That has to be the most irritating video I've ever seen. Annoying presenter dressed like a clown, yammering so much I couldn't hear or focus on what the robot was doing. I stopped it less than halfway through.
I'm no longer interested in this robot for two reasons. First, it's subscription based and they want an exorbitant amount of money. Clearly Chinese manufacturers haven't learned their lesson from the home surveillance camera industry. At first all home cameras were subscription based, then customers realized they were being ripped off and stopped buying them. Then they started lying to customers that a camera was not subscription based, except they'd coerce the customer to pay for a subscription after purchase by making the app unusable (full of ads and demands for money, or blocking features) or even bricking the camera until they paid. Now most cameras have optional cloud service, but can still be used without it, using an SD card for local storage. I got fed up with their games years ago and bought a set of cameras connected with an NVR using power over ethernet. Now everything's on my NVR, nobody can hack into it, it records even when internet is down, and they have no control over what I do with my cameras or footage. I monitor my cameras using a web browser or app.
Speaking of NVR's, I think it would be great if this model could be used with home robots. A central hub with local storage, controlled by the user with robots and smart home devices connected to it, without the need for internet or cloud service.
Which brings me to my second point. SwitchBot's app sucks. It's geared towards pushing more products on customers instead of being useful or intuitive. Just today I wanted to check the battery level on my smart lock. I open the app, and instead of seeing the devices I own, I see a list of their products that aren't paired with my existing devices because I don't own them. It's just a slimy attempt to get me to purchase these items by making me think they're "missing". Even important notifications from devices (door left unlocked etc.) are mixed in with ads to purchase other products, which makes them harder to find.
Long story short, I had to go through five screens just to get to the lock and its settings, and even then, when I finally found the battery level, it's a tiny icon the size of a grain of rice, with no "percentage left" listed. So I have to guess, and hope the lock doesn't crap out while I'm out somewhere. Luckily I can still open it with a key.
Given their poorly thought out app design and focus on peddling other products to customers, combined with their greed in demanding over $400 a year in subscription fees for Kata, I won't be buying this robot. It wouldn't surprise me if they program Kata to prattle ads for their other devices, like Amazon does with its Alexa devices (which I threw out for this reason). "Boy who cried wolf" fake notifications mixed in with real ones seem to be a new thing with smart home devices these days.
