Exclusive hands-on review - one year in
Here's my one-year review.
Obviously we'd had this product on order for a long time, and there was a lot of expectations. Would it live up to the hype? In the end it was lovely to see it arrive, right on time. The unboxing was something of a complicated process, and we had some concerns that the product would not fit back in the wrapper if we had to return it. But it does not come with any kind of warranty, so that may not be a problem. The packaging itself is beautiful, and well worth hanging on to.
From first glance, this product is stunning. It is clearly more attractive than all the other models on the market. Home run. The attention to detail is superb, nice to see some familiar features in there, and you just want to pick it up and play immediately.
On the down side, the preinstalled operating system was not really ready for prime time. It would go into sleep mode every hour or so, and require constant recharging. The charger is built into the packaging, which seems inconvenient.
We're still waiting on the promised voice commands. Waiting a whole year for this obvious feature is frustrating, and I feel this should have been built in when shipped. The inbuilt apps are also not much use. However, we've seen more and more available as the product has matured, and each new one is a delight to install.
We are still having a number of problems with sleep mode, which seems to have a mind of its own. I think some sort of hardware switch would be more useful. Equally, the alarm can go off at all times of night, which hasn't helped with scheduling.
While the initial outlay for the product was very low, it ships with a binding multi-year contract, and the monthly fees are very high. Be very sure this is what you want when placing your order. Accessories are also expensive, if you want to look the part.
We've tried a little networking, which seems to be going well. I can get the devices almost talking to each other, but we haven't completed a full handshake yet, let alone transferred any meaningful data.
Despite this, viruses can still be easily caught, though you can get some anti-virus plugins. They are painful to install, but apparently worthwhile, and the minor viruses we've seen have been shortlived.
Ultimately, like any luxury good, this is a product requires significant customisation and time, but will grow with you. I think it's well worth the investment of time and money, and I look forward to playing with it for years to come.
10 / 10
might not seem so obvious in retrospect but I was talking about my baby here
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