Ultimate Lightning McQueen by Sphero

Fell in love with the droids by Sphero and purchased this as a Christmas gift for a nephew. Amazing details, great driving experience and they nailed the drifting. Works very well on tile and hardwood floors. Its an indoor toy only in opinion, as the tires will wear on concrete as they seem a rubbery finish. Charges fast, about 30 minutes, and the app for the car is very cool with 2 modes to drive. Can drive about 90 minutes before needing a charge which is also good. Interactions are top notch and the voice seems like licensed real voices of Owen Wilson from or by Disney.

So far this toy is amazing. You will need to connect WiFi and Bluetooth to update the audio and firmware but it doesn't take long. My son has been bouncing him off walls with no issues. Needs to charge for a half hour so I updated right off the bat as he needs to be plugged in to update. Well put together and the box he comes in makes excellent storage and holds him stationary during transport. No weird glitches or anything I will update if there are any issues.

This is VERY cool. It responds to the movie and talks. My son still loves this.

Talk about joy killer. Open it for kid and have to wait 2 hours to download ‘critical updates’ and then install ‘audio files’. Seriously how bad is your team at developing apps that you have returns because it’s so slow and bad. My kid was excited to open, and annoyed after the first hour of updates. I’m on Verizon fios with fast broadband, and takes 2+ hours to update??? Jezee, will return as on first iPhone didn’t even finish the app install, installed it on new iPhone and finally installed but takes forever to update the app. Sucks, really ruin the excitement, enjoy the return**update, app stuck on updates, 4 hours in. From online research seems to be a common issue. I f***ing hate this company ruined my 3yr olds Christmas. Take my return and throw it in the garbage pile that I’m sure is 3 stories tall now. Wish I could sue sphero for my wasted wrapping paper expenses, seems small but imagine your kid is McQueen fanatic and crying on Christmas as you jam this turd back into the box for return. Thanks sphero for making my kid cry on Christmas

This McQueen is a marvel--like having the character from the screen right in your living room! There's an initial period of sheer joy at the lifelike qualities!There's some cons: the connectivity is complex and unreliable. The initiation is cumbersome as there are required updates which don't go so smoothly. As another review pointed out there's no hardware control. I actually don't mind this but once the app ceases to be supported, what happens to this? It's basically nothing without the app. So much for collectability.Update in the year 2022, apps no longer supported or available and seems my car is now dead

11/28/17 Update - Updated to 5 stars as the developers of the App listened and added traditional 4 way controls to the app. The controls still lag a bit tried with an iPhone 7 Plus, iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 2, iPad Pro and a Galaxy S7, however soooooooooo much better control over the funky circle needing orientation setup.Is it worth $300 ... meh depends, powered it up and disliked the controls being a normal RC guy used to sticks and pistol grips, but seeing my 5 yr old daughter finally play with an RC after trying to get her into RC's ... priceless.If Sphero every adds a traditional stick controls to it's app and I will bump it up to a 5 star

This open box purchase was not inspected and arrived with a destroyed box and the charging wire broken off in the charging port on the car. (See Pic). My 2.5 year old was not happy that his long awaited Lightning McQueen was not working. So I had to go buy a new plug for the charging port and solder it onto the original Sphero power source. This was necessary because Sphero uses an uncommon 15v/1000mA power supply so the usual 12v converters would not sufficiently charge the car. So all said, it was a hassle and a half.After all was said and done, the car works great and my boy can sit there all day and talk to Lightning. Ka-chow! But I would think twice before buying a purportedly inspected open box from this seller. I have contacted them and let them know about the problems. We will see if they respond at all. I will update this review accordingly.