Orboot Earth Interactive AR Globe Review

Reviewed by Kathryn Harrison

I have two daughters aged 4 and 8, I’m always on the lookout for toys and games that they can enjoy together and will engage them both. With this in mind I jumped at the chance to review the PlayShifu Orboot Earth. This is an interactive globe that uses augmented reality to help children explore the world.

There was great excitement last week when a very large brown cardboard box arrived, my girls were delighted when they opened it and two large helium balloons in the shape of a tiger and elephant head popped out! After having a lot of fun with the balloons they ventured further into the box and found a smaller box surrounded by shredded paper. On the smaller box that contains the globe there are lots of bright pictures to entice children to want to play with it. However I must admit that at first my girls were definitely more interested in the massive box!

Whilst the girls were happy playing with the box I downloaded the Orboot earth app, it’s it’s free app available on both the Apple app store and Googe Play app store. It was simple and easy to download then set up. On the app you can create multiple profiles so I made one for each of my daughters.

When I finally dragged them away from the massive box we opened the box containing the globe, inside the was the 10″ globe, a passport, a stamp, stickers and a help guide. My four year old was very excited by the stickers! 

When you open the app there are a number of options with different ways to play, we chose AR Explore, this uses your phone or devices camera to match a star on the screen with a star on the globe. When the stars are matched up a number of highlights become available, these are maps, cuisine, culture and animals. Each highlight then has different options you can choose to find out more about. This was really fun,both my girls found it engaging and interesting. My 4 year old liked hearing about the different animals around the world whereas my 8 year old was more interested in the food! The only problem was we all found it a little tricky to access the highlights. You need to focus the star on screen exactly on the star on the globe, if you move off the star then all the menus disappear. It was quite frustrating when you would find a star then as you go to select highlight the camera would move or lose focus and you’d have to start again. My 4 year old found it particularly annoying and began to get upset. We managed to avoid any tantrums by looking at the stamp and stickers.

The sticker book has a few different kinds of stickers, there are boarding cards, stickers representing different cities and stickers with the flag of each country. We spent time using the app to scan different countries then finding the matching flag stickers and putting them in the passport. Within the app there are 5 different game plays, Explore, Mysteries, Quiz Wiz, Tour and Oko Park. My 8 year old enjoys playing Oko Park where you have to balance the Oko nature circle by adding or removing certain resources. There are so many different ways to play with this globe and we haven’t fully investigated them all after playing with it daily for a week! 

I love the idea of this globe, its entertaining and educational meaning my girls are learning geography, environmental science and about different cultures without even realising it! However in practice it’s a bit clunky to use, the 4 year old who is pretty tech savvy can’t use the Explore option on her own as she struggles getting the camera to focus on each star whilst accessing the menu at the same time. Another little annoyance is that the ink pad has fallen out of the stamp meaning she has had blue fingertips for days. 

Overall its a great toy, fun, educational, informative and interesting for a range of ages and I’m looking forward to exploring the world further with my girls!

Editor’s note – building STEM/STEAM skills is a big feature of the globe. This is a STEM toy and all about Edutainment.

Rating: 4/5

RRP: £44.99

This product can be purchased direct from PlayShifu on their website here as well as from Amazon, Argos and Very.