The cheapest home phone to run, if your kid's friends get one too
Pinwheel built its name on locked-down smartphones for kids, then watched Tin Can sell out batch after batch of a screen-free home phone. Pinwheel Home is its answer, shown at CES in January 2026 and on sale in the US since July 14.
From Pinwheel's own photos: the curly cord is part of the point.
The plans are what set it apart:
- Pinwheel Circle, free: calls to and from other Pinwheel Home phones, using a short Pinwheel Code instead of a phone number, plus 911.
- Friends & Family, $6.99 a month: everything above, plus up to five outside numbers and a real 10-digit number.
- Unlimited, $9.99 a month: any number.
You don't have to pick a plan to order, and the Pinwheel Code keeps working if you upgrade. Families with more than one paid Pinwheel line save 15%. Pinwheel also sells phones in bulk to groups of ten or more, which is how a class or a street can put everyone on the free plan at once.
Two phones, one job
The Spark ($68, regular $79) is a small, light handset in blue, white, black or purple. The Classic ($79, regular $99) is a trimline phone in pink, white or black, with the keypad on the inside of the handset. Both are corded and plug into a small adapter that goes into a wall outlet and joins home Wi-Fi. There is no phone jack, no cable company and no battery.
The Classic hides its keypad inside the handset. Speed dials 1 to 9 are set by a parent and dialed as *1#.
There is no screen and no caller ID display. The phone makes calls, takes calls and has voicemail. No texts, apps or camera.
What parents control
Everything runs through the Pinwheel Caregiver Portal app, the same one that manages Pinwheel's smartphones and watch:
- Approved contacts. Nobody can call in or out unless a parent approved them, even another Pinwheel Home phone. Unknown callers, spam and robocalls never ring.
- Quiet hours. Calls in both directions pause on a schedule, and a caller hears a "calls on pause" message.
- Speed dial for up to nine people.
- Call history, including calls that were blocked.
Pinwheel ships stickers in the box. Most kids will have decorated it before the setup is done.
Where it falls short
Like every Wi-Fi landline, it stops working when the power or the internet does, and 911 goes with it. Treat it as a way for your kid to reach people, not as the house's emergency line. The free plan also only reaches other Pinwheel Home phones, so a kid whose grandparents and friends have ordinary phones needs a paid plan from day one.
It is new. Launch coverage came from TechCrunch, Digital Trends and TechRadar, and hands-on reviews are still to come. Pinwheel offers free returns and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
For how it compares with Tin Can, Ooma MyPhone, Wiley and the phones a kid carries, see the guide to every new kid phone.
