It’s no secret that we lust after handsome, well-designed stuff, but the often astronomical price tags make us wonder: Is the old adage you get what you pay for an essential truth? We decided to test it by pitting four posh and pricey products against their budget-friendly counterparts, comparing aesthetics and performance. No battle was without its hardships: razor burn, bossy robots, and sore feet among them. But we emerged appreciably wiser—and even maybe a bit richer—for them.



Pleo
($350)
v.
WowWee Robosapien V2
($140)

In this corner, at 3.3 pounds, 6 inches tall, and hailing from Emeryville, California, home to manufacturer Ugobe, we have the artificially intelligent baby Camarasaurus Pleo. In the other corner, towering at 22 inches tall and 8 pounds, meet the creative spawn of former NASA engineer and WowWee Robotics physicist Mark Tilden—the barking, belly-aching, world-famously rude Robosapien V2. Welcome to
the battle of the bleating toy robots, where the winner is the first machine to drive us totally nuts and get tossed out the window. Pleo, which debuted this Christmas from the makers of the hit toy robot Furby, played the clear underdog with his heart-melting blue eyes and adorable paws that looked like oversize gumdrops. Everything about Pleo said “hug me,” and the idea of pitting it against the sinister-looking Robosapien, with its pinching claws, beady eyes, and a hard drive full of surly quips, seemed cruel.

But beware the cute factor: It’s Pleo’s secret weapon. Beneath the baby dinosaur’s irresistibly scrunchy rubber skin is a sophisticated robotic life form, complete with 33 sensors—object detectors, infrareds, touch sensors—all designed to help Pleo manipulate the external world with its charm. Scratch Pleo’s back and up to eight microprocessors, crunching up to 60 million calculations per second, command it to nuzzle your hand. Pleo is autonomous, meaning he does pretty much whatever he feels like doing, but a USB port and an SD card slot let owners upload personality tweaks. (One makes him bark like a dog in response to noise; another inspires him to sing Christmas carols.) Fresh out of the box, however, Pleo mostly bleats like a baby goat and wags his long, pointy tail. Occasionally he’ll venture to crawl and chomp his teeth, ostensibly a sign he’s hungry, but he demonstrated little interest in gumming the plastic leaf that came in his box. And he often gets sleepy, which means the rechargeable NiMH battery in his belly is running low.

If Pleo has a personality flaw, it’s that he’s aloof. Even after a couple of weeks of playing with him (activity is supposed to make him evolve more sophisticated behaviors), he did little more than crawl, cry, and coo. He doesn’t come when called, nor does he sit up and beg for food or cuddle with you on the couch like a living, breathing pet would. Yet that doesn’t stop kids from adoring him. Pleo was a big hit with the under-10 crowd we introduced him to; they instantly fell prey to his charms and seemed not to mind when he thoroughly ignored them.

Robosapien, meanwhile, mostly collected dust in the corner. It’s not that he’s dumb. In fact, he’s loaded with intelligence. According to WowWee, he’s capable of 100 preprogrammed functions, from kung fu to bowling, and you can command him to perform other tricks via remote control. (After a particularly harrying session, we had him throw an espresso cup at Pleo.) He also comes with stereo-sonic sensors that gift him with hearing, and an infrared headcam that lets him “see” what’s ahead. Wave an object in his face and he shouts, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” while greedily extending his claws. But Robosapien’s many features can make him unduly complicated, and the amount of programming options proved tiresome. After 20 minutes of fiddling with the myriad buttons on an Xbox-like remote, we managed to manipulate his arms and pincers but never quite mastered anything as fun as martial arts. (Spending time with Robosapien’s newer, more expensive sibling, the RS Media, didn’t prove any more rewarding.) WowWee claims the robot is “ready to go right out of the box,” but in reality, he requires a serious time investment, which is partly why Pleo saw more play time. While the Robosapien may ultimately be more interactive than the baby dinosaur, in the short term—which may be all a kid will offer—his high maintenance makes him a less rewarding playmate. Advantage: Pleo.

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