Just received MAX today, and haven't had the pleasure of introducing him to my daughter yet, so this review is purely based on my impression. First off, the cons:
- Instructions are great for building the robot, but when it comes to the wiring, can take a little trial and error to get it right.
- MAX finds it hard to hear me a good deal of the time (about 50%). I assume this is mostly due to being a kiwi. Pretty much anything that is voice controlled takes issue with the Kiwi accent, and MAX is no different.
Pros: All I can really say is that I had an absolute blast building him by myself. I can only imagine how much of a good time it would be building this with an eager child of perhaps 8 upwards (my daughter is turning 5, so the building would be a bit beyond her at this stage) – this would certainly be a great bonding experience! Once he was complete, I then proceeded to spend a good couple of hours just mucking about. Despite the lack of understanding my accent, I had a great time just interacting with him, he really does have a cool little personality. The phone/tablet app also does a remarkable job of controlling MAX, and it was fun just roaming him around the house. Overall day 1 impression is that I don't regret buying it at all. I can't wait to introduce my daughter to him and while the initial novelty will certainly wear off, I do see MAX getting a hell of a lot of use. I would recommend this to anyone with a child that shows interest in technology, and certainly think that the price of admission, while reasonably high, is still worth paying.