Customer Ratings & Reviews

Works great,grandchildren’s love to watch, all happy when ever I bring it out

Love all the sphero products. Works great. Takes some time to master the driving

Purchased for adult son and he is absolutely in love with it

Great toy for a great price. My son loves it. It's very life-like.

Great toy, great price and lots of fun with it, my son love it

I love this car. It does a lot of great tricks and sounds

My son loves it, it's fun and exciting to play with it.

Excellent product. Exactly as it was described!!!y

Everything you would expect from the sphero brand!

Got it as a gift for my boyfriend and he loves it!

Sphero makes quality high end toys. The packaging was beautiful, but the instructions were lacking. After putting “gas” into Lightning (love that the charge port is in the gas cap area!) and downloading the app we were off and playing! I had no issues running him from the berber carpet to the tile floor, granted I am not a good RC driver, I had fun! Controlling him on my phone through the app was easy and we loved him talking as well as the expressions. We all got a kick out of touching Lightning to make him laugh or scratch his itch. The movement of the car is pretty fantastic and looked a lot better than I thought it would. My daughter had a lot of fun playing with Lightning as well! This is definitely not a child’s toy and big grown up kids will enjoy playing with Lightning McQueen.

It is what it is. A famous car that is controlled by your phone(Big Deal). Limited in what it can do. Just not worth $300

Very cool idea, but the controls aren’t as responsive as an actual controller. Expect to crash a lot.

This remote control toy, for lack of a better term, comes from Sphero, the company I recognize for bringing us the real live BB-8 from Star Wars. This appears to be the beginning of an onslaught of interactive robotic toys that need the brains of our smartphones to process all that they have going on. Build - The car itself is fairly robust, and heavier than I expected. The details are top notch and even powered off it looks like a VERY accurate Lightning McQueen model. Powered up and you get your first glimpse of the big LCD that makes up the windshield and expressive eyes that are the cornerstone of all the Cars characters. The front wheels are also spring on separate A arms which make the car even more expressive when turned on. Working lights and the loud clear sounds that come from the built in speaker complete this wonderful model. Play: I was a little surprised that at almost $300 this car didn't come with a separate remote, even to play with it without all the other features. Reported battery life is 40 min on 2 hours of charge. I didn't get any significantly different than that myself. Not including a remote means one thing these days - it requires a smartphone to run. Granted you can do LOTS more with a smartphone than you can with a static remote. The many many MANY ways would keep a kid busy with this thing... now if only it was meant for kids and not adults... I won't go into detail on all the modes of play that the app provides, as you can easily download it yourself and check them out. Some of the games have you interacting with the screen more than the car, and lighting just provides sounds and lights, and then the main event - actually driving lighting. He is equipped with tires/suspension/powerful motor that lets it do donuts and drift on almost all floor surfaces (except carpet) and he's actually pretty good at it. This enhances the play and makes you look like an even better driver than you actually are. Overall I struggled a little bit with the cost of this toy compared to others, but Sphero has done their best to make up for it in the gameplay provided in the app. This is a top notch toy, likely aimed more at the collector or adult who enjoyed cars than it is to kids, but I didn't mind that one bit. I even let my kids play with it too!

The first thing I would say about this Lightning McQueen is that you should think of it as more of a robot than a radio control car. Radio control cars are driven using radio frequencies that control the driving motions of a car. This Lightning McQueen uses a smart Bluetooth device and a massive number of sensors to not just control its driving motions, but to also interact to voices and touches. In essence, you are controlling a driving robot that you can both drive around as well as interact with. The car has an LCD panel that controls the eyes and motors that control things like its mouth and individual wheels The quality and details of this car are outstanding. I was impressed with not only the quality and attention to detail on this car, but also with how the car seemed to have a personality of its own, including expressions, voices and other interactions, like when you insert the charging plug into the gas cap and it makes a comment. Or when it gets tipped upside down and it makes a funny comment about being upside down. It also has interactive programming and games that you can play through the app that the car responds to. When you stop playing Lightning says something like "awww, come on...". There are a lot of other positives about this car. It has a good battery life, charges quickly, is really easy to use, and can almost be treated like a friend to my son instead of an RC car. There is much more of a connection with the car than just driving it. Also, I think the app software and firmware can still be upgraded in the future to unlock even more cool features. On the negative side, the only thing I would point out would be the lack of Bluetooth connectivity. Although it connects great at close range, the connection can break anytime after about ten feet. This impacts not just the driving (most kids follow the car closely anyway), but if you are walking around the house with your smart device while connected you will lose the connection. Overall, I would highly recommend this to anyone that loves the combination of 1) robotics, 2) RC cars, and 3) Lighting McQueen/Cars Movie.

I have been wanting to try out the Sphero for a while with just the ball and when I saw this car I was excited. The car looks pretty cool and exactly as seen in the video,etc. I had a little difficulty getting it setup initially but finally got it working. The controls are a little tough to figure out. I am not sure if they are not that responsive or my controlling them is not very good. Either way I had difficulty controlling the car specifically at faster speeds. Setup was simple. Take the sticker off the windshield, plug the car in (for 30 min to full charge, may already be charged), download the app on your device, then connect. I had a problem using my phone (pixel XL) first so I tried my tablet (iPad) to get the updates and do a first test, then I connected my phone and it worked as well. Connecting seems a little difficult at times and it may have to do with going in and out of wi-fi or other network issues. The battery was pretty full when I took it out of the box, so I only needed to plug it in to start it up and connect at first. You will also need to plug it in if you power off the car completely (for storage) through the app. You can just put it to sleep and avoid this. After about 30 minutes the battery was below 30% and may have caused some of my connection issues. For car controls, there are 2 types, Sphero (360 dial with buttons for reverse, hi speed, and donuts) and RC controls (forward/reverse, and left/right turn). The turning seemed less responsive to me, or maybe just lagging. I noticed the car would not come out of turns quick enough and I never really ran it at full speed because I was afraid of running into walls. The range is more than 70 feet, but may lose connection around walls/corners. It definitely takes some work to learn the controls but is fun to play with. There are several games/videos/settings to tool around with. Head to head racing w/ a virtual track Normal App games (fix the car etc.) You can adjust the app volume, and the car volume (Lightning talks to you will your playing or driving) The Car/toy is fun to play with and I would still recommend it, but be aware of the connecting issues you may have and the car control issues.

If you are a fan of lightning mcqueen, you must have this product and even thou needs to improve the apps

As an owner of another Sphero product, the Star Wars BB-8 unit, I knew what to expect in terms of build quality and entertainment experience. The Ultimate Lighting McQueen does not disappoint. It is a well-made product with lots of high-end parts. The moving mouth, LCD screen for the eyes, sensors, and articulating wheels, create a toy so life-like, it's easy to forget that you're not watching the Cars movie, but actually playing with a toy. Driving it around is fun. This is where you're going to get the most enjoyment out of this toy. At least it was for me. The app has other features, like playing some basic games, watching the Car's movie (not included) with Lighting McQueen, or programming some sayings and expressions, but the best part for me was driving him around. Regarding his driving ability, the car has great traction, and is designed to make sharp turns and donuts. Because of his fully articulating wheels, he turns into curves by leaning in the direction of the turn. It's quite impressive. He's easy to drive once you get used to controlling him from your phone. Just keep in mind, if you had RC cars before, this toy is not going to provide the exact same driving experience, but it does come close. Or at least close enough to bring you back to the enjoyment of driving a remote-controlled car from your past. All this enjoyment, comes for a price. If you can afford this toy, and recognize that what you're really paying for is the unique experience this car brings with its life-like qualities, then I'd recommended it. It's definitely a fun piece of technology worth showing others. The reactions I get from showing others this toy, is priceless.

Woah, my mind is officially blown by this product. It is like they reached into my brain as a 10 year old and came up with the ultimate toy car. The packaging is premium. The cardboard is high quality with information on the product and nice glitter effects on some of the surfaces. Opening it is easy separating the top portion from the base. Inside you will not find a lot but the cara is “parked” in its carrier. It has little plastic cups covering its wheels as if it was being held on a trailer. The red AC adapter is inside along with a bit of documentation. The app needs to be downloaded to make this work, on iOS it is about 200 megabytes so make sure you have room. The documentation states to plug it in for 30 mins on first use. After you plug it in (in the gas tank of course), it gets cool… I figured there would be a charging indicator but nope, it is way more fun. The headlights and brake lights start to pulse, the eyes illuminate and the car starts looking around. The car makes a few quirky remarks and moves the front side up and down as if he is shifting his weight just like he moves in the cartoon. When the charge is ready, he tells you with a moving mouth that he is ready to go! Pairing the app to the device is easy and might require a quick firmware update. The instructions are simple enough but you point it the right way, set the direction and get to some awesome times with your your kids! The car can go in reverse, drift, and has a turbo button for speed. Lightning McQueen makes remarks the whole time you are having a blast and the action is extremely responsive. You can use sphero controls which takes a little getting used to or you can switch it to RC controls if you are a vet in that world. This device is extremely premium, it scream quality in every way. If you want to make a few dreams come true, I say go for it. The battery life was a little short and the wireless range was shorter than I expected. Even with that, I didn’t care, the perks of this device far outweigh the negatives by far.

well, this little car is fun, but not 300 dollars fun. I understand why it is priced what it is, because there is some impressive technology, but it doesn't provide much return on investment. The car comes well packaged, with a cute stand for it to stay on that stores the car on a pedestal and the charger/instructions below. The battery lasts long enough, 30 or so minutes of fun out of it. The app that provides the entertainment is lagging a bit. The app provides control and interaction with the toy. The games are definitely child based, with the racing games very easy to win, even with me banging into walls and having to reverse. I couldn't get the "drive in" to work, which is supposed to have you watch the Cars movie with the toy, but I couldn't get it. This is an expensive toy that is going to be get boring to an adult quickly, and broken by a child. The controls are finicky, I'm sure after I get the hang of it, it will be ok, but for now It likes spinning out of control or hitting walls. I'm not recommending this just because of price vs experience. Too little "fun" for an adult, but will be broken by a child.