This Transformer Is a Sick Robot and Sad Bluetooth Speaker

Whenever I see a toy robot, I feel like a kid again. Not because transformersbut because I — a millennial and self-proclaimed Cartoon Network kid — have grown up Dexter’s laboratoryMan, this show has wormed its way into my mind. Who knows? Maybe if I wasn’t so bad at doing useful things like math and chemistry, Dexter might have forced me to become a scientist or engineer.

As you know from reading this, though, I didn’t do it. However, I did the next best thing, it seems: I chose to write about technology. I say “next best” because this The path, which I didn’t know at the time, was the one that led me directly to something that scratched a childhood itch as much as lab coats and beakers: a large robot transformer.

Make some noise for Soundwave

When I first saw Robosen’s new, expensive and elaborate robot, the Soundwave G1, it was hard not to get excited. Not only is he a transforming robot, but because Soundwave’s form transforms into a megaphone, which is a practical speaker.

In case you didn’t catch my message when this thing was released, the Soundwave G1 takes Robosen’s autotransformers (yes, there are a lot) a step further and features a Bluetooth speaker mode that can be used when Soundwave is fully assembled in its own cassette player form. This is annoying for hardcore Transformer fans since it brings the original Soundwave to life, but it’s also for me personally because I pay my bills in part by reviewing speakers.

In short, my interests conflicted dramatically here, which meant I got a chance to test Soundwave for myself, and oh boy, did I have some ideas.

Superior sound waves

There are actually two ways you can review Robosen’s Soundwave G1: as a toy and as a speaker. I’ll try to do both now, for all the possibilities transformers Fans reading this, I’ll start with the fun stuff first. You may be wondering how the Soundwave G1 is a toy? The answer: a kind of patient.

This thing is Robotman – capital “R” intended. When you pick it up, you can feel all the robots inside, because there are so many of them. According to Robussen, there are “28 high-precision intelligent servo motors” and 84 custom microchips. This means that when Soundwave starts moving and doing his transforming action, he really moves. The feet move visibly, the arms move in two joints, the head pops out, and the shoulder-mounted “sonic cannon” moves and lights up. Even the cassette player part pops up for dramatic effect, although you can’t play real tapes with it, which is frustrating. In defense of the Robosens, I can only imagine that fitting duct tape to this thing would be an engineering nightmare. In terms of look and feel, it’s the robot toy most people my age wanted when they were kids, and for $1,400, it should be.

The Soundwave G1 also understands a fair number of commands. With the help of the built-in microphone, you can shout at your expensive robot and make it do things. In all, there are 48 pre-programmed voice commands that include things like “attack” or “defend,” which causes the robot to fire using the toy gun and built-in gestures. There is also more transformers– Specific commands like “Megatron” or “Laserbeak”, where Soundwave G1 says things from the show while gesture. The fun fact here is that they asked Soundwave’s original voice actor, Frank Welker, to come in and do some voice acting for the robot.

Most impressive of all is the conversion command. By shouting “Hey Soundwave, transform”, you’ll be able to watch the robot dramatically bend all its limbs upwards and transform into a tape player from robot mode or vice versa. It’s wild, but that also brings me to the first and biggest downside to the Soundwave G1.

Although I love the inclusion of the voice command feature, this was also the biggest point of frustration when playing the bot. I’m afraid Soundwave, after all the years of laser fighting with the Autobots, might be hard of hearing. Time after time, I had to scream at this giant piece of plastic, begging it to do something. I don’t know what my record is for yelling “Hey Soundwave” without the robot recognizing me, but I’m pretty sure I hit more than a dozen. Come on, Robinson. If I want to be teased by a voice assistant, I’ll just talk to my Nest speaker at home.

To add to the frustration, I also find it very difficult to understand what the Soundwave G1 is saying. This is partly because Soundwave speaks in a vocoder-like voice that mixes in human speech, but also because the speakers aren’t the best (something I’ll cover in more detail later).

With all that said, there is an app through which you can issue commands on your phone. These certainly work well, and if you’re tired of screaming into the void, they may actually be the best way to use the Soundwave G1. There are other things you can do in the companion app, too

Here, you can use the touch D-pad to tell Soundwave to move around (it can move left, right, forward or backward), and you can even program your own actions. I should warn you that movement programming is far from intuitive, though I’ve had some minor success using the block-based programming UI to make Soundwave do simple things like twist its arms. It’s a nice touch, but I’m willing to bet that most people won’t want to spend a lot of time in the app programming this thing.

There’s also a sound mode which, when selected in the app, automatically switches the robot into cassette mode and lets you play about two dozen music tracks from the original cartoon. Honestly, this might be my favorite app-based touch since I’m a huge fan of the original with all its obnoxious guitar and 80s music.

Finally, there’s a “mini theater” mode where Soundwave is meant to do what amounts to a short demo while you’re watching a video in the app, but I couldn’t really get the feature to work properly. After launching the mini stage feature and waiting for the demo to load, Soundwave did some research, but the video wouldn’t load within the app. In defense of Robosen, I was using an early version of the app to test Soundwave, so maybe that had something to do with it? Either way, no dice for me.

Decepticons indeed

As I mentioned before, there are two ways to review the Soundwave, the second is as a Bluetooth speaker. By shouting at Soundwave to transform, you can use the Robosen robot as a Bluetooth speaker. All you have to do is turn on your phone’s Bluetooth, connect to it, and you’re good to go.

As I wrote when this robot was first announced, I was curious if the Soundwave G1 would actually look decent. I mean, it’s a game, sure, but it’s also $1,400, so decent sound isn’t great completely Out of the question, right? right?..

I’m sorry to say that my first inclination was correct; The Soundwave G1 sounds kind of bad. It’s not unlistenable, but it’s certainly not a speaker you want to use for anything other than the novelty of everything. The sound is very flat and one-dimensional, and for engineering reasons I believe, the sound actually emanates from the back of the robot when it’s in cassette mode, which isn’t ideal for accuracy.

I will say, though I inadvertently think, that this kind of bad sound works? It almost seems lo-fi. It’s bad enough that I wish Robosen had leaned into the bad, applying a kind of tape-like effect to the sound you’re listening to that makes you feel as if the 80s are alive and well. I mean, this thing doesn’t actually play tapes, but what if it did It seemed As if you were playing tapes? Now that would be true.

A nice touch is the inclusion of physical buttons on the Soundwave G1, which can be pressed and used as you would on a tape player. There is a track skip button (forward and backward) as well as a play button and a stop button. There’s also a record button that can actually record your voice! I may have to redact the exclamation point here, though, because I couldn’t get Soundwave to record anything I said.

When I pressed the record button, I was prompted to record after hearing the beep. I did. Then I pressed the stop button to stop recording. When I listened back to my recordings in the app, or tried to play them from the robot by pressing the play button, I didn’t hear much of anything. Maybe the microphone on my robot is faulty? Maybe it’s just poor quality? I don’t know, but nothing I seemed to do forced Soundwave to listen to me. I don’t speak Decepticons, apparently.

And even if I were talking about the Decepticons, I wouldn’t have to talk much about him. The battery in the Soundwave G1 is probably just as bad as batteries were in 1984 when transformers broadcast. I think if you’re lucky, you’ll get an hour and a half out of the Soundwave G1, and that’s in smaller quantities. I got 2 hours, but only 25 minutes spent playing music; The rest of the time, the Soundwave G1 was cool in cassette mode. This bad battery can be a bit dangerous too. Several times while using the Sondwave G1, the battery died while the robot was standing, and the whole thing went limp, causing it to fall to the ground like a sack of robotic potatoes. Oh.

This is all to say that you don’t want to use the Soundwave G1 as a Bluetooth speaker in any serious way, which is fine for most people. But if, like me, you entertain the idea that Soundwave would look decent, you can extricate yourself from that fantasy now.

Should You Deposit Sound Wave 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, $1400 is a lot of money. That’s more than a new iPhone 17, two Nintendo Switch 2s, or nearly half the price of a 1984 Chevy Chevette.

But maybe you’ve been robbing banks with Decepticons and have money to spend. and maybe You want to use a little of that money to buy a robot with which you can impress your friends for five minutes. If you’re that person, I think you should do this: Soundwave G1 is an impressive robot when it’s working, and you don’t have to yell at it 400 times to transform. Bluetooth speakers are definitely a parlor trick, but as long as you know that, I’d say no harm, no foul.

I don’t know, call me nice, but it’s hard to get mad at an auto converter that I don’t think most people expect to do much other than convert. If you want a good Bluetooth speaker, go buy it; If you want a robot that makes you feel like a kid again, and is richer than I will ever be, then I think you should do as Megatron does and choose the Soundwave G1.