Customer Reviews

Revell Vexplorer Robotics System

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The VEXplorer is a nifty little kit. Nice tires, better motors than VEX, and pre-assembled components. You can argue if the pre-packaged assemblies really allow students to "engineer" the machine; or if they just dumb-down the kit.

Regardless, where the kit is really lacking is the inability to do any programming. Without being able to program, this isn't a robot; it is a remote-controlled car. The kit is overly basic to make it a very effective teaching tool in high-school or middle-school. It may be good for elementary.

According to the folks at VEX, the motors are not interchangeable with the VEX kit (also a problem). The kit does come with some nice design software. However, the license is only good for six-months. Anyhow, so much of this kit is already built; there is very little left to design.

If you want a quickly-built remote control car for your kids, this kit is great! If you want something to use as a real teaching platform; this isn't the robot for you.

After taking delivery of this we (my 12 year old nephew and myself) had this thing put together and ready for action in about 2 hours.
I would not call it a robotics system due to the fact that it is actually remote controlled and not robotic by any definition.
The quality of the parts seemed high and robust.
Battery life is short so stock up.

Overall the boys are very happy with it and it's still in one piece!!
Recommended with the understanding that it is not a robot but an RC toy.

Pros: wireless color video camera with microphone, has a claw for grabbing (and moving) almost anything, the range is about 150 feet fom the remote control.
cons: batteries start to wear out within 45 minutes, kind of slow, even though it has 6 wheels it is not an all terrain vehicle.

Overall I think this is a very cool toy you will not find anywhere else and is great for kids who like robots and building because this robot comes in about 5 preasembled pieces. You use nuts and bolts to put it together. It also comes with a program so you can design your own robot with the 5 preasembled parts. this is such a fun toy it is graeat for spying around the house and grabbing almost anything! The camera is placed on the claw arm so you can see exactly what you're grabbing you can also pan up, down, left and right with it.(Left and right with the wheels.)Giving it a very wide field of vision. Like I said, this is one of the best robotic toys on the market! I llove it!

I bought this for my 16 year old son who is kind of an electronics "geek" and wondered at the time if he would think it was too "little kid" for him. He not only loved it, but sat down & immediately began assembling it & didn't stop until he was done!

Revell Vexplorer Robotics SystemThe finished toy is great. Assembly is extremely difficult. Too many nuts and screws have extremely bad access. Assembly time was 2 and a half hours not under an hour like the package says. Even after doing it once assembly would still be time consuming because of such limited access to nuts and screws.

Having just completed building this thing, I'm amazed at the reviews on here. Only one mentions how terrible the design of putting this together is. Unless you have very slender, loooooooooooong fingers, you will find screwing the nuts/bolts together in some literally nigh-impossible places to be a real nightmare. Yes, I've build many things over the years, and I know how to use a pair of needle-nose pliers, but wow.......

One perfect example: the kit comes with (4) 1/2" screws, and it's illustrated in the list of parts. BUT YOU NEED 5. The directions tell you to install 4 to connect the arm. That's fine, but then it tells you to use another one to connect the antenna holder. Just an example.....

anyway, once i got it built, it worked. For about 5 minutes. It acted like the batteries were dead. I was sure they were new, but what the heck. I put even "newer" ones in. Drove around the house with it for about 15 minutes, hooked the camera up. Then it died again. I don't know, maybe I hooked something up wrong, but i don't think so. Tomorrow I'll see what the deal is. I can't believe that this thing would suck battery life THAT fast.

Overall, it's a cool toy, but with the battery life looking ridiculous (as i've read on other reviews), and the ridiculousness of the assembley, I can't really recommend this.

It was a gift for a friend of mine and she loved it. If you're into robots or building things its totally amazing.

My 13 year old son absolutely loves this robot, yes it may not be programmable, but it can be reconfigured into anything you want which makes it lots of fun for a kid who likes to build things. The camera works very well however we did find out that if you have any other electronics that use the same frequency, like cordless phones, it does interfere with the cameras signal, we just unplugged the phone. My son has set up a timed obstacle course to drive through and at the end an item to pick up with the "claw" to return to the start line and the whole time he is doing this by watching the camera image on the TV...this is great fun...even for me! The only thing that some may find frustrating is the assembly. Assembling this kit is really a 2 person job, some of the nuts and bolts are hard to get into position without and extra hand to hold the nut in place but this is a small problem (lol) and actually it was nice to have my son ask me for help. Working together it only took about an hour to get it all done. We really like this robot although our dogs and cat would disagree we me as my son like to drive up and grab their tails with it, which is very funny, but after a couple of days they have gotten smart and when they hear it coming they run and hide. This robot is something that I wish I had when I was a kid!

My 10(almost 11) year old son, who is a gadget geek, got this for Christmas. He had seen it advertised on the back of a Scout Magazine. He was very excited, and assembled it on Christmas day. He needed assistance with this, as it was tricky. However, that was a lesson in itself. Once assembled, he played with it for hours, as did his dad! The TV image is a little fuzzy, but the technology is amazing. He named it JR and still plays with it from time to time. We have not had it long, so I can't say how durable it really is, but it seems strong. Amazon was by far the cheapest place to buy it too.

On the whole, the Revell Vexplorer is a very neat construction toy with a few limitations. I bought this for myself as a present because I was interested in a gadget that allowed me to build something which was controlled with a remote but was not too advanced or expensive. The Revell Vexplorer fulfilled some of those desires.

The good features of the Vexplorer include the ability to construct a vehicle from the supplied parts, of which there are many. The parts seemed at least hobby grade equivalent. The remote control was excellent and did not feel plastic and cheap like other remote control toys I've owned. The construction process was slow for me but I definitely am the type of person to get reward from seeing a finished product after working on it. So, I enjoyed the building process. There are some tricky places where assembly gets difficult but I managed after a few starts and stops. If you have large fingers, this may present a problem. Kids shouldn't have a problem however. After the build, it's a lot of fun to play with. The biggest draw for me is the claw. It really brought purpose to the Vexplorer and encouraged creativity. At a family gathering where I was showing off the Vexplorer, we ended up playing lots of games, moving the Vexplorer around obstacles and then using the claw to move the obstacles themselves. It moves a little slow, but the functionality of the claw more than makes up for this.

The negatives involve the fact that the camera did not work at all upon receiving the Vexplorer, so I lowered the durability rating. Another downgrade to durability was because the servos provided did not seem very powerful and seemed like they could get ruined pretty easily if a kid was playing with the remote control haphazardly. The number of parts is substantial which is good but the variety is not so impressive. You can make the basic mobile unit with robotic claw, but that's about it. Creating a wholly different remote controlled unit is difficult because of the lack of variety in the pieces. Looking at their website, you can purchase the starter kit but that is pretty expensive comparatively. In addition, Vex has basically phased out this toy by 2011 so replacement parts are going to be hard to come by.

Overall, it's a really cool and unique toy that has some drawbacks. If this could be found for less than $100, I would recommend buying it. Unfortunately that seems unlikely now that it's been virtually discontinued.