Roboni - I Programmable Gaming Robot

Roboni-i Review. Bought 3 of these when Woot guested as Gold Box of the day, mainly because of the positive reviews, both Amazon and various 'gamer' sites. Then, when they sold out three different times that day, I thought to myself, these things must really be something. Wrong. Really, really overrated. Neither me nor my three grandchildren are impressed ... it took all of ten minutes for all of us to lose interest. 1. 12 rechargeable batteries (each) are necessary and expensive. I bought the best and we still don't get 20 minutes a session. Do you know how long it takes to recharge 12 AA's? 2. Steering is imprecise out of the box and very difficult to master, I'm guessing weeks, not days. 3. Bots are fairly well constructed but fragile ... any kind of accident, even a short drop, and they're gonna break. Of particular concern is the wheel frames which I'm guessing can be easily snapped when the oversize wheel is accidentally cantilevered with the wheel itself the next to go. And, because they keep moving and jerking around even when you put the controller down, they're really easy to drop. 4. "Programmable" is a joke ... all you can do is drop and drag from a list of meaningless 'motions'. Chuck the Truck is more fun to "program" than this. 5. Control is constantly being interrupted by the bot's 'personality' function if you can call a few beeps and an annoying shudder a personality. 6. Finally, every review spoke of how much fun it would be to have two or three of these at the same time. WRONG! All they do is get tangled up with the others' wheels and give the imprecision of control, you have to physically separate them, which means picking them up, while they're jerking around, see above as being prone to dropping and breaking. I expect the kids to give them another try or two but as of right now, I'm going to rank these as the worst Christmas presents I've ever purchased and trust me, that's saying something.

Roboni- i was recommended to me by a friend that had purchased one and then a second for her younger son. I bought one for my 12 year old. From unpacking to start up took less than 10 min. I installed the software (running on Vista) and went through the normal process. We are all technology junkies in my household, so this is so down our alley. The robot immediately caught our attention, he (the robot, my son named him) was immediately running around the house - on its own as well, if you ignore the chap. Leaving the base station switched on also gives him a new character! We did buy the recommended re-chargable batteries, and I suggest getting good ones, this robot eats power. The first night Roboni- i took the test for over 1 hour and 38 minutes before I had to remove him. My son is inquisitive and a natural problem solver, and has sat working with Roboni-i everyday since. We are getting into the programming aspects of the robot -so cool and user-friendly. Have been able to programme variety of robot responses so far - I personally like his "shiver" a happy movement! It's not the noise of the robot that bothers me, but my son constantly calling me to come see what Roboni- i can do. He loves it! The down side is that my younger son wants one too. My older son has now taken it round to friends trying to get them to buy one so that he has competition. Well let's hope. I really like the repeat play experience. There are some seven games included allowing my kid to play on his own for now - Colors - simply gathering specific colors as illustrate on the remote controller and depositing them at a loading dock in limited time. Good for coordination and memory development. Space Pods game allows multiplayer gaming which can be played according to the rules or your own. There are no rules printed, you have to access the software to get ti the tutorials. At the moment we play against time in like a soccer game fashion. For the price, computer learning experience and fun aspect it has hours, days and months of use ahead. We have only scratched the tip of the ice-berg, and so much more to learn. This robot truly has an extended life ahead. When I considered the price, it was in line with gaming prices for things such as Wii and PSP, in fact cheaper once you start adding all the game cards required for these games from time to time. Roboni-i is really a whole lot of stuff in one - a RC toy combined with lots of repeat play games and exposure to programming by plugging it into your PC. Can't wait for online world to go live as well. I strongly recommend the following: 1. Purchase the highest quality rechargable batteries (expensive, but much cheaper in the long run.) 2. Read up on Roboni i. Check out the video clips and media material online. This will give you a good insight. Strenghts: 1. Lots of variety and clearly sustainable interest potential 2. So much value in computer learning experience and accessories 3. As far as robotic toys go, if one may refer to Roboni i as a toy, it stands in a class of it's own based on the super software and gameing diversity Weaknesses: 1. Definitely adds to the fun if a friend has one. I guess as this robot gains more exposure more children will have one, making the interactive experience so much better. It strikes me as having one of the first few cell phones around. Difficult to phone people who did not have one. 2. Eats batteries. 3. Noisy if you do not turn the volume down (in the Command Center). I recommended it for the inquisitive, and active mind with imagination.

We ordered this as a gift for our son. We read all of the features and were excited to give it to him. That excitement was soon turned to absolute frustration, after we gave him the gift. When we tried to register the product on-line we found out that the company has gone out of business. What's the problem with that you ask? Well you can't play the on-line games, nor can you do several other things that this little robot is supposed to be able to do. Fantastic concept, but it is an absolute waste, since there is no support. We had this out of the box for less than 30 minutes before we packaged it back up and contacted Amazon about a refund.

Did not have luck with this item, not the the item was bad, but the distributor was not responsible - disappointed to find out the sender would not take returns - my fault for not reviewing the fine print. If a company is willing to sell, they should be willing to return if item is credible