Compare wearables and connected devices. Choose what’s right for you.

Independent comparisons of watches, trackers and monitors for children, teens, adults, seniors, people living with dementia, lone workers and pets. See their technologies, security features and privacy practices side by side, and make a more informed choice.

How we work

Our focus is only on cellular connected devices and wearables with 4G LTE, LTE-M, 5G, satellite, GPS and other technologies.

Explore devices

Browse by device and who it's for

Start with the person

Six segments, organized around the wearer. A wearable that's perfect for a marathon runner is useless for someone with dementia — and that mismatch, not the spec sheet, is what decides whether a device works.

A child wearing a GPS smartwatch, signaling to a parent holding a phone

Ages 4–12

Children

GPS watches, SOS buttons, first phones-on-the-wrist. What survives a school year, what lasts a school day, and what parents actually need versus what's sold to them.

Explore kids' wearables

A teenager's smartwatch and a phone exchanging location in both directions

Ages 13–17

Teens

Location sharing, crash detection, driving safety and the balance between oversight and autonomy. Often the phone already does it — we say when.

Explore teen wearables

An adult and an older adult wearing smartwatches, sending location, messages and heart data to a phone

18 and over

Adults & seniors

Smartwatches, fitness and health sensors, sleep, ECG and SpO2 — through to medical alerts and fall detection as needs change. We organize by need rather than birthday, because people stay active far longer than the old 65+ categories assume.

Explore adult & senior wearables

An older man walking out of a geofenced zone around his home, triggering an alert on a phone

Cognitive decline

Dementia & Alzheimer's

Wandering alerts, geofencing, tamper resistance, two-way voice. Over 60% of people with dementia wander; 94% are found within 1.5 miles — the exact range a device changes.

Explore dementia wearables

A worker in remote terrain connecting to a satellite from a wrist device

Isolated & off-grid

Lone workers & outdoors

Man-down detection, panic alerts, satellite SOS, working and traveling beyond coverage. Two watches can both claim "satellite SOS" and promise very different things — and consumer devices often aren't enough for occupational duty of care.

Explore solo & remote safety

A man wearing a chest sensor and smartwatch streaming to a clinical monitor and a phone alert

Chronic conditions

Health monitoring

Continuous glucose, cardiac monitoring, epilepsy alerts, oxygen. What's clinically validated, what's wellness, and what a clinician will actually accept data from.

Explore health monitoring

Or compare every device side by side

Security & data

Where does the data go?

Continuous location and health signals on a child or an older adult are some of the most sensitive data that exists. Almost nobody asks who holds it, for how long, or what happens when the company disappears.

76%

of wearable companies rated high risk for transparency

59%

rated inadequate on breach notification

41%

fail to implement privacy by default

74%

of users say they're concerned about their data

Read the full picture

Apps & platforms

The device is half the product

The companion app is where families actually live — setting alerts, checking location, responding at 3am. A superb tracker with a broken app is a broken product. We assess both, and the platforms underneath.

Compare every device See how we review →

Technology, explained

From Bluetooth to satellite

Two different jobs get muddled on every product page. Positioning is how a device works out where it is. Connectivity is how it tells you. A device can be excellent at one and useless at the other.

Finding you indoors

GPS fails inside. Wi-Fi positioning is what actually reports a location in a school or care home — and what it collects surprises people.

The battery trade-off

NB-IoT lasts longest and tracks worst. 4G LTE does video calls and needs charging nightly. LTE-M sits in between.

Satellite SOS, twice over

One device lets you tell a rescue coordinator what happened. Another lets you press a button and hope.

See how each one works

EMF & SAR

How much RF does it actually emit?

EMF (electromagnetic fields): The electric and magnetic fields produced by electricity, wireless signals, power lines and many everyday devices.
SAR (specific absorption rate): A measure of how much radio-frequency energy your body absorbs, usually expressed in watts per kilogram (W/kg).

Regulators require phone makers to publish SAR figures. They don't require it for wearables — so the numbers exist, scattered across filings and manuals. We collect them and publish them per device, with the standard attached.

The comparison trap

A smartwatch is measured against 4.0 W/kg; a phone against 1.6. Four numbers, four different yardsticks.

We're not a lab

Every figure comes from the manufacturer's published data or a public FCC filing, cited to source. Where none is published, we say so.

No fear-selling

We report the evidence as it stands, and we don't sell shielding products.

The SAR index explained

Our independence

Not affiliated with any brand

No manufacturer owns, funds or influences ViaMondo. We accept no payment for coverage, rankings or placement, and every affiliate relationship is disclosed at the top of the page it appears on.

How we work

Latest

Guides, comparisons & analysis

Security & data · Investigation

Who actually holds your family's location history?

A child's smartwatch and a parent's tracker run on the same infrastructure — and the name on the box is frequently not the company storing the data.

Off-grid · Coming soon

Garmin inReach vs Apple Emergency SOS

Both are sold as satellite SOS. They promise different things, and the gap matters most when it matters most.

Dementia · Coming soon

Five questions before buying any dementia tracker

Battery, tamper resistance, phone dependency, who answers the alert, and what happens the day they take it off.