Sphero - Ultimate Lightning McQueen - Red

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.

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....

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 was really excited to try the “Ultimate Lightning McQueen”. Below are my thoughts. Set up and unboxing: McQueen comes in a really nice box and it includes an easy to follow service manual. The app is only available from the google play store and the App Store (I would keep that in mind). The car is only usable with the app and a smartphone. Set up in the app took a few minutes after the latest update. Use: The application is pretty easy to use and I got the hang of it after a few drives. I would say it would be good for ages over 5. There are two driving styles to choose from. There is the Sphero style and RC car style. The RC car style was the easiest to me. I have tile and carpet in my basement and the car handled fine on the tile…it wasn’t very usable on the carpet. My two year old managed to pick up the car and slam it down on our tile, but it was still working. Overall it has been very enjoyable and pretty easy to use.

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.

I probably should use the term "toy" loosely. This little guy is technically very impressive. From the animated body and mouth movements to the screen (eyes), it's all very well done. He controls very well from my phone and is pretty fast. Speaking of the controls, which are built into the app, the app itself is very well done. There are mini games, and races that can be completed from within the app that all include the real-world car as well. You can also create "scripts" of dialog from the pre-recorded lines to create a sort of playlist to use while driving around. Also, another nice touch, Lightning can interact with the Cars movies. This is pretty similar to anyone who may have used Sphero's BB-8 toy that was released a little while ago. It's very cool. There are plenty of nice little touches all around. Even the location of the charger is smart. It's in the gas cap, and when the battery is getting low, Lightning will tell you that he "needs to refuel". Very creative, and cool. Pros: Very well designed, fun to use, feels very solid, creative, nice app, many fun things to do. Cons: Price may be a bit of a barrier for some

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.

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.