Robosen’s $1,400 Soundwave Transformer Is a Sick Robot and Sad Bluetooth Speaker
Whenever I see a toy robot, I feel like a kid again. Not because of Transformers, but because I—a millennial and self-proclaimed Cartoon Network kid—grew up on Dexter’s Lab, and man, did that show burrow its way into my brain. Who knows? Maybe if I hadn’t been so awful at doing useful stuff like math and chemistry, Dexter might have compelled me to become a scientist or an engineer. As you may have gathered from reading this, though, I didn’t do that. I did, however, do the next best thing, apparently: I chose to write about technology. I say “next best” because this road, unbeknownst to me at the time, is one that led me straight to something that scratches that childhood itch just as much as lab coats and beakers: a big friggin’ robotic Transformer.
Robosen Soundwave G1 The Soundwave G1 is an impressive robot with bad sound. For the Transformers superfans only. Impressive robotics Lots of different commands Transformation into cassette mode rocks Subpar Bluetooth sound Subpar battery life Hit or miss voice command recognition Make some noise for Soundwave When I first saw Robosen’s new ultra-expensive, elaborate Transformer robot, the Soundwave G1, it was hard not to get excited. Not just because (duh) it’s a Transformer robot, but because Soundwave shapeshifts into a speaker—a functional one. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo In case you didn’t catch my missive when this thing was launched, the Soundwave G1 takes Robosen’s robotic Transformers (yes, there are many) a step further and features a Bluetooth speaker mode that can be used when Soundwave is all crumpled up in its cassette player form. That’s sick for hardcore Transformer fans since it brings the original schtick of Soundwave to life, but also for me personally because I pay my bills in part by reviewing speakers.
In short, my interests collided here in a big way, which means I got a chance to test out Soundwave myself, and boy, do I have some thoughts. Soundwave superior There are really two ways you can review Robosen’s Soundwave G1: as a toy and as a speaker. I’m going to try to do both right now, and for the sake of all the potential Transformers fans out there reading this, I am going to start with the fun stuff first. How, you might ask, is the Soundwave G1 as a toy? Answer: kind of sick.
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo This thing is a Robot, man—capital “R” intended. When you pick it up, you can feel all the robotics inside, which is because there are a lot. According to Robosen, there are “28 high-precision intelligent servo motors” and 84 custom microchips. That means when Soundwave starts moving around and doing his Transformer thing, it’s really moving. The feet articulate, the arms move in two joints, the head pops out, and the shoulder-mounted “sonic cannon” articulates and lights up. Even the cassette player portion pops out for dramatic effect, though you cannot actually play real tapes with it, which is a bummer. In Robosens’ defense, I can only imagine fitting a tape deck in this thing would be an engineering nightmare. In terms of look and feel, it’s the robot toy most people my age wanted as a kid, and for $1,400, it damn well should be. The Soundwave G1 also understands quite a few commands. With the help of a built-in microphone, you can shout at your expensive robot and get it to do things. Altogether, there are 48 pre-programmed voice commands that include stuff like “attack” or “defend,” which make the robot shoot with its included toy gun and gesture. There are also more Transformers-specific commands like “Megatron” or “Laserbeak,” in which the Soundwave G1 says stuff from the show while gesticulating. A fun fact here is that they got the original Soundwave voice actor, Frank Welker, to come in and do some voice acting for the robot.
Mid transformation, but also maybe yoga, I don’t know. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo The most impressive command of them all is the transform one, though. By shouting “Hey Soundwave, transform,” you get to watch the robot dramatically bend all of its limbs up and curl into a tape player from a robot mode or vice versa. It’s wild, but also that leads me to my first and biggest downside of the Soundwave G1. While I love the inclusion of a voice command feature, this was also easily the biggest point of frustration when playing the robot. I fear Soundwave, after all the years of laser battling with Autobots, may be a little hard of hearing. Time after time, I was forced to scream at this giant hunk of plastic, begging it to do stuff. I don’t know what my record was for shouting “Hey Soundwave” without the robot acknowledging me, but I’m pretty sure I hit over a dozen. C’mon, Robosen; if I wanted to be agitated by a voice assistant, I would just talk to my Nest speaker at home.
To add to the frustration, I also find it really hard to understand what Soundwave G1 is saying. That’s partially because canonically, Soundwave talks in a vocoder-like voice that blends synth and human speech, but also because the speakers aren’t the best (which is something I’ll get into more later). An unsuspecting tape deck… © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo With all that said, there is an app where you can punch in commands on your phone. These definitely work fine, and if you’re sick of screaming into the void, they may actually be the best way to use the Soundwave G1. There’s other stuff you can do in the companion app, too © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Here, you can use a touchscreen D-pad to tell Soundwave to walk around (it can move left, right, forward, or backward), and you can even program your own actions. Action programming, I must warn you, is pretty far from intuitive, though I did have some minor success with using the block-based programming UI to get Soundwave to do simple stuff like twist its arms. It’s a nice touch, but I’m willing to wager that most people aren’t going to want to spend loads of time in the app programming this thing.
© Raymond Wong / Gizmodo There’s also an audio mode that, when selected in the app, automatically transforms the robot into the cassette mode and lets you play about two dozen tracks from the original cartoon. Honestly, that may be my favorite app-based touch since I’m a big fan of the original score with all of its obnoxious guitar and ’80s riffage. Lastly, there’s a “mini theater” mode where Soundwave is meant to do what amounts to a short demo while you watch a video in the app, but I couldn’t really get the feature to work correctly. After launching the mini theater feature and waiting for the demo to load, Soundwave did some thrashing about, but the in-app video wouldn’t load. In Robosen’s defense, I was using an early version of the app to test Soundwave, so maybe that had something to do with it? Either way, no dice for me. A Decepticon indeed As I mentioned before, there are two ways to review the Soundwave, and the second is as a Bluetooth speaker. By shouting at Soundwave to transform, you can use Robosen’s robot as a Bluetooth speaker. All you have to do is pull up your phone’s Bluetooth and connect, and boom, you’re in business.
As I wrote when this robot was first announced, I was curious about whether the Soundwave G1 would actually sound decent. I mean, it’s a toy, to be sure, but it is also $1,400, so decent sound isn’t totally out of the question, right? Right?.. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo I’m sad to say my first inclination was correct; the Soundwave G1 sounds sort of bad. It’s not unlistenable, but definitely not a speaker that you’re going to want to use for anything other than the novelty of it all. Sound is pretty flat and one-dimensional, and for what I assume are engineering reasons, the sound actually emanates from the back of the robot when it’s in cassette mode, which is not ideal for fidelity. I will say, though, I think unintentionally, the crappy sound kind of works? It almost sounds lo-fi. It’s bad enough that I sort of wish that Robosen had leaned into the badness, applying some kind of tape-like effect to the audio you listen to that makes it feel as though the ’80s are alive and well. I mean, this thing doesn’t actually play tapes, but what if it sounded like you were playing tapes? Now that’d be righteous.
Shiny buttons. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo A nice touch is the inclusion of physical buttons on the Soundwave G1, which can be pressed and used as you would on a tape player. There’s a track skipping button (forward and back) as well as a play button and a stop button. There’s also a record button that can actually record your voice! I may have to redact the exclamation point here, though, because I couldn’t get Soundwave to record anything I said. What do you think Pikachu has to say about all this? © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo When I pressed the record button, it prompted me to record after the beep. I did. Then I pressed stop to stop the recording. When I listened back to my recordings in the app, though, or tried to play them from the robot by pressing the play button, I didn’t hear much of anything. Maybe the microphone on my robotic son is defective? Maybe it’s just poor quality? I don’t know, but nothing I seemed to do forced Soundwave to listen to me. I don’t speak Decepticon, apparently.
And even if I did speak Decepticon, I wouldn’t have to speak very much of it. The battery on the Soundwave G1 is perhaps just as bad as batteries were in 1984 when Transformers aired. I think, if you’re lucky, you’ll get an hour and a half out of the Soundwave G1, and that’s at lower volumes. I got 2 hours, but only 25 mins of that were actually spent playing music; the rest of the time, the Soundwave G1 was just chilling there in cassette mode. That bad battery can be a little dangerous, too. A few times while using the Sondwave G1, the battery ran out while the robot was standing, and the whole thing went limp, causing it to fall to the ground like a sack of robotic potatoes. Ouch. Same, tbh. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo This is all to say that you do not want to use the Soundwave G1 as a Bluetooth speaker in any sort of serious way, which is probably fine for most people. But if you, like me, entertained the idea that Soundwave would sound decent, you can rid yourself of that fantasy now.
Should you soundwave goodbye to $1,400? Are Autobots really inferior, though? © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Listen, who am I to tell you what to do with your money? I don’t know how you live. To me, $1,400 is a lot of money. That’s more than a brand new iPhone 17, or two Nintendo Switch 2s, or almost half the price of a Chevy Chevette in 1984. But maybe you’ve been robbing banks with the Decepticons and have money to blow. And maybe you want to use a little bit of that cash on a robot that you can impress your friends with for five minutes. If you’re that person, then I guess go for it: the Soundwave G1 is an impressive robot when it works, and you don’t have to shout at it 400 times to transform. The Bluetooth speaker stuff is definitely a parlor trick, but as long as you know that going in, I’m going to say no harm, no foul.
I don’t know, call me soft, but it’s just hard to get mad at a robot transformer that I don’t think most people are expecting to do much other than, well, transform. If you want a good Bluetooth speaker, go buy that; if you want a robot that makes you feel like a kid again, and you’re wealthier than I’ll ever be, then I guess do as Megatron does and go with the Soundwave G1.
