Excite Flying UFO Alien Sphere - 3 Channel Remote Controlled Infrared w/Controller

Interesting concept but flawed. The spherical cage is too fragile and easy to break . The flyer is charged by 6 AAA betterues in the remote (plug remote into the flyer) and it runs out if charge too quickly. Takes a long time to charge. Kids gave up on it.

This toy is great as long as you only want to use it a couple times. We got two of these and both pooped out after very little use.

This was a gift and after putting fresh batteries in, we charged the unit and it flew for 30 seconds and came down to the floor. After trying to charge and changing the new batteries with another fresh set waiting to see if it would charge, nothing. followed every trouble shoot still a no go. very disappointed.

No question about this purchase, I wish I bought more of them. The product just works as long as your grandson does not sit on it.

I gave 4 of these as Christmas gifts and I think everybody loved them. They are not nearly as fragile as the helicopters are.

It flies pretty good and made a great gift. I dont like having to do the xtra words for this.

It does fly. Range is shortish - 5-10 minutes. Easy to "trim" so it doesn't spin on its own. Charging is sort of hard to interpret. Not sure if it fully charges if you use rechargeable cells in the charger.Biggest flaw is the flimsy construction, if it falls from say 6 feet high, chances are something is going to break.Then there is a weak spot and it starts breaking faster and faster every time it falls.And it will fall because it is kind of hard to control accurately. It will hit walls - it seems to be sucked over to them. If it hits a wall, you usually cannot recover, it will fall.Also it is easy at first to hit the ceiling, usually that crashes it too.Pretty soon it will be too broken to fly.You can try outdoors but the slightest wind is too strong for it, it will blow away.If it gets out of control range, it might keep the motors running, just flying away.Or it might just fall down from 20' or so- that is usually game over, the whole frame breaks.,You can try fixing it but it will be too heavy, or unbalanced, or your fix won;t fix the breaks.It IS fun but if it were stronger (heavier with more battery) it would last longer.

Not a bad idea overall, but with a few negatives. It does fly, but has a tendency to get sucked toward the walls. Then it may lose it's vertical orientation at which point it will fly sideways and then fall down. Also, the front is defined by the bright blue light, and it takes a bit of time to get used to which direction is forward, and which is back. In flight, it behaves very much like a regular co-axial helicopter such as Syma S107g.On the negative side, there was no external charging cable included (at least in my Costco's version that looks identical), so all the charging was supposed to happen via the remote. Luckily a USB cable from another helio by WLToys matched the charging socket and polarity, so I used that cable and a USB port instead. It appears that the sphere has the charging electronics inside and will control the voltage for the LiPo battery, so the approach should be safe.Another big negative is that the plastic cage is fragile. After a few drops the plastic beams were breaking up either at the top or the bottom at the attachment points. I wish that the plastic beams had some sort of thin wire or carbon threads inside, and that would provide better tolerance to falls without the breakage. Also, once the beams start breaking, the game is over, and as far as I can imagine there is no way to restore the beams.The remote looks like from Syma's, but is not compatible and has 3 IR channels vs Syma's 2. I found the lack of spring on the throttle stick to be a negative rather than a positive, since for newbies (or kids!) it's be better if the sphere lost power when somebody stops pushing up the throttle stick.Anyway, with a slight redesign, the sphere could become a great and fairly lasting toy.