Buy Yourself the Star Wars BB-8 Droid this Christmas [REVIEW]
With the launch of Star Wars VII – The Force Awakens last night, you may have seen the BB-8 Droid. Well, make sure you have one under your tree this Christmas!
This cool little gadget was developed through a collaboration between Disney and Sphero – a robotics startup. The BB-8 Droid is controlled using your smartphone and can give you hours of fun, any kid, or kid at heart would love it. However, the person buying it may have a heart attack with the $230 price tag.
It’s quite ingenious how the BB-8 Droid works, a robotic ball with a magnetic head that sits on top. You need to see it to believe it.
To get started, simply download the Star Wars BB-8 App from the Android Play Store or App Store, take the Droid off the charging dock and following the on screen prompts. You are initially presented with an interesting animation of the Droid coming to life.
Once you have paired your phone and app via Bluetooth with the BB-8 Droid, you have a number of options on how you can interact with the BB-8 Droid.
Drive
Drive gives you full control of what you do with the BB-8 Droid. To use, align the BB-8’s blue dot with you using the right side panel, and then use the left side panel to steer BB-8 Droid. It can take a while to get used to controlling the BB-8; however, it is quite easy to manoeuvre once you have the hang of it. You also have a speed boost button on the bottom right to speed him up.
Patrol
The Patrol option gives your BB-8 Droid the freedom to explore his surrounds. Just make sure you don’t have him on the table, as he won’t see the edge.
Message
An interesting feature that allows you to record a message and you can watch the BB-8 Droid play back your message, or you can watch messages from some characters such as C3PO and Storm Troopers.
Overall Thoughts
Overall, I think the BB-8 Droid, provided by MobileZap is a bit of a novelty and suitable for someone who’s not an adult. For $230, it’s quite a lot of money for a robotic toy, so I’d personally not want to buy one. It would defiantly the best toy under the Christmas tree; however, I think the novelty would wear off in a few days. For those Star Wars fans, I’d recommend to buy two. One to play, and one to keep.
