Every time I see it toy robotI feel like a kid again. It’s not the fault of transformersBut even though I am a millennial and a self-proclaimed Cartoon Network kid; dexter’s laboratoryand well, that show wormed its way into my brain. who knows? Perhaps if I wasn’t so bad at doing useful things like math or chemistry, Dexter might have forced me to become a scientist or engineer.

But as you’ll see after reading this, I didn’t do that. But apparently I did the next best thing. I decided to write about technology. What I mean by “the next best thing” is: this I didn’t realize it at the time, but this path was one that led me straight to something that scratched my childhood itch as much as lab coats and beakers: giant robot Transformers.

make some noise for soundwave

The first time I saw RoboSen’s new ultra-expensive and sophisticated Transformers robot, Soundwave G1it was hard not to get excited. Not only because it’s a Transformers robot (obviously), but because Soundwave transforms into a speaker, a functional speaker.

Just in case it wasn’t Catch my communications when this launchesSoundwave G1 uses RoboSen’s robot transformers (Yes, there are many) It goes a step further and features a Bluetooth speaker mode that you can use when the Soundwave is crumpled up in cassette player form. This is cringeworthy for hardcore Transformers fans, but also for me personally, as it brings to life the atmosphere of Soundwave’s original. speaker reviews.

So my interests really collided here. That means I got a chance to test Soundwave myself. Well, do you have any thoughts?

excellent soundwave

There are two ways to review Robosen’s Soundwave G1: as a toy and as a speaker. I’m now going to try both to maximize their potential transformers For all you fans reading this, let’s start with the fun stuff. How does the Soundwave G1 work as a toy?Answer: It’s kind of sick.

This means that robotMale – Intended with a capital “R”. When you pick it up, you can feel that there are many robots inside. Robosen says it has “28 high-precision intelligent servo motors” and 84 custom microchips. I mean, when Soundwave starts moving around and doing Transformers things, it gets really emotional. The legs are movable, the arms move with two joints, the head pops out, and the “sonic cannon” attached to the shoulders moves and emits light. The cassette player part also pops out for dramatic effect, but unfortunately it can’t play actual tapes. In Robosense’s defense, I can only imagine that attaching a tape deck to it would be an engineering nightmare. In terms of look and feel, this is the robot toy that most people my age wanted as kids, and for $1,400, it’s more than worth it.

Soundwave G1 also understands quite a few commands. With the help of the built-in microphone, you can shout loudly at your expensive robot and make it do anything. There are 48 pre-programmed voice commands in total, including voice commands such as “Attack” and “Defense” to make the robot shoot with the included toy gun and gestures. There are others too transformers-Specific commands such as “Megatron” and “Laserbeak”. Soundwave G1 talks about the contents of the program. meanwhile Gestures. An interesting fact here is that they had the original Soundwave voice actor, Frank Welker, do the voice acting for the robot.

However, the most impressive of all these commands is the transform command. When you shout “Hey Soundwave, transform,” you’ll see the robot flex all of its limbs dramatically, curling up from robot mode into a tape player and vice versa. That’s wild, but it also brings me to the first and biggest drawback of the Soundwave G1.

While I like the inclusion of voice command functionality, this was also my biggest gripe when playing robots. Soundwave has been fighting the Autobots with lasers for years, so I’m worried he’s a little deaf. Many times I had to scream at this giant hunk of plastic and beg it to do something. I don’t know what my record was for yelling “Hey, Soundwave” without being recognized by a robot, but I’m sure I accomplished it a dozen times. Come on, Robosen. If you want to get excited about your voice assistant, just talk to it nest speaker At home.

Adding to the frustration, I find it extremely difficult to understand what the Soundwave G1 is saying. This is typically due to Soundwave speaking in a vocoder-like voice that’s a mix of synth and human voices, but it’s also because the speakers aren’t the best (more on this later).

That being said, there are apps that allow you to enter commands on your phone. These definitely work well and may actually be the best way to use the Soundwave G1 if you’re tired of shouting into the void. There are other things you can do companion apptoo

Here, you can use the touchscreen directional pad to tell Soundwave to walk around (you can move left/right, forward/backward). You can also program your own actions. I have to warn you, action programming is far from intuitive, but I had some success getting Soundwave to perform simple tasks like twisting an arm using a block-based programming UI. That’s great, but most people won’t want to spend a lot of time programming an app.

When selected in the app, the robot automatically converts to cassette mode, which also has an audio mode that can play about 20 songs from the original cartoon. To be honest, I’m a huge fan of the original score, so this might be my favorite app-based touch. unpleasant guitar And 80’s riffs.

Finally, there’s a “mini theater” mode that’s meant to let Soundwave do what amounts to a short demo while watching videos in the app, but I couldn’t get this feature to work properly. After launching the mini-theater feature and waiting for the demo to load, Soundwave did some things, but no in-app video loaded. In Robosen’s defense, I was using an early version of the app to test Soundwave, so maybe that has something to do with it? In any case, I don’t need dice.

Just a Decepticon

As mentioned earlier, there are two ways to review Soundwave. Second, bluetooth speaker. If you shout at Soundwave and transform, you can use RoboSen’s robot as a Bluetooth speaker. Just pull up your phone’s Bluetooth, connect, and you’re off to business in no time.

As I wrote about when this robot was first announced, I was curious to see if the Soundwave G1 actually produced decent sound. Sure, it’s a toy, but it costs $1,400 and doesn’t have any decent sound. completely That’s out of the question, right? right? ..

I’m sorry to say that my initial inclination was correct. Soundwave G1’s sound is a bit bad. It’s not that you can’t listen to it, but it’s not a speaker that you’ll want to use for anything other than novelty. The sound is very flat and one-dimensional, which I suspect is due to engineering reasons, but when in cassette mode the sound actually comes from the back of the robot, which is not ideal from a fidelity standpoint.

I have to say, I can’t help but wonder, is that shitty sounding piece? It almost sounds lo-fi. It’s so bad that I wish Robocene had gone for the worse and applied a tape-like effect to the audio you hear to make it feel like the ’80s are alive. I mean, this doesn’t actually play the tape, but what if it could? It rang Like playing a tape? Now that would be justice.

The great thing about the Soundwave G1 is that it has physical buttons that you can press and use just like you would a tape player. There is a track skip button (forward, backward), a play button, and a stop button. There’s even a record button that lets you actually record your own voice! However, I couldn’t get Soundwave to record what I said, so I might need to edit out the exclamation mark here.

When I pressed the record button, a message prompting me to record appeared after a beep. I did that. I then pressed stop to stop recording. But when I tried to listen back to my recordings in the app or hit the play button to play them from the robot, I heard almost nothing. Maybe my son’s robot’s microphone is malfunctioning? Maybe it’s just poor quality? I don’t know, but nothing I did forced Soundwave to listen to me. Apparently I can’t speak for Decepticons.

Even if you talk about Decepticons, you don’t have to say too much. The Soundwave G1’s battery is probably as bad as the one from 1984. transformers It was aired. If you’re lucky, you’ll be able to listen to the Soundwave G1 at a lower volume for an hour and a half. I had two hours of time, but only 25 minutes of that time was spent actually playing music. The rest of the time, the Soundwave G1 just chilled out in cassette mode. Battery deterioration is also a bit dangerous. While using the Sondwave G1, there were several times when the battery died while the robot was standing and the whole thing went limp and fell to the ground like a sack of robot potatoes. ah.

This means you don’t need to seriously use the Soundwave G1 as a Bluetooth speaker, but it’s probably fine for most people. But if you, like me, were under the impression that Soundwave would sound decent, you can remove that illusion right now.

Should you say goodbye to $1,400?

Listen, who am I to tell you what to do with your money? I don’t know how you live. To me, $1,400 is a lot of money. That’s more than a brand new iPhone 17 or two nintendo switch 2or almost half the price Chevrolet Chevette, 1984.

But maybe you’ve been robbing banks with the Decepticons and have some money to blow. and perhaps You want to use some of that money to build a robot that can impress your friends for five minutes. If you’re one of those people, give it a try. Soundwave G1 is a great robot in action and doesn’t need to scream 400 times to transform. The Bluetooth speaker thing is definitely a parlor trick, but as long as you know it’s being done, I say no harm or foul.

I don’t know, call me soft. But it’s hard to be mad at robot shapeshifters, who I think most people don’t expect to do much more than, well, transform. If you want a good Bluetooth speaker, buy it. If I wanted a robot that made me feel like I was a kid again, and I was richer than I was, I think I would choose the Soundwave G1, just like Megatron.