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Resources · Reviews · 9 min read
Monk tag reviews, written by the people who sell the thing
Start with the awkward part: we make Monk. Every review sitting on our own site was collected by us and published by us, and plenty of the early ones came from people somewhere in our orbit. That is not independent proof and we are not going to dress it up as any. What is left, once you strip that out, is still worth your five minutes: what customers actually report, what the disc flatly refuses to do, the three days that make people want their money back, and the four kinds of buyer we would rather send somewhere else.
Most people who search for monk tag reviews want one answer: does this thing survive a normal week, or does it end up in a drawer next to the fitness tracker. That is the right question for anything that costs €54.95 and asks you to change a habit. So here is the version we would want if we were the ones holding the card, including the parts that cost us sales.
Who wrote the reviews you are reading
We did, in the sense that matters. The reviews on our product page were gathered through our own review tool, which means we decided what to ask, when to ask it and what appears at the top. Some of the earliest ones came from friends, friends of friends and people who had followed the company since it was three people and a 3D printer. None of that makes them dishonest. It makes them useless as evidence, which is a different thing, and anyone selling you a habit device should be the one to say so.
A useful rule in this category: a review the seller can delete is a testimonial, and a testimonial is an advert with a first name on it. Read ours for the texture — which apps people block, where the disc ends up, what annoyed them in week one — and ignore the star average.
Where to find monk tag reviews we cannot edit
There is a Monk page on Trustpilot. We do not control it, we cannot remove a review from it, and if someone wants to write that the disc is a fridge magnet with delusions of grandeur, it stays up. That is the page to read before you buy anything from us.
You will notice we are not quoting a star rating here. That is deliberate. A rating we type into our own blog is a rating frozen on the day it flattered us most, and by the time you read this it may be higher, lower or based on twice as many reviews. Go and look at today's number yourself. It takes eleven seconds and it is the only version of it you have any reason to believe.
A review the seller can delete is not a review. It is an advert with a first name on it.
What our own customer survey found
We interviewed our first hundred customers. Ninety-five of them told us their screen time had dropped by something in the region of 30%. That is a good number and you should discount it heavily, for four reasons we would rather state than have you find.
We ran the survey, so we wrote the questions. The first hundred customers of a young Spanish company are the friendliest hundred it will ever have. Screen time a person remembers is not screen time a phone measured. And a hundred people is a hundred people, not a study. It lines up with what strangers write on the page we cannot edit, which is why we still think it means something. It is not proof.
The number we find more useful is the other one. Five people said it did nothing for them. When we asked why, the answers were boringly consistent: some wanted the whole phone dead and Monk only blocks apps, and some had bought it for a household where the phone in question ran Android. Both of those are avoidable before you pay, which is what the next section is for.
What Monk does not do
Four limits, all of them permanent, none of them coming off in a future update we can promise you today.
It does not work on Android
Monk is iPhone only: iOS 16.2 or later, iPhone XS onwards. There is no Android version, and we are not going to promise you one, because we have watched other people put dates on things. If the phone you want to tame runs Android, do not buy this, and do not buy it as a gift for someone whose phone you have not checked. It is the most avoidable return in our whole support inbox.
It is not a block you cannot get around
On iOS there is no such thing as an unbreakable block, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or has not read Apple's documentation. Safari is always there. If you truly want into Instagram, you can open the web version and nobody can stop you. What the disc kills is the automatic version of the gesture: unlock, thumb, open, scroll, forty minutes gone, no decision made anywhere in the chain. Getting past the barrier takes a plan, and a plan is not autopilot. The hours disappear into autopilot, not into premeditated workarounds. We wrote a longer piece on whether you can get around a physical blocker, and the short answer there is also yes.
The emergency unlocks run out
Each Monk comes with three emergency unlocks for the genuine edge cases: the disc is at home and you are in another country, or the disc is gone. Three, total. They do not refill monthly. That is on purpose. An unlimited emergency unlock is a manual unlock button wearing a hat, and the moment it exists the whole thing stops working.
There is no "not today" button
To reopen a blocked app you scan the disc. Always. There is no soft mode, no five-minute pass, no override buried in settings that you will find on a bad Tuesday. The three emergency unlocks above are the only door out that is not the disc, and there are three of them. If that sounds rigid, it is rigid, and the rigidity is the product. People who want an adjustable limit already have one on their phone and have already switched it off.
The first three days are the worst part
Nobody writes this in a product description, so here it is. For roughly three days your hand keeps going. You will reach for a dead app more times than you would like to admit, and every one of those reaches is slightly annoying, because you can feel how little of it was ever a decision. Some people find that fascinating. Some find it insulting.
By the fourth or fifth day the reaching mostly stops, and what replaces it is the flat, slightly strange feeling of an hour you did not plan for. That is the whole payoff, and it is quieter than any advert makes it sound. Buy Monk expecting to feel great on day one and you will be asking for a refund on day two.
Who should not buy Monk
Five buyers we would rather turn away, because a return costs us more than a lost sale and a bad fit costs us more than both.
- Anyone on Android. Said twice on purpose. Brick runs on Android 12 and later, uses the same physical idea, and will actually reach your address.
- Anyone who wants the phone completely dead. Monk blocks apps. Calls and texts keep working, always, which is a design decision rather than a gap: you can kill Instagram without becoming unreachable to a school or a client. If your goal is a brick of glass for four hours, this is not it.
- Anyone who wants a gentle nudge. Reminders, weekly stats and a limit you can extend are already on your phone for free, and ScreenZen does a good job of the same job for nothing. Monk is for the person who has already beaten every limit they set themselves.
- Anyone who wants to test the idea for free first. Do it. Foqos is free, open source and built on the same mechanism: block your apps, make an NFC tag the only way back in. Buy a pack of blank tags and you have the concept for the price of a coffee. If it works for you, you have learned something for almost nothing. If you then want a finished object, a stricter rule and a company that answers emails, come back.
- Anyone outside Spain, for now. Monk currently ships within Spain only. You can read everything here, and you can join the list for the EU and UK, but we are not going to take money for a parcel we cannot promise to deliver.
The number we nearly left out: 2.24% of Monks come back.
Out of a thousand sold, around twenty-two return to us. The rest end up stuck to a desk or a fridge or a shelf by the front door.
Shops do not usually publish their return rate, and the first internal reaction to putting ours here was the obvious one: why hand people a reason to hesitate. Because it is the one figure on this page that costs us money if it is wrong, and that makes it worth more than the flattering ones. It also protects you. Our 30-day guarantee sits on top of the 14-day statutory withdrawal period you get under EU law, which is around 44 real days to test it inside your actual week rather than in theory. And because Monk is a single payment with no subscription attached, there is nothing to cancel and no renewal quietly waiting in your inbox. It either earns its place or it leaves entirely.
How it works, if you have just arrived
Two pieces. A magnetic NFC disc about the size of an AirTag, with no battery and no need for a connection, and an app. You choose which apps go behind the barrier and which stay free. From then on, opening a blocked app means holding your iPhone against the disc, wherever you left it. There is a strict mode that stops the app being deleted mid-session, and scheduled sessions that start on their own at a set hour, but the way back in never changes.
The detail customers mention most is not technical. It is furniture. Where the disc lives decides everything: by the front door, on the fridge, on the desk in the room you work in. Anywhere that is not the sofa or the bedside table. Keep it within arm's reach of where you scroll and you are running the same phone as before, with one extra step.
Frequently asked questions
Are the reviews on your site from real customers?
They are from real people who bought a Monk, but they were collected and published by us, and some of the early ones came from people who know the company. Read them for detail, not as independent proof. For reviews we have no ability to edit or remove, use the public Trustpilot page. We would rather point you there than argue about our own wall of five stars.
Can I return it if it does not work for me?
Yes. A 30-day guarantee on top of the 14-day statutory withdrawal period, which is roughly 44 days to test it in a real working week. Our return rate was 2.24% the last time we counted, so most people keep it, but the process exists and it is not designed to wear you down.
What happens if I lose the disc?
That is what the three emergency unlocks are for. They get you out of a block while you sort out a replacement. They are finite and they do not refill, because an infinite emergency unlock is just a manual unlock with better branding. The dull advice that prevents the problem: give the disc a fixed home on day one and never move it.
Does Monk work on Android?
No. iPhone only, iOS 16.2 or later, from the iPhone XS. There is no Android version, and no date we are willing to commit to. If you are on Android, buy something that supports it today. We would rather lose the sale than sell you a disc that does nothing.
Do you ship to the UK or the US?
Not yet. Monk ships within Spain today, and we are working on the rest of Europe and the UK. If you want to be told when that changes, join the list rather than ordering and hoping. Until then, Brick is the physical blocker that already ships to most of Europe and North America, and Foqos is the free way to try the mechanism anywhere.
The only review that decides this is yours
Everything above happened to other people, and we collected most of it, which is why it can only take you so far. If the scene sounds familiar — you open the phone to check one message and put it down forty minutes later with no memory of the middle — more reading will not settle it. The only test that counts happens in your week, with the disc somewhere annoying.
Monk is the disc and the app for €54.95, paid once, with a 30-day guarantee on top of your statutory 14. It currently ships within Spain; if you are elsewhere in the EU or in the UK, join the list and we will tell you when we can actually deliver instead of guessing.
See the MonkOne payment of €54.95 · No subscription · 30-day guarantee plus 14 statutory · Ships within Spain today
