Electronic Kit Reviews

Those are the noises my nephew, with some help from his father, was making with this kit after just a few minutes. We gave it to him for his 7th birthday and, though a bit young to go it alone at first, he is learning a lot and it is a great activity for him to enjoy with his parents, grandparents, etc.
It's a great toy AND educational tool.
He is at a stage where he wants to really figure out how things work and LOVES the kit and the oportunities for experimenting it offers.
While I was driving home from his birthday party he called my cell phone to let me listen as he talked into it and his voice came out on the radio.
It's a hit.

We purchased this for our daughter (8 yrs) and she loves it. It does a good job of explaining electronic concepts and allows for varying levels of experience to enjoy the projects. Everything you'll need is included and the experiments are flexible, progressive and "really cool".

Experimenter's kits are something of a dying breed. Electronics & hobbyists shops used to be almost everywhere it seemed, and carried educational kits like these. God, all the fun we had as kids playing with stuff like this. Every child should be exposed to these toys at as early of an age as possible imho. Helping a child get a head start on life, and sparking his or her imagination/desire to learn, is always a good thing.

This product is made by MONSTER CABLE so it pretty much have a standard of performance. The S-Video works perfect with flat screens because of the clarity. The Fiber-optic needs a receiver and it's only wroth it if you are going to use it as your first or secondary DVD machine. Don't waste money if you are not turning on the DTS. If you are buying this kit to watch DVD mainly. It's wroth the cost. Get a remote control too if watching DVD.

If you have a AV system capable of component video and optical digital audio this is a must have. My kids just loved it! The picture was crisp and clean and playing various games in Dolby Prologic ][ sound was very cool!

~e

I personally like this Zoid. It doesn't take too long to assemble (30 mins-1 hr), mainly because of the fact that it's basically a motor with a bit of armor on it. Once completed, the cockpit is removable (why they did this I'll never know), and it walks very smoothly. The wings and beak are fully poseable (aka not included in the motorization). The only problem is the tail; it falls out alot, so don't pick it up by the tail. When it's motorized it walks and the guns move up and down.
I'd get this Zoid while its this cheap.

This Zoid is a re-mold of the 80s version with new colours. I'm not too much of a fan of the colours, but what can you do right? Hasbro also reassigned him with a sheet of all new stickers, which is a major plus to me. But anyway when I brought him home and opened his box I was quite stunned, half the box was empty. Building time took no time at all really, due to the fact that there wasn't that there isn't much to him. He walks pretty well while his guns move up and down. His mouth and wings are posable which is kind of fun to mess with, foldable wings equal less space thieving. One thing that is very interesting about him is his Grade-up Port, Hasbro decided to keep it. What a Grade-up is, is Tomy's first CPs, released in the 80s that hooked up into the little port that had a toothed circle, so when it was turned on the circle in the port would twirl. The Grade-up also had a toothed circle that locked into with the one on the Zoid, so when it was turned on it would move and do what it was suppose to do, it has a little cover for the port to hide it which is very unique to the Zoids in that time period. On Hasbro's site they feature a Battle Cougar with a Grade-up, he does not come with his extra weapon, maybe if we're lucky they'll release Grade-ups and CPs. He isn't that large, he's about the size of a Shadow Fox, but I found him very amusing ^.^ He's pretty durable and could probably stand a bit of rough play, his tail likes to slide out of the holder sometimes, but you can just simply glue that in. Well I hope my review was helpful to you, Happy Shopping :D

This happens to be one of the smoothest walking zoids I have bought. It's durable and also very attractive. Also very easy to assemble.

Great Gift for any girl. If you've read the other reviews, you know now it's only for girls, which is dumb why someone would buy it for a boy? Ok..... someone's not right in the head.

Oh, And it's not very educational, acutally, it's not good at all for school, it's bad, all well, it's still great to have.

I thought it would be so fun, it's just plain boring. I have no friends that would take me seriously when I tried to give them a note! The teachers told me not to take toys to school. I said it was a pencil box, the teacher said "Suuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeee." It wasn't worth a dime!!!!!!!!!!

the Girl's Room Gear Secret Note Kit is the coolest toy i have ever had it looks like a pencil holder but when you open it, it is filled with paper, red light, disapeering ink, and a paper shredder! It really is the coolest toy ever even for grown ups.

I agree with the first reviewer. I purchased this kit for my 10 year old son, who is above average intelligence and has a voracious appetite for scientific knowledge and experiments. He is fascinated by the kit, but the instruction book is so poorly written that he cannot even begin to make sense of it. I am taking the other reviewers advice and purchasing some other basic electronics books in hopes of salvaging the [money] spent on the kit.

I've always been interested in learning at least the basics about electronics and finally decided to do something about it. I bought a couple of 'intro to electronics', 'electonrics basics' type books and I bought this toy. While rated for 10 years and up, they'd be pretty bright 10 year olds. The kit comes with capacitors, resistors, diodes, wires, transistors and even IC's. The other reviewer is correct. Resistors are all color coded -- and very small --- and very many in this kit. I finally spent about 4 hours labelling over 50 tiny plastic bags so I could easily find the appropriate parts to do the projects.
The manual explains how to identify all the parts, and for the projects uses a step by step approach to instruct one on how to put the project together. For example, "Insert 100 ohm resistor in B12 and J12 on the breadboard". In this respect, yes, a 10 year old could easily follow these instructions. The diagrams show the breadboard layout as well as showing you the "real" schematics. That coupled with my reading through my "electronics for dummies" books -- it's actually all starting to make sense as to why components are laid out they way they are. Without the other books, I would not have figured that out just from this kit -- but, if you just want to make things flash and make sounds etc and follow the instructions, that that won't matter. The manual does attempt to explain why something works -- but I was lacking the bare basics, so it didn't make much sense.

All in all, I would highly recommend this kit to anyone who really has an interest in learning about basic electronics and wants to put things together.

It would be a great kit for family projects. However, there are a ton of very small parts and good eyesight or a magnifying glass and a flashlight would be recommended for those of us with less then perfect eyesight.

Well worth the cost, working out to much much less then $[money]/hour of enjoyment to work through the 300 projects.

What the descriptions fail to mention is that resistors, one of the most critical types of electronic parts, are *always* color-coded. If, like me, you're even moderately color-blind, you have a very expensive paperweight on your hand.

For people without that problem, this looks to be a greally great kit.

I purchased this toy as a Christmas gift for my 5-yr-old...but my 3-yr-old appreciated them so much more. Really cute to see her all dressed up with the Barbie sunglasses, and carrying a purse. It's really a riot; the keys makes noises when you push a button exactly the way a real car alarm would.

Really a cute, fun toy...and inexpensive!!

DYB

Straight out of the box, this drum kit seems like a winner. Its construction is fairly sturdy considering its price range - especially the main stand and the brain unit - it's easy to put together, and once constructed its futuristic good looks draw "wows" from all hands. A glance at the brain unit shows a huge array of buttons with such promising titles as "Metal" and "Blues" and "Bass Boost" and - my own personal favorite - "Speaker On/Off" which lets your child hear the drums in the included headset microphone without the rest of the house benefiting from his percussion skills.

There are, however, three main down checks which relegate this toy to the first-five(minutes)-then-forget pile. Those problems, in increasing order of severity are:

1. For the sturdiness of the rest of the unit, the "bass drum" pedal is exceptionally flimsy. Anyone with experience with any kind of musical instrument requiring a foot pedal will know the instant they touch this lightweight plastic pedal that it's going to cause problems - or it would if your kid will play with the set long enough for it to.

2. The "stand-up" drum kit idea may have seemed like a good idea in the corporate boardroom, because it removed the need for a pricey drum throne; but from the get-go I thought my kid would tire of standing up while beating these things and sure enough, the first words out of his mouth after I set it up and switched it on were, "daddy, I want to sit down." OK, you say, so get a chair for him. Well, maybe if he was older, but at the moment, they don't make a chair that lets his small body reach both the drum pads and the flimsy bass pedal, whose shortcomings are exacerbated by the requirement to step on it while standing. You're right, the bass pedal is no real loss, so if I thought he would ever play with these drums again, I'd put down the chair and forego the bass.

3. The real problem is that for all the aesthetic beauty and apparent quality of these "drums," the sounds themselves are nothing short of heinous. Whether in the included headset microphone, the mercifully switch-offable speaker or daddy's $130 Bose Triport headphones, every noise this thing makes sounds like it was recorded on a Radio Shack microphone into a $3 tape deck and played through blown out car speakers. The sounds are so distorted that it's difficult to tell the difference between each "tom" when you hit it, and the vast selection of "beats" on the brain unit are just so much wow and flutter. I'm not kidding you when I say they sound better with the power OFF than ON... at least then you can hear the rhythm of the clicking plastic without all the hideous distortion.

For purposes of this review, I should have put a stopwatch on him; but instead I'll have to estimate that in just over three minutes, my son was through playing with them and they will likely not see much use again, though the sturdy plastic drum sticks will probably get a workout on lots of other items around the house - items which, I might add, will probably sound more like real drums than the e-groovz Drum Station.

Yes, the price is right, but I would rather have spent double for something that would get some use. Now I'm only sorry I didn't take better care of the box when I opened it, as I'll likely be trying to dump this off on Ebay or via garage sale within the month.

When he was seven, my son wanted "a drum set" even though he had no experience and no lessons. This item was perfect, since it can be played with headphones- it still makes a lot of racket just hearing the sticks beat the pads, but he got to try making a bunch of sounds and we got some time to watch his interest before we took the next step. He was ready for lessons and some real kit before he wore out the first set of batteries.
It survived all he could dish out, but a new puppy took out the wire to the pedal.
This is an ok product for kids that want to bang and make more than noise. A good first step toward music for small kids.

The outdoor adventure kit worked great to keep my 3 year old son occupied while his older brother and I worked with the telescope. He now has his "gear" and lets his brother work in semi-peace.

Three of the six pieces to this set fell apart within 3 weeks. Better to pick out components individually that you're interested in than spend (your money)on this garbage. 1 star is too many for the rating.

This product was given to our 9 year old son from Santa. For the price, I thought that all the items I was receiving was going to be a great deal! NOT! The watch battery went dead w/in days after Christmas! The camera, you might as well bought out of a gum-ball machine!...easly broken. (Just by loading the film & the pictures that were developed were horrible. Even the ones I took.) The other "outdoor items" are very cheaply made & break easily. (To repeat the quote like they came out of a .50 gum-ball machine.)
It is NOT worth it at all. It is very cheaply made! Please save your self the agervation & tears & do NOT buy it!

i recently bought pacific digital's drumxtreme with all intentions of using this product as a beginner's tool. i hate to say that i am dissapointed with it though. for starts, the software that comes with it hardly works, meaning the "music game, etc." doesn't work, so therefore one cannot play along with music. all it basically does is let you bang on the drums and try to figure out things for yourself. so why not get real drums instead? this product promises a good beginner's experience but does not deliver it. the sound is not good quality, and the toms are barely audiable. not to mention that this model doesn't come with a hi hat pedal, leaving the beginner to use their arm - which complicates things in the beginning and could leave one frustrated. sure, there are other models that offer this, but for one who is on a budget and just looking to begin drums, this one seems like the best bet. i personally wish i would've kept my money and used it on real drums instead, which i am going to have to do now. so save yourself the trouble, if you want to begin - begin on real drums and get the real experience, dont be fooled by this product.

This great for kids who want a drum kit. Parents won't have to listen to the noise that a real wood drum set can make. For a professional, probably not a road worthy buy, but for a beginner and for the low price it is a good buy. All you need is a pc and it doesn't cost $1000 to $4500 dollars...

I bought the DX-150 (DX-100 with extra hi-hat pedal and pad) 2 months ago after did a lot of research before decided to buy this set since I was trying to save money (I'm a student). I have not been disappointed at all. I'm not try to compare with $500 e-drum. All I'm saying is that the quality of the set with the price I paid, I really have to give it 4 starts. The set-up with the rack is awesome and nicely done. I initially run the system with my very old soundcard and the sound was terrible. But after I upgraded my soundcard to 24-bit Audigy, this thing came alive. However, the system doesn't provide that many choices in terms of sound. Hopefully, there will be an upgrade version of the program (then I can give 5 stars). The delay of the sound after hitting the pad could be disturbing for experienced drummer. I ended up plug the system into my drum module (Alesis D4) with some modification on the base pedal. And it works like charm. I put a thin gum-rubber on each pad to reduce the nagging sound when you hit the pad. It works great without loosing the sensitivity. Really recommend this set if you have low budget.