Sphero really outdid themselves with the creation and design of the Mini. The shell is so easy to pop off when you need access to the charging port, but I've found that it will never come off on its own (unless dropped. Oops). It matches my walking speed perfectly, and keeps me occupied for much longer than I'm willing to admit. And when it dies, it's so easy to remove the shell and plug it in. I've found that it'll usually charge within an hour.

When opening the product, the first thing I noticed was how simple and easy it was to get started. I simply plugged in the sphero to wake it up, downloaded the app, and it connected within seconds. This product doesn't require any settings or accounts to use. I'd highly recommend this product for children with phones, or adults bored in the office.

I've owned a few Sphero products, and this one by far is the most useful, for my cat that is. My cat loves this thing! Don't know about the "STEM" value, but the it should really be sold at pet stores.

It's easy to set up on you ipad or iphone, just install the app. No registrations, or pairing, so anyone with a smartphone could control it.

I've only had a few problems,
One, it seems to disconnect from the bluetooth while using it more often than you think it should.
Two, it quickly loses orientation, and will go off in the wrong direction. Probably just a characteristic of the gyros, and the device being so small. It would be nice if the UI was designed to quickly put it back into orination mode, but currently, this is a little awkward.
Three, like most small RF battery powered vehicles, it doesn't work on thick carpet. You''l need hardwood floors for best performance.

Other than that, it's great. I would like to buy additional shells for it, but they're hard to find, and typically more expensive than buying a new ball. Please offer new shells for sale.

This hopefully short review will feature 2 parts. A casual fun side, and "I like to develop video games or robotics" side.

CASUAL:
First off, this will drive on carpet, as long as it's not too thick!
This thing this fun right out of the box! It has all sorts of intuitively built functions, albeit with a couple issues.
Driving it around, it has multiple fun ways to accomplish this task.
The stick controls work well but are finicky. However it's still quite fun. Feels like you're directing a drunk driver around, as it seems to function like a weirder version of a quadcopter drones' headless mode.
Frustrating and hard to control, but extremely fun.
The other driving modes are weird but neat. It has a tilt control mode, which is hard to get working properly, as it still feels like it has a weirdly programmed headless mode. So it can get confusing.
It also has an entertaining "golf" mode. The golf mode is fun but is hard to learn at first. Your swiping of your phone is hard to get used to, because the angle and side you're swiping is asynchronous to the way you aim the actual ball. Swipe any way you want, and it will only go the way you aimed before you swiped.
The other driving modes are poorly made gimmicks, not worth mentioning.

The games are fun, but the controls make it irritating and sometimes not responsive.
Yes, it comes with games. You use the ball as the controller to move a ship across a screen, or drive a car.
Very neat!
If these were the only functions of the ball, I would give this ball a 3.5 out of 5, or a 4 out of 5. Fun, but eventually an adult like myself will grow tired of it. This concludes the casual part of the review.

Are you a game developer or robotics developer? Yes? Enjoy your new toy!
If you install the education app, you will quickly find yourself in a funland! It seems to run on javascript, and at the time of this review, I haven't checked that completely. However, I've looked into it's engine.
Yes, this app seems to have a javascript powered engine, which functions similar to Unreal Engine 5's blueprints system.
THE FUNCTIONS REALLY SURPRISED ME! (but if you're serious about having fun with this ball, buy the advanced version)
This ball has axis positioning check features, collision check bools, airborne bool checks, landing from airborne collision check bools, sound effect functions, LED color change functions, variables, functions, loops, and probably more than what I saw in just a couple minutes of looking into the app.

It absolutely blew my mind when I looked into the app.
I seriously recommend one of these if you want something to mess around with for farts and laughs.
But if you want a fuller experience, you should probably buy the 200 dollar version.

OVERALL: I love this ball! I can't wait to see what I can do with this coding wise!

No hay mucho que se pueda hacer es como un carro a control remoto pero con más limitaciones de terreno y luces

Our 11yo son wanted a Sphere Bolt for Christmas, but we weren't sure how much he'd actually use it, so this was a great alternative. He was super-excited to get it and used it constantly for about a month. He still gets it out occasionally, but I think he has pretty much done all he can with it and is ready for an upgrade.