Sphero - Ultimate Lightning McQueen - Red

On paper, this is a neat remote-controlled car and should be a great experience for a Cars movie enthusiast. However, all I have to say about my experience with the actual product is: BUYER BEWARE. Currently, I’m on my third McQueen car. I’ve worked with the folks at Sphero for over a month trying to get a car that works 100%. So far, that hasn’t happened, so I want to share my experience with everyone in this review. As an FYI I’m using a Galaxy Note 8 as the controller for the car. Car #1: Refused to connect approximately 90% of the time. When it did connect, the range was extremely limited, less than four to five feet at best. I contacted Sphero customer support as the Best Buy stores in my area ran out of this product, so an in-store even exchange appeared to be out of the question. I provided Sphero the information they requested, and they provided a pre-paid return shipping label via e-mail. I shipped the car to them the next business day. Car #2: McQueen’s battery refused to take a charge. I called Sphero immediately and was informed by another rep that I should let the car charge for about 3 hours before using it. That had no effect on getting the car to work properly whatsoever so I immediately felt I was getting brushed off. I contacted Sphero again later that day and after a discussion I was provided another pre-paid shipping label via e-mail. I shipped the defective replacement car back to them the following day. Car #3: This is the car that I received two days ago and still have in my possession. The Sphero rep I spoke to assured me they would update the car’s firmware and software before they shipped it to me, which they did. Unfortunately, I’ve had the same exact problems as car #1, except it connects a little more often, around the 60-70% mark when it’s not on the charger. The no connection issues get rampant when the car’s battery is showing around ¾ charge in the app. So, based on my experience with this product I have come up with four possibilities as to what may be going on: 1) The car itself has rampant manufacturing problems that Sphero refuses to acknowledge. 2) The problem lies within the app itself considering all the connection issues I’ve experienced with two out of the three cars I’ve worked with. 3) The problem lies with a potential hardware/software problem that the McQueen app may be having with my phone. 4) All of the above. There are plenty of other reviews both here and on other websites showing that other consumers have had similar problems with the car, so it’s disappointing that Sphero would continue to market this product considering the overwhelming evidence that there’s something wrong with it. I haven’t experienced any connection issues with either my BB8 or my R2-Q5, both of which were also made by Sphero and all the phone reps I’ve spoken to have reported no known issues with the Galaxy Note 8 connecting with this product so I’m pretty sure my phone isn’t responsible. I did purchase an extended warranty with Best Buy for the car so I’m wondering if Best Buy will grant me an exception and give me my money back based on my horrible experience with this product. I’ve saved copies of both shipping labels to show that I’ve tried to get a working car directly from the manufacturer without success. So, I think it's quite clear that I’ve had my fill of trying to get a Lightning McQueen that works properly 100%. As I said in the beginning, it’s a neat product on paper but consumers should avoid this product. This product gets 1 out of 5 stars. Sphero needs to smarten up, issue a recall for this product and get the bugs worked out or discontinue it entirely from their line-up if they can’t fix it properly.

First ignoring cost, this thing is so awesome, it responds to touch, it seems to have a real personality and it moves so realistically. Behind the windshield is a color LCD screen which bring the "Eyes" of the car alive, moving with the spoken word, and boy does is speak (with Owen Wilson's voice, and quite loudly if you want it to) the front bumper is a soft rubber with an animated mouth that moves (mouth opens/closes w/animation) with the spoken words. The packaging of Lightning McQueen goes above and beyond excellent, a beautiful box secures Lightning by the wheels, a drawer beneath contains a small booklet and charger. The heavy box is printed with metallic ink, boldly advertising Disney PIXAR Cars 3 - Lightning McQueen. The car is controlled by an Andriod or Apple App which must be downloaded to your device - but we all have one or more so it can easily be updated to add/correct features. After down loading the app it instruct you to Update the Car, and it must be connected to it's AC adapter to do the update, which took about 2 minutes. But now I know my car is up to date and I have the latest app 3 minutes after unboxing - everything should be this easy - a good experience to get started. Now ready to get started, Lightning McQueen starts to chirp, wanting to get moving,you touch the car and it's body moves and reacts to your touch, you lift it up and it recants with another naturally spoken word choice. I don't want to spoil the fun by telling you the car says but it kind of errie - you will think the car is paying attention to you. Now using the app controls take some getting used to, the most important step that the written instructions gloss over, is the positioning button, you must push this "button" while standing directly behind the car pointing forward, fail to do this befor your start each time, and the car's controls will seem backwards or out of wack; do it right and the controls work reasonably well (you can also change to a RC control (up/down left/right set to sticks - this did not seem quite as natural as the joy stick), Still it takes a pretty fair amount of time to get the car to move exactly as you desire, after 1/2hr I still felt like an amateur, it really took 3-4 hrs usage before I could negotiate movements reliably. I'm sure a "kid" would pick it faster than I did, but a kid would not be concerned about crashing a $300 'toy' car (more like a little robot), so maybe I error-ed through caution. But with time by confidence grew, I was ready to try some driving challenges, that are part of the app, after a dozen or so attempts I was competitive on the challenges, and more impressed with, my friend, the chatty car. A few not so positive points, they (Sphero.com) claims you can operate the car from 30 meters (100ft); not in my experience, I got an out of range message, several times, and started "walking off" the lost at distance - and it was consistently about 20 long steps, which I'd call it 60 ft. Once understood it was still reasonable to have a lot of fun. The app (currently) offers 4 race tracks, one strait and a pit stop game which is much more entertaining than I though it would be, it was a real challenge to improve, but doable. The app allow you collect "trophies" , and race against others (this I could not test with only one expensive car). This bring me to my biggest complaint or really a is it worth it issue. This "toy" is quite a remarkable piece of technology, more robot than racing car, I don't think I'd trust it to a 5yr old, but I know a lot of 5-8 yr olds that would be truly amazed by my talking car, but the car is very fast, and a full speed, as the car warned me more than once, "that's going to leave a mark" and "maybe that will buff out" solid objects/walls will (probably) damage the car, I did not want to risk that. And that's where I have a hard time with the $300 price tag, at $100 or so I'l not worry about a kid playing with it, but for over $200 it's a struggle for me - but it's a lot of fun, unlike any toy Iv'e ever had - and it's faster then most dogs - so when you can drive well enough you can certainly have fun with your pets, as is quick and the cool lights on the car will capture their attention. So many ways to have fun with my my talking car....

I wasn't sure where to start, there is much to say about this unique and advance piece of technology, so let me start for the tips to set up the unit. The box and packaging are outstanding. The McQueen car feels sturdy and heavy, which makes me feel really confident. Even it seems to be built of plastic and silicone, I did some research, and you will find inside 6 motors used for steering, driving, and controlling body movements, with a speaker loud enough so you can hear it clearly while you are playing in wide open exteriors. It also have a windscreen that is actually a LCD with the eyes that make all type of different expressions. And the bumper mouth is capable to move and make expressions as well with the voice of Owen Wilson, and like the movie, it doesn’t stop talking or complaining. The I played about 50 min and the battery wasn’t depleted, after a almost 2 hours charge. Esthetically speaking, the toy is an amazing approximation of the Pixar McQueen Character. So, the first I did, was to connect the McQueen to the Power Outlet, By the way, great idea that the power connector is a gas cap charge port that lifts up to accept the red charge cable. Then I installed the app called "Ultimate Lightning McQueen by Sphero" in my Samsung Cell Phone, and once it is installed, the app will look for the McQueen toy. My best suggestion, is to put your phone the closest you can to the trunk, ( I put it on top) which is where the Bluetooth antenna is located. It is going to check and install for all the updates available first. It is going to take a while, you have to remember, the better the cell phone model you own, the faster and stable the Bluetooth transmitter will be. On IPhone the Bluetooth connection is really fast. In my case the McQueen app performed updates in A, B, C, and D Stages. Once all the updates are done, McQueen is ready to go. The suspension moves the car to the right, left up and down, you will have to take your time and learn how to operate the RC control app, there are 2 options, the Sphero virtual joystick, and the regular RC. I started with the regular RC, that doesn’t give you to much options to do the donuts or rolls, but allows me to learn how to operate it and have some fun. My recommendation is to start in a wide open area, so you can practice and learn to control the speed, and learn how to take curves. Overall, it’s really quite fun. On the Sphero option, you will see a virtual joystick that can be moved around in a circular space, you control direction and speed. The more you tilt the virtual joystick towards the edge of the circle, the faster he’ll go. With enough practice you will eventually figure out, and you'll be able to drive it successfully. But because the toy itself is still handling all of the steering, it will occasionally crash into obstacles as it turns around to change directions. It took me a while to learn how to use, but once you mastered, is way better than the regular RC control. You will see 3 other buttons that are part of the app. The first is ‘reverse’, and it is not as fast while is backing up. The second is ‘drift’, it will allow to perform donuts and rolls. The third is a turbo boost. So, basically, the fun you can get with this toy, is totally up to you, and the skills you will develop learning how to control it. Lightning McQueen is more than a simple RC Toy, it is what I think a first gen of Robot Toys. With that been said, the Lightning McQueen feels really alive. This is a result of the combination of the LCD eyes, moving bumper mouth, and animated suspension and the hundreds of different phrases it speaks, voiced by an Owen Wilson sound-alike. It has a lot of sensors, including light, motion, and touch panels on the roof, hood, doors, and rear of the vehicle, the chassis of the car features 5 capacitive touch panels that respond to your touch, so anywhere you touch the car, the toy is aware of how it's being handled, and can respond accordingly, making noises, and complaining like the movie character. Every time you crash it or get it in an accident, McQueen will ask for help in getting back on its wheels. Another nice feature is the lighting. The red tail lights seem to be turned on all the time, but the headlights are light sensor activated. Finally, you can put the toy in a sleep mode, or power it off completely. To power off you will need to go to the advance settings, and just follow the instructions, which are quiet simple, however, to power on again, make sure you have the toy connected to the power. It is a wonderful toy, it make me feel like i am part of the future of the technology. It is my understanding that this is the first of five products that Sphero will release this year, with more interactives options. Now that I have played, watched and enjoyed all that this toy is capable to do, I cannot wait to see what other surprise Sphero is going to release very soon.

WOW what a cool toy, Many adults will undoubtedly purchase this to play with under the guise that it was for the child. Out of the box I plugged it in to get a full charge, It comes almost fully charged. Lightning will tell you when he is ready. I am amazed at this car. You almost think he is alive. Lightning has a 30 meter range (that’s 90 feet to us Americans) a 40 minute charge and can go up to 6 miles an hour. You start by downloading the app (IOS/Android) and connect via Bluetooth. Then to get a full understanding of what he is able to do you should go to sphere.com/manuals and read through it. There you can find how to develop race strategy (match wits with lightning), unlock skills as you play with him, Learn about reactive touch (master his moves by a simple touch to the car) and Active studio (sequence animations for him to perform). He will even react to the original move Cars!! After ready the manual I and Downloading the app, make sure your Bluetooth is enabled and plug in McQueen, the app will do the rest, it first updates (takes 9-12 minutes depending on speed.) I did encounter a problem. My S6 refused to install the firmware, I uninstalled the app and booted phone reinstalled the app. It still would stick and the status bar wouldn’t move. I would hope that the app would time out and not leave you hanging in future app updates. I then used IOS and it took only a few minutes. The app is all immersive, the main screen lets you Maneuver the car in any direction. You can also turn on drift or boost mode. Initially you can race at 4 different tracks, unlocking achievements the more you race. The race is basically you and McQueen do different things to help you learn how to drive him. You can also practice skills in the pit. This is a game you play on the phone or tablet and McQueen interacts during the game. create scripts for him to perform (lines of speech) when driving the car around, and as mentioned above, you can watch the movie cars with him and he will respond or react to the movie (must be plugged in) My daughter absolutely loves it. Too bad the battery doesn’t last longer than 40 minutes. I would recommend this to friends and family. Also to people who have kids 7 and up give or take (do they know how to drive RC cars?) It will give you/them hours of fun. I would also recommend using this on a tablet for the better control. But it will still do fine on phones too.

Sphero is a brand that's known for making cool toys - just look at their BB8! My kids love the Cars movie and when I saw that Sphero was making an "Ultimate Lightning McQueen", I had to try it out! First thing is this toy is expensive - like $300 expensive. That aside, there's a crazy amount of detail that Sphero has put into Lightning. When he arrives, you'll notice how solid and sturdy he is. Sphero could've gone on the cheap and used sticker decals, but everything on Lightning is painted on - except for his awesome eyes! His eyes are actually a small screen and his eyes respond to where you drive him and what he's doing. Want to put the pedal to the metal? Lightning revs up and his eyes go all serious! When my kids test drove him, they obvious knocked him into things. It was really funny to hear Lightning yell out "OUCH!" when the kids ran him into the kitchen table. For the voice, they went straight to the source - Owen Wilson voices Lightning McQueen and the speakers they put into him make it sound like Owen's actually in the room with you. The other cool thing when he speaks is his mouth - it actually moves in sync with the audio! Lightning's body is solid except for the soft, pliable material around his mouth that lets him move and express himself just he does in the movies! The app that you download to control him also comes with some cool games - but my kids had more fun running him all over the house. I tried to upload a video of him speaking, but I couldn't get it to work for some reason. Here's a quick run down of his specs: * 3 processors and 6 motors * Ambient light sensor controls headlights * Pivoting, suspension wheel system * Responsive screen for eyes * Articulated mouth that moves with audio If you're a fan of Cars, or have kids that are, then Sphero's Ultimate Lightning McQueen needs to be on your list. The only reason I rated it 4 stars was due to the price. At $300, it's definitely one of the most expensive toys, if not the most expensive, in our house.

I have to say this is a pretty cool toy, if somewhat expensive... To start off, I rated this 4 stars for an adult using it, but I'd probably give it 3 for a kid and I'll explain why in a bit. First, setup is reasonably straightforward, you plug the car in to turn it on for the first time (no on or off switch... odd) and it charges a bit and boots up. You'll hear Lightning McQueen start talking to you when he's ready to go. On your first connect (or two) you will have to download and push an update to the car which takes FOREVER. I had two updates consecutively on separate uses of the car in the same day and they both took quite some time, so be prepared to not play with it for a while when you're first connecting. The voice and sounds on the car are LOUD to start with, and you cannot turn them down until you're done connecting, so with the updates and such you end up with the car talking and revving very loudly until you're able to get in and adjust the volume. Second, for some reason the app wont let you use the car without location services enabled... I'm not entirely sure why a remote control car needs location services when all it does is connect via bluetooth, seems a little invasive. Third, driving Lightning takes a bit of getting used to. The app's default controls are like the sphero orb controls which is to say they dont make a whole lot of sense for controlling a car. You can switch them to the standard two-directional option like an RC car in the settings though, so I'd recommend that. The car is MUCH faster than I had anticipated, and while that's fine for me and for most older children, I had intended on giving this to my son, who is a little bit younger. It would be nice if inside the settings there was a throttle threshold so I could keep it at a reasonable pace for not only his age but inside use so it isn't constantly bouncing off the walls at high speed (this was worth removing a star since Cars is a kids movie, why not make the car from the movie a little more user friendly for a child. Sure the price point of this means that many kids wont have it, but any adult buying this will likely let their child use it at some point even if it wasn't FOR the child). I'm worried that the animatronic face is going to break from hitting the walls too much. I'm sure he'll get used to it, but a maximum speed setting would definitely help. There's a couple of one-button touches for it to do some quick tricks which is neat, but again the sphero controls are just annoying to use. Which brings me to the design of the car itself. The face is a soft rubber to help with the animations of the mouth with Lightning is talking.. Unfortunately the rubber is a little tacky to the touch, which means with it running around on the ground it picks up any sort of stray dust, hair, debris, etc... And it's annoying to clean off. So overall, the toy is pretty cool, but a couple of tweaks to make it so it's a little more friendly to a younger audience (it is a kids movie after all) would make it that much better.

Ultimate Lightning McQueen is straight-up magic, for real. The attention to detail put into this toy is astonishing - from the charging mechanism (you plug him in, the plug goes under his gas cap), to the care put into the app (there's a ton to do and Lightning gives you feedback the whole time), to the impact sensors ("Ow! That's gonna leave a mark!"), to how he handles on carpet (exceedingly well), to his headlights and taillights that actually work, to the fact that he can reverse or get a speed boost, to his idle chatter, the fact that his MOUTH MOVES when he talks, and the whole chassis moves up, down, and all around. OK, sure, that's nice, right? Let's take it a step further: he knows if he's upside down. He knows if he's stuck. He tells you when his battery is low. He knows when you've picked him up and when you've set him down and he comments about it. He talks about what screen you're on in the app and gives feedback about what's happening inside the app, too. This is a SLICK toy that adults and kids alike will appreciate. He's not just a functional RC car, he's FUN to drive - he's not just a gimmicky car that "kinda works" - nope, Lightning has pep and travels well on hardwood as well as carpet. The controls are easy to learn, there's a reverse feature, a speed boost feature, lightning can also burn donuts AND drift with like two buttons. Will your kid be able to figure it out? Probably after like 2 minutes of practice (the on-screen instructions are pretty helpful, too). He's got race mode where you combine a little app play (pit stop puzzle game) and driving him around. All in all, he's pretty open-ended - there's a ton of fun things to do with him (from watch Cars - he responds to the movie - to just tooling around driving him from place to place). He's super speedy, the battery life is darn good for an RC car, the handling is good but you'll want a significant area to play with him on (and probably padded while you get used to his turning radius). I goofed plenty and he didn't show any scratches or scrapes. I was afraid to really wreck him, but he seems pretty padded, especially around the front bumper. If I had to conjure up a complaint, he's a little loud on unboxing (as in when Lightning is talking, the driving mechanism itself is quiet)... but I was also testing in my carpeted basement office, so the sound carried. Lo-and-behold, HE HAS HIS OWN VOLUME CONTROL. Did I mention these Sphero folks have figured out how to package magic? The app is not clunky (as Sphero has had a ton of time to figure this out with the other products - and in fact, I'd say this app is a significant step up from the Sphero BB-8 app, which I consider to be the weakest part of the Sphero BB-8 experience). If you or your kiddo is a Pixar Cars fan IN THE SLIGHTEST, this is the toy you/they will want to have without question or delay.

First impression from just opening the box is quality. I just feel when a manufacture cares and love their product they also package it was they did here. The high quality doesn't stop at the box. It continues inside to the car it self. When you will find it has a animatronic mouth that moves when he talks. LED running head and tail lights. Which automatically come on when needed. ( like when you take racing under the couch). The emotive suspension has to be my favorite part and this just brings Lightning to life. To the life like voice. He sounds just like the movie, Cuz it is the same voice as the movie. Nice touch Sphero. On to the fun part, the driving. Tip if you are use to driving RC cars like my self. The first thing you need to do is change the steering from sphero (default setting) to RC. Which was one of the biggest complaints. And Sphero listened and added the RC feature with the last update. Driving is simpe and fun from the app on your smart phone or tablet. Lighting did well on wood floors,low carpet and tile. From drifting to doing doughnuts your sure to have a blast. The app also has some games to play like Pit Stop Panic. And a drive-in where when you watch the movie with Lighting he will talk and interact with the movie. The only problem I had was conductivity with the car. You almost need line of sight at all times. Out side I could not drive around my truck with out losing connection to Lighting. But didn't have any issues in side in the same room.