Bark Phone Review

The Bark Phone ticks all the boxes on our wish list for a safe kids' phone. The parental controls are even more finely tuned in the Bark Phone than the Bark app—no more restrictive third-party rules getting in the way.

In this review, we’ll explain everything the Bark Phone does, why your kid will (probably) like it, and how it compares to other kids' phones.

Bark Phone was once again picked as the Best Overall kids phone in our third annual Kids Safety Awards. 

You have to make a couple of decisions when shopping for a kids smartphone, and your choices may knock the Bark Phone out of the running by default:

• Web browser: The Bark Phone does have a web browser with safe search protections and a parent-controlled block list. Pinwheel and Gabb phones don't have a web browser, and it’s optional on Troomi phones.
• Text monitoring: Bark keeps your child’s texts private unless it detects a problem. Your kid will appreciate this. Pinwheel and Troomi let you see all of your child’s texts. Text monitoring isn’t available on Gabb phones.
• App access: Parents get to approve all app downloads before they’re installed on the Bark Phone. Pinwheel, Troomi, and the Gabb Phone Plus include a small number of third-party apps they’ve deemed kid-friendly. Bark’s approach gives your child more options, but it also means you’ll need to do some research about dangerous apps for kids.
• Storage: The Bark Phone has 128 GB of storage, which is plenty for most kids. Budding photographers and videographers may want the Pinwheel or Troomi phones, which have more storage options.
• Carrier: You can’t add the Bark Phone to your current cell service, be it Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, or any other carrier. You have to pay for Bark Wireless. Pinwheel is the best option for folks wanting a specific carrier.

Everything else works in Bark’s favor. We especially like that Bark respects kids' privacy regarding their text history and browsing history—unless it goes against the content filters, of course. And Bark has the best parent notifications of any parental control we’ve come across. The app even provides talking points if having a heart-to-heart conversation isn’t your strong suit.

We also like that Bark gives parents the freedom to decide whether their kids should have internet access or what kind of apps they can use. Bark’s flexibility allows it to grow with your child.

Bark Phones automatically come with a Bark Premium subscription (normally $99/yr.), allowing you to put similar controls on your child’s computer or tablet via the Bark app.

With Bark Premium, you can connect an unlimited number of devices and customize an unlimited number of child profiles. This is especially useful for younger kids who may not be ready for a phone but who still like to play on the computer.

We’d be happy even if the Bark Phone was nothing more than the Bark app permanently installed on a smartphone. Uninstall protection is a major sticking point for parental control apps—including Bark.

On a normal smartphone, kids can end up uninstalling the controls or downloading VPNs to browse the internet without any filters. But the Bark Phone is tamperproof. There isn’t a “grown-up” iOS underneath the Bark controls. It’s all Bark, all day long.

And it gets even better—the Bark Phone does things the Bark app can’t:

• App download approvals
• App time limits
• Contact management
• Spam call blocking
• Improved location tracking

Plus, linking your child’s social media accounts to Bark is way easier on the Bark Phone than on the Bark app—you don’t have to ask your child to manually sign in to all of them during setup. Monitoring begins as soon as they log into an app that Bark monitors.

To learn more about the core Bark features—listed below—hop over to our Bark app review. They work the same way on the Bark Phone.

• Social media monitoring
• Screen time usage reports
• Content filters
• Push, text, and email alerts for parents
• Remote internet shutdown

The Bark Phone looks like a grown-up smartphone because, well, it is. It’s a Samsung Galaxy A16 or A37. There’s no Bark branding on the outside—your kid can truthfully say they've got a Samsung Galaxy.

Here's a quick look at the major differences between the Bark Phone and the Bark Phone Pro.

For the most part, yes, the Bark Phone works as advertised.

Bark loaned me the Bark Phone and Bark Phone Pro so I could test it myself. (Note: Because they have the same protections, I'll call both the Bark Phone going forward.) After setting up content controls on the parent phone, I used various web browsers on the Bark Phone to try to look up adult content.

SafeSearch is automatically turned on for search engines like Google Chrome, Bing, and DuckDuckGo. Any search engine that doesn't have SafeSearch (like Yahoo) is automatically blocked. Yahoo is how I accessed explicit content on the UK phone Wingio, so I was pleased to see that Bark is already aware of this workaround. Your child can type something into Yahoo search, but the results screen will never load. 

But SafeSearch isn't perfect. Kids can still access informational content about adult topics on sites like Wikipedia. For example, Wikipedia pages describe sex in graphic detail and feature explicit drawings, all of which were visible on the Bark Phone. These will show up in search engine results — your child doesn't necessarily have to know to look for them.

But, one of Bark's strengths is its content monitoring. You can set up alerts for various categories (like sexual content) to know what kinds of sites your child is visiting. 

The only downside is that these alerts aren't always immediate. For example, I got an instant alert after searching for a sexual topic on YouTube through the Bark Phone. But when I visited the Wikipedia pages, I didn't get an alert until the next morning — nearly 17 hours later.

Bark customer service says their system processes alerts in batches so that really important alerts (like threats of violence) go out as soon as possible. However, they acknowledged that my sexual content alerts took much longer than usual to process. 

Still, I think a late notification is better than no notification, and Bark still shines as one of the best kids phones with content alerts. You'll even get alerts if your child searches for inappropriate keywords but doesn't click on a site. 

The Bark Phone successfully blocked my attempts to chat with or call unknown numbers, and I appreciate that more than one person's phone number and email can be set up for alerts. 

If we could wave a magic wand, we’d change these things about the Bark Phone:

• Add a multi-line discount: If you have more than one kiddo who’s ready for a phone, you pay full price every month for each Bark Phone.
• Provide a longer warranty: The phone is covered for just one year.

To review the Bark Phone, we examined its features compared to the original Bark app and other kids' phones. We've tested the Bark app hands-on multiple times, spoken to real users, and read hundreds of online reviews. Bark sent the Bark Phone and Bark Phone Pro to us to test, review, and return. To learn more, visit our methodology page.

We think the Bark Phone is easily the best kids phone on the market today thanks to its unparalleled focus on message monitoring. We also love that parents can adjust the settings to be as restrictive or laid back as necessary, and that Bark provides instant alerts when there’s an issue.