actually end up with? Kids & Family

Two viable routes and they fail differently. The dedicated kids' watch route is simpler to lock down and the hardware is usually mediocre — signal and battery are exactly where they disappoint, which matches what you found. The mainstream-smartwatch-with-family-setup route gives you good hardware and a decent contact whitelist, but costs more and needs a cellular plan on the watch itself. Most people I know who tried both ended up on the second.

Talk to the school first. Ours has a written policy on wearables with cameras and cellular, and a friend bought a lovely watch that then lived in a locker all day, which defeated the entire purpose. Five-minute email, saves a return.

Check where the location data actually goes and what the company's terms say, especially on the cheaper devices where the app is the weak point. This is the one product category where I would knowingly pay more for a company that has something to lose.

Battery. A nine-year-old will not charge it. Whatever you buy, if it can't do a full school day with location on, it will be flat at exactly the moment you need it. That's what killed the first one we tried — dead by about 11am, every day, within a fortnight.

Ours is on a family setup and the unexpected win was the walkie-talkie style voice message rather than calls. She uses that constantly and calls almost never, which I would not have predicted.