Can someone who plays fretted violin help me out?

Basically, I'm a guitarist and I'd be interested in having some fun with an instrument similar enough in tone to violin and is bowed, but with frets so that I don't have to spend 5-10 years learning intonation. (normal violin is really cool, but I just want to try a bowed instrument without as much time investment)

I thought that's what fretted violins were like but I've heard three people at this point say that you still need good intonation to use fretted violins. I don't understand this at all and I'm wondering if the instrument I'm looking for exists. Also... Why have frets if you can't use them as frets? Tf?

Can anyone help clear things up? Thanks a lot.

EDIT: Thanks for everyone's help. Reading all the comments I think maybe I'll take the plunge and start learning violin sometime as a more serious thing and just learn intonation as well because everyone is saying bowing is just hard so I might as well just get the benefits of learning intonation.

Will probably still go with 6 string electric violin though anyways because the added bass range like a cello is really cool and I like how you can practice with headphones and ideally not torture everyone around you with the screeching lmao. And the last four strings are tuned the same so I could learn acoustic violin later on if I wanted.