We have been fans of Teksta for many years and we have seen the toys progress and grow in functionality. This year sees the release of the 5th generation of Teksta Puppy that now comes with 10 pre-programmed voice recognition commands that allow Teksta to respond to your voice.
Teksta Puppy takes 4 AA batteries and I recommend that you get good quality ones or rechargeable ones to get the best experience as it can be quite draining on batteries if you just have cheap ones.
Teksta Puppy has fabulous multi-coloured LED eyes with are extremely expressive and also features realistic ear movements which help to make the 5th generation Teksta Puppy the most advanced one yet.
Although the ten voice recognition commands are pre-programmed that doesn’t mean that Teksta Puppy will respond to your commands straight away as he needs to be trained to do so but we did find that he was able to respond to some of the more basic commands fairly quickly and that after an hour or so he was able to recognise most of them. The girls did need to speak slowly and clearly to get him to listen and if there was too much background noise such as a tv then it wouldn’t work. Teksta Puppy does still respond to hand gestures and is touch sensitive which means he pants when you pet him which the girls loved. Teksta Puppy displays a large range of emotions including crying, whimpering, and barking. He can be fed using the included light-up bone and even plays with his ball. To add to the fun you can also download the Teksta Puppy App to iOS or Android and use it to teach Teksta how to perform even more tricks.
Teksta has over 100 physical and interactive play features and the longer you play with him the more of these you will be able to do.
We have had great fun playing with Teksta Puppy and he is definitely a big improvement on some of the previous models and the ability to use both voice recognition commands and hand gestures to control him plus the addition of the app to increase his playability is fantastic. Teksta Puppy is recommended for ages 7 plus and I think that this is a realistic bottom range for this toy. We would definitely recommend it for a slightly older child who wants a robotic pet and has the patience to spend the time training him to make sure they really get the full benefits.
Available from http://www.character-online.co.uk/