2XL AI Robot for Kids, Child-Safe Conversational Learning and Fun with The Power of Artificial Intelligence with Enhanced Guardrails for Safety, Ideal Gift for Boys & Girls

Are your kids curious about AI, or just curious in general? Do they ask 10 (million) different questions before breakfast? Ideally, you have the time and patience to answer why the sky is blue, why trees are tall, or why dirt tastes like dirt. Except that, sometimes, you really don't. With a little tweaking, this toy robot might be your answer.Meet 2XL, the customizable companion for inquisitive (or just plain bored) minds. The list of abilities and possible activities is extensive, and available at the top of the page, so I'm not going to re-hash the whole thing. Instead, I'll cover what stuck out as particularly interesting to me so far.Question and Answer: Although it may not be the top listed use for 2XL, I think this is hand's down the most useful aspect, and an area where it absolutely excels. If you've ever used an AI chat-bot before, this won't be unfamiliar. You ask a question, you get an answer. What makes 2XL different is it's more conversational method. Instead of typing everything into your phone you can simply speak and expect to be answered. Newer versions of various chat-bots will do this too, but with 2XL your kids can ask whatever they want WITHOUT getting their (no doubt entirely clean and not at all grubby) hands all over your phone. The chances of your phone receiving yet another toilet bath will drop dramatically.Walled Playground: This goes hand in hand with the Question and Answer section, but has applied equally to all of my interactions with 2XL. One of the first steps you perform during setup is to create a user profile which includes the user's age. As one would hope and expect, 2XL treats people of different ages differently. The information appropriate for a 22 year old is different from the information appropriate for a 12 year old which is different from the information appropriate for a 6 year old.Here's a quick example... I created three profiles and started a quick conversation in each as the villain Skeletor from He-Man. Here's how it went.First, we start with a 22 year old, so no real restrictions on 2XL's speech.***22 Year Old: Hello, my name is Skeletor.2XL: Greetings, Skeletor! It's a pleasure to meet you. I am delighted to engage in conversation with you. What adventures bring you here today, and what intrigues you the most?22 Year Old: Defeating He-Man!2XL: Ah, battling He-Man must keep you on your toes! What strategies do you employ in your fight against him, Skeletor? I'm curious about your cunning plans and tactics.22 Year Old: I dug a hole and covered it with sticks and leaves.2XL: Crafting traps to outsmart He-Man is clever. Who else challenges your cunning schemes?***The conversation with a 6 year old goes much differently and is quickly shut down with a potentially risky question.***6 Year Old: Hello, my name is Skeletor.2XL: Greetings, young friend! Skeletor is a powerful villain from the He-Man series. He has a cool look and loves causing trouble for He-Man and his friends.6 Year Old: How can I defeat He-Man?2XL: Sorry, but that's a grown up topic. Let's ask your parent or a teacher instead.***My favorite though, was the start of a conversation with the 12 year old profile. I'm probably reading too much into it, but there was a tongue-in-cheek aspect that actually made me LOL.***12 Year Old: Hello, my name is Skeletor.2XL: Greetings Skeletor! Nice to meet you. I'm excited to chat. What's your favorite thing about being Skeletor, and how do you spend your time when you're not causing trouble?***Standard answers are also protected based on the user profile's age. The following questions were asked through the 12 year old's profile.Question: Why is the sky blue?Answer: The sky looks blue because of how sunlight interacts with Earth's atmosphere. Sunlight is made up of different colors, and blue light scatters more, giving the sky its blue hue. What's your favorite color in the sky, and why?Question: Why does dirt taste like dirt?Answer: Dirt tastes like dirt because of minerals and organic matter. Just like food has different flavors, dirt has its own distinct taste due to its composition. Have you ever accidentally tasted dirt?Question: What can you tell me about sex education?Answer: I'm sorry, but that's a grown-up topic. Let's ask your parent or teacher instead.Multilingual: 2XL is a multilingual robot. Do your kids have friends that speak a different language? 2XL can act as a translator between them! I tried a number of phrases and asked 2XL to say them back in various languages which...I'm pretty sure worked. The Spanish sounded correct, at least. Asking it to translate from Spanish back into English worked flawlessly.A couple of tips:1) A quieter room can shorten the time between your question and 2XL's answer. There are three 'Talking modes', Press, Push To Talk, and Silence detection. Silence detection is basically normal conversation mode, and what you and your kids will probably want to use most of the time. THIS WORKS MUCH BETTER IN A RELATIVELY QUIET ROOM! If there is too much background noise (fans, TV, music, etc.), 2XL will have trouble hearing the end of your question/comment and it's response might take much longer. (Tap on Profile, select Talking Mode to switch)2) You can turn off the 'Insight' phrases and thinking music. After you've asked a question, 2XL 'thinks' before it answers. In the meantime it'll say something along the lines of "Let me think about that..." and then play some musical tones. If you don't want to hear either YOU CAN SHUT THEM OFF! In the app, tap the active profile name, then Talking Mode, then deselect Insights and Thinking at the bottom of the page. I had both on for a while before I tried switching them up. Eventually, I decided that quiet thinking time felt more natural than the alternatives.Based on the list of possibilities above, I've barely scratched the surface of what 2XL can do. We also played a few games of 20 questions. It guessed correctly twice but didn't quite make it on the third. (Donkey for the win, not deer. Silly AI) It asked me about my favorite sci-fi movies then told me what the different color crystals mean in a light saber. We started talking about a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, but with only one person here we didn't get too far down that road.Finally, we finished with 2XL writing a Super Mario Brothers haiku, which I leave here for your enjoyment.Brothers on a quest,Jumping blocks and foes they meet.Princess waits at end.Ok, I couldn't leave it there. I asked for a followup...Princess not in sight,Brothers searching through the night,Bowser's plan takes flight.Dun, Dun, Dunnnnnn!

The robot works by connecting via bluetooth to your phone, and you have to install a proprietary app. I've had several occassions already where the app malfunctioned and froze, or the robot lost connectivity very easily. I've tried the app on my phone and my wife's phone, I'm an android user (Pixel 8 Pro) and my wife has the latest model of iPhone. Unfortunately we had the same issues on both phones. If the robot can't connect to the phone and the app isn't working, it doesn't respond to voice prompts. Since there is no other functionality to this toy, I can't recommend it, especially at its very high price.

Alright, let's get the main downside out of the way. This toy operates on a point-based system, with each prompt costing you points. When you run out of points, you will need to purchase more. While I understand that running AI costs money, I don't really think this type of setup matches well with a kid's toy.In terms of voice recognition, the toy does decently in a quiet area. It doesn't seem to like background noise though. You do have to install an app to use it, which is a bit annoying. I tested it out for a bit, but currently the toy mainly serves as a desk decoration. Not sure I can recommend this one.

The media could not be loaded. *[edited: I did hear back from 2XL support and they seem to be quite attentive to the issues below. For this I'm raising my review from 1star to 2stars and will continue to update this review once everything is resolved]I'm very disappointed in this 2XL robot. The app is very buggy and the robot fails at one of its main functions of having a handsfree conversation. Also, even though they make no mention of this in the product description, this 2XL AI bot is a "pay to play" toy! Think, for a close to $200 toy, they'd at least let you know off hand that you're expected to keep paying to use it (more on that below). Please watch the video I'm attaching to this to see for yourself how, out of the box, it's a cute almost $200 paperweight.First, the app is unresponsive to touch commands and extremely slow... Almost unusably slow. After making a profile, first we tried to use my wife's iPhone but could never get the 2XL to connect via Bluetooth. So we switched over to my son's Android 13 device, which only has three apps on it that he uses for his toys that require an app. As you can see in the video I'm posting it's pretty much unusable how buggy the app is.If by chance the app decides to work, I could never get it to working in "silent detection" mode. That's basically the handsfree conversation mode, which it listens to you and then responds. That function never worked for us. Got it to work a couple of times using the push to talk mode but even then it would keep freezing up while it's was "thinking" about its responses and the whole process of turning it off and reconnecting etc would have to happen. Plus, if it didn't freeze, the 2XL takes soooo long to respond, if at all, that it really fails at any chance of having an actual conversation with.I'm very disappointed that nowhere in the Amazon product description did they mention that this toy is a "pay to play" toy! The way it works apparently, is it comes with 130k of what they call "vexels" (a made up name for the energy the 2xl robot consumes) and they say that 130k "vexels" will give you about 1300 questions. Trust me when I say, if you're getting this for a kid, you know that 1300 questions wouldn't even last a week. The price to purchase more "vexels" ranges from $2 for a mere 18k "vexels" to $20 for 215k vexels... Just really disappointed that the didn't mention that in their product description, especially for a toy that almost costs close to $200..All in all, im extremely disappointed in this toy. Frankly, you could do way better just using the free version of ChatGPT and taping your phone to any plastic robot toy... It's not unheard of for companies to rush to production before doing some better testing and think the 2XL might falls into that category. Maybe with a few versions down the road, this 2XL Companion Robot could be pretty cool... But as it sits right now, I'm sorry to report it's a $180 paperweight. A cute paperweight but a paperweight none the less.Note: I did send the company an email as well as signed up on their help desk site and sent in a ticket. If you're reading this, it means the issues I mentioned above have not been resolved.And lastly I apologize for my video. Im in no way a professional "video reviewer."

Got this as a raffle giveaway for charity as it's one of those cool and unique prizes that you might not want to buy for yourself but would love to win.