First off, after the obligatory "Charge at least 5 hours before first use" (I did overnight)..oh, and the communicator device will set you back 3 AAA batteries (not included); you proceed underneath to turn I-que from "Sleep" to "on". Prepare to chuckle...he really seems happy to come to life.
But warning here first--READ THE BOOK before you turn it on and get familiar with the communicator. I didn't do this except up to the "charge 5 hours" part and how to turn him on. I never looked at the communicator so I wasn't familiar with it. So here he's asking me questions and I have to ---oh bother...just read the book.
Otherwise--I'll admit, this is a new review but I'm quite impressed. I can see that you could literally spend hours and hours and days and days and weeks on end and never get to the end of what this thing has in memory.
The other reason this unit is intriguing is that it's unlike other "toy robots" that sing and dance and punch...kids want that stuff...they don't want to learn about how far the sun is from the earth...Things these days are different. So it certainly has the potential for the collector.
I do think it IS well made, fashioned like the I-Robot; Roomba and Scooba (I have both) and self-charges similar to the Roomba. Larry made a point about the charging terminals on the floor--the DC voltage is so low it is not dangerous--unless you place the charge base in a puddle.
I ordered all the cartridges (that collector instinct) and I think I-que has allot of potential...like Larry did, if I need to come back and add to the review I will...in the meantime I'd highly recommend, especially if yer' a gadget geek pushing 50 like me! (P.s. Shipping and packaging is outstanding: Good job Amazon!)
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We purchased the robot about 3 weeks before Christmas, charged it up and I took it to my office to spend some time playing with it before giving it to my 8 year old daughter.First skill needed: patience. When you power i-Que on for the first time, you have to wait until he laboriously introduces himself. Finally, he'll ask you about yourself. This process takes several long minutes. And guess what? You can't raise or lower his volume.
All of i-Que's processes are slow and there's no way to move on. For example, when he tells you he's going to show you how he can lower his head to go under furniture, he'll then take a long pause, move around a bit, then pause, lower his head, and then pause, bring it back up, then pause and begin speaking again.
Everything I tried to do to make sure he'd stay put at night when I left my office resulted in him being wedged under my desk, battery dead the next morning. Sleep, shutdown, or quiet all failed to keep him from roaming around.
When interacting with i-Que, it's all in the timing; you have to relay your responses at just the right moment after he's completely through speaking and you're not sure when that's going to be due to the very long pauses. The functionality of the handheld communicator is counterintuitive and has very small keys. The 5 adults in our family (all techno-geeks) who attempted to use the communicator found it really difficult to figure out.
Voice recognition? Yeah, right. If you call 4 words that have to be shouted, voice recognition. With i-Que, you can choose different voices, but you're not going to be happy with any of them. Many words and phrases are unintelligible and the rise and fall of his speech is all wrong. The monotone droning on and on of facts when asked about some topic is never going to be tolerated by my daughter.
The initial charge created a very high-pitched noise that you couldn't stay in the room with. I decided we could never live with that since the robot would need to be docked in my daughter's bedroom so that it could act as an alarm clock. The later charges during testing did not create this noise, but now it's doing it again, so it's station is in the kitchen, hurting my ears last night while I was preparing dinner. And i-Que has only found his charging station once without help, but not before he got stuck under my desk. The first time he needed to charge, he was 2 feet away from his charging station, he completely left my office and headed off down the hallway. You have no way of knowing when he's through charging unless you take him off his station and scroll through the menu and find the status command. I called the help desk to ask how long the re-charge takes and was told they needed to put me on hold, only they must not have a hold button, I could hear the guy asking the others nearby and nobody knew. They didn't know anything about the toy. I was told to email them the next day and ask my question, that they'd have to call California. I haven't heard back yet and it's been nearly five weeks.
You can watch grass grow faster than you can play with this toy. No kid with a T.V. or computer in the house is going to learn from this robot. I'm not sure they'll even play with it if there are clouds in the sky that can be watched instead. My daughter has had one, and only one interaction with him, this lasted about 15 minutes. She hasn't touched him since.
I'm totally done with this piece of junk. If some of my well-meaning family hadn't thrown away the box (and no one will confess to this!), I'd have already returned it.
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This robot has gotten an unfair rap by some. It has, as Captain Dials, said enless hours of information. It is hugely interactive, more then any other robot out there. Yes the voice recognition is poor but the blackberry type communicator is literally like chatting with someone. You can even send texts like one would a person, ala LOL, TTFN etc. I have had no problems with the docking function but yes he can get his head stuck going under things. I have truly had more fun with this robot then many in awhile. Sort of like the Heath Hero jr. Stores phone numbers, dates, plays multiple games etc. Also has Easter eggs! I will reveal one of several I have found so far, for a little fun text him the word Cylon..Honest reviews on i-Que Personal Robot
I bought I-QUE for my eight year old son and we both have enjoyed playing with it. I can speak from experience when I say this is the most advanced robot on the market. My son has been on a robot kick for the past couple years and we have been disappointed with just about every purchase so far. Not only do I believe this to be a superior toy but it is by far the most educational.Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for i-Que Personal Robot
Well, I have owned the I-Que now for a couple of weeks and I must say that it is a great little robot. It's not THE most technologically advanced device available, but it does do the trick. I guess if there was a way to combine the AIBO and the I-Que it would be great. The robot has a lot of fun and entertaining data stored and it does remember some of the stuff you input in to it's tiny memory. The only backdraw and also the only reason I rated this toy 4 stars is that the sensors, as in so many of the cheaper robots, are somewhat useless. If the robot drives, and it does this very slow, and encounters an obstacle, it gets stuck most of the times and you could run the risk of burning out the motor or damaging the gears. I think that this is a minor setback though since this robot wasn't developed for pure autonomy but rather with having the user be within eyesight and able to assist the robot when needed. I recommend this toy to any robot enthusiast out there as it brings fun and entertainment to the whole family. The expandable memory makes it more fun and adds years to it's use.
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