Reviewed by Louise Totton
One of the most popular items in our house at the moment is the Sphero Specdrums, which we tried out for What’s Good To Do last month – a little app-enabled ring that has a colour sensor, and turns colour to sound. The kids have had a real ball playing with it – they’re mad on gadgets and electronic toys anyway, but there has been something about the Specdrums that has really captured everyone’s imaginations. So, as I’m sure you can image, the offer of another product to try out from the fabulous Sphero was a source of massive excitement!
This time, we were sent the Sphero BOLT to try out – Sphero’s top of the range app-enabled spherical robot. When I say robot, this little device doesn’t look like your child might envisage a robot; it doesn’t have a recognisable ‘robot’ shape, it doesn’t have a face and you can’t tell it to make a cup of tea. But the list of things that it can do is quite immense, we have had it for a couple of weeks and I know we’ve barely scratched the surface of what this can do!
The BOLT contains countless sensors – a gyrometer and accelerometer to measure and control the speed and distance of travel, as well as Bluetooth to allow it to connect with your phone or tablet, infrared to allow it to work with other Sphero BOLTS and even a multi-coloured LED matrix that can be programmed along with the movement of the BOLT. It is water and scratch resistant and the shell is ultra-durable, so can cope perfectly well with being used by eager and enthusiastic kids. My girls are 7 and 10 – the BOLT is recommended for ages 8+ but my 7-year-old is a bright girl and lots other educational toys are for slightly older age groups.
First things first, the BOLT is an app-enabled robot, meaning that the device itself doesn’t have any buttons or means of input and you do need to have a compatible phone or tablet to run it from. The BOLT is compatible with iOS 9+, as well as Android devices (mostly Android 6+ but check as some Android devices simply aren’t compatible), Kindle, Mac and Windows. We have an iPhone, a Samsung Note 9 running the latest version of Android, a Windows laptop and a Kindle Fire, so we had plenty to go at! If you are unsure as to whether your device is compatible, you can email support@sphero.com to check.
Contained in the box is the BOLT robot, a wireless charging dock, micro USB charging cable and a quick start guide, which also included a set of stickers and a cardboard compass. The BOLT didn’t have any charge in when it arrived, so we popped it on to charge and waited! The BOLT is a perfectly smooth and clear ball – about the size of an orange. Because it’s perfectly smooth, there is no charging port and it is charged via a dock. It sits in the dock which is connected to the mains via micro USB and charges fully in around six hours, which provides around two hours of run time. An internal LED indicated when the BOLT was fully charged and we were ready to roll!
The first thing we had to do was connect the BOLT to the phone – this only took a couple of minutes and is done via the two Sphero apps – Sphero Play and Sphero Edu. As you might guess, these two apps showcase the two different sides to the BOLT. The Play app allows you to get used to the BOLT, what it’s capable of and the way it works, whereas the Edu app focusses on becoming familiar with coding and syntax via block coding, before moving onto editing and then writing your own JavaScript code.
The first app we tried was the Play app, mostly because we thought it would be the easiest way of getting used to what it could do and how it moved, and that using it like this would then spark an interest with the kids and encourage them towards coding. Pairing the BOLT to both the Note 9 and the iPhone 6 was a doddle and took only a few seconds. At this point, we created an account which allows you to be able to log in from any phone or laptop, so you can keep track of your projects and progress, whichever device you are accessing your BOLT from.
The Play app allows you to either use the BOLT as a controller to play games, or to use your phone to ‘drive’ the BOLT in various modes. We started with basic driving, where you have the choice of Joystick, Slingshot, Tilt, Scream Drive, Kick and Golf. These are great fun and a super introduction to using the BOLT – the Joystick method uses the touchscreen on the phone as a joystick, and the Tilt mode uses the gyrometer within your phone and the BOLT will mirror the movement and tilt of your phone. In reality, these are the ones that we have used for the longest and which I think will have the most sticking power; the Golf and Kick drives are fun but are a little difficult to control and the kids quickly moved back to using the Tilt and Joystick, and we set up little obstacle courses with books and building blocks for them to manoeuvre around, and they spent ages playing with just this aspect of the BOLT.
The built-in games are also fantastic fun, and with them, you use the BOLT as a joystick to control movement on the phone screen, moving the BOLT around in your hand to play the games. For the time being, there are three games in the app: Exile II which is a version of Space Invaders, Lightspeed Drifter where you are driving through a tunnel and use the BOLT to spin the tunnel to avoid obstacles and Round Trip which is a fiendishly difficult special awareness game. We loved all of these games and felt they utilised the sensors and capabilities of the BOLT in a really innovative way. It actually works very well and intuitively to control the games and I look forward to more games being added as they are a great way to spend a few empty minutes. We also loved that the BOLT was made from clear plastic – the kids (and I!) lived being able to see the internal components and parts, especially all of the little cogs and wheels that turn to propel it, turn it and stop it moving.
Of course, as much fun as the Play app is (and it really is!), £150 would be a lot of money to spend on toy. The Edu app and coding functionality is where the real value in this product is. All kids learn a basic type of coding from primary school, usually a block-based system, and this is one of the coding input methods for the Edu app. The coding can either be drawn into the touch screen (you literally use your finger to draw the path on the screen that you want the BOLT to take), entered using the block-based method or written from scratch in JavaScript.
We started with the block-based system, or jigsaw coding as the kids called it, and both me and the kids were able to program simple routes for the BOLT very quickly and easily. The colour-coded system allows you to adjust the movement (speed, direction, start, stop and spinning), lights (main LED, fading between colours, strobe lights and back light), sounds (either from the bank of sounds or even with speech), and even to include IF/THEN statements and loops as well as other events functions and variables that we haven’t even scratched the surface of.
You can use the block coding to build a program for BOLT, and then use the app to view what you have created in JavaScript. We found that being able to do this and compare the block coding to the JavaScript text allowed even my youngest to identify the commands and functions in the JavaScript, and then even use the laptop to edit the coding and create a new program by editing an existing one. My eldest has been able to take this a step further by actually creating her own code completely from scratch as she could identify the functions of the different syntaxes very easily.
The Edu app also features a number of Sphero tutorials and tasks for the kids to work through, as well as a community who are creating and sharing their own coding (Sphero coding is opensource, so is perfect for kids to tinker with and share). We haven’t yet moved on to this aspect of the app, and for the time being the kids are having a fantastic time using the BOLT as a remote control toy and manoeuvring around obstacles, and my eldest is now ‘coding’ her way around obstacle courses that we have set up on the playroom floor. This every hands-on way of allowing young kids to get to grips with and be interested in coding is absolutely the way to go – it presents coding as exactly what it should be: an exercise in problem solving and logical thinking. The kids don’t even realise that they’re learning, which is surely the mark of a great educational toy.
We are all looking forward to really putting the BOLT through its paces over the coming weeks and months. It’s a fabulous little device which the kids have really connected with and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to any parent looking for something to introduce the kids to coding. I am so impressed with both of the products we have tried from Sphero and hope to try out more in the future.
Rating: 5/5
RRP: £149.99
For more information visit www.sphero.com. Available to buy from Amazon here.
