Hey everyone! I purchased a Joy For All companion cat from Amazon and am writing a review on it. Aside from the shedding fur which is horrible, I like this robot. If Hasbro were to reskin it with something that didn't shed and make a few software tweaks, then put it up for market again, I think it would be a much better product.
Pros:
-Purrs when you pet it and you are able to feel the purr when holding the cat.
-Fur is much softer than on Furreal Friends.
-Has four touch sensors and a light sensor (light sensor is used as a motion sensor because a change in the lighting means something is moving in front of the sensor).
-I like how this robot focuses on calming sounds like purrs, occasional meows and sighs instead of the yowls or harsh and frequent meows of some other Hasbro cats.
-Legs that do not have motors in them (all but one), are moveable manually so that you can change the cat's position to a degree.
-Battery case is well hidden, but still easily accessible.
-Will start meowing to catch your attention if you don't pet it for a few minutes and go to sleep a couple minutes later if you still leave it alone.
-It's nice to just leave it on sitting by my computer while I'm working or browsing without it bothering me with constant noise.
-Has a mute button in case you find the repetitive noises it makes annoying. Mute button is a little strange though since the cat still occasionally purrs when muted but does not make any other sound.
-No annoying twist ties holding it into the box!
Cons:
-The shedding is a nightmare. If you pet it daily, that pretty long coat may not last long. And you'll be covered in fake cat hair constantly. I think I just breathed in fake cat hair while writing this.
-Very limited AI, probably has only around 10 distinct sounds that it makes and five distinct movements.
-One of the sighs it makes sounds creepily human and I think should be rerecorded. Sounds for robots can be easily recorded by a human without having them sound exactly like a person.
-Needs more padding to be more cuddly, feels too robotic.
-There is visible glue along seams on the inside and the fur just seems to weakly glued to the robot with poorly cut seams visible in some areas.
-The purring can get annoying when the cat carries on purring for 5+ minutes at a time which happens occasionally.
-The robot has batteries included, but they're left inside the robot. Hasbro has had issues with this before with their old stock of other similar robots being ruined because the batteries got corroded and damaged the robot beyond repair. If they actually listened to their customers, they would have packaged the batteries separately.
-If this robot were actually to be used in a nursing home setting, it would need removable fur that could be washed which this does not have. The shed hair is also easy to breath in by accident.
Is this just a refurred LuLu my Cuddlin Kitty?
-This cat seems to purr for much longer periods and move its paw less often than LuLu compared the videos that I've seen of this product. It also seems that LuLu's default response to most things is meowing and purring is a secondary response while this cat almost solely purrs and really only meows to get your attention. I believe the mechanical components are exactly the same, so any differences would be in the programming. My guess is that the software is a slightly tweaked version of LuLu's.
Would I recommend this?
-If you know someone who would like a robotic cat that they can cuddle with, but that isn't too advanced or active, then this might work. However, this person also has to be used to shedding animals enough that a shedding robot doesn't bother them.
Overall opinion:
-Aside from the shedding, it's not a bad product. I would much prefer to pay around $50 for it than the $100 price tag which I feel is too steep for what this robot is, but this does already have shipping factored into it, so that's something to take into consideration.
Will I be keeping this product?
-I'm going to give it a few days for the shedding to die down, but if that doesn't happen, I may have to opt for a return.
Some people on Amazon have complained about the motors being very loud, but they are actually quieter than a Pleo's motors, so this doesn't really bother me (only loud motor is one used to control the paw/torso).
Here are some pictures of the box and robot itself:
Edit:
Here's a video. It's hard to capture this robot in a short video though since while it does more actions and sounds than are featured here, it's something that isn't meant to do much or move around a lot, so seeing each action and noise can take an hour or so of use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT_7pJZwP5M&feature=youtu.be