It's finally here, the Amazon Astro. We're gonna Unbox it, set it up and talk through first impressions let's get right to it.
Unboxing: What comes in the Box of Amazon Astro
So apparently one of the boxes I just had to peel, pop and lift which sounds like a dance move. All right step one complete.
In the box they have gloves that are meant to keep you sanitary. Astro look dusty, maybe this is part of the thing with sending out like prototypes. Astro is very much in their experimental phase, it's invite only right now. It costs a thousand dollars, maybe it'll get a full release and at that point it might have more refined packaging. Okay so had a big box that said Hello Home, Let's Let's roll.
So we've get instructions, a welcome kit, the charge base. It looks very similar to a robot vacuum charge base. Astro is able to navigate your space and you can put a beer in Astro and say hey go find my friend in the other room, he could really use a drink and in theory it will be able to do that.
Amazon Astro First Impressions
It's heavy and so now we've got Astro wheeling and ready to adventure and you know just not on yet, we actually do have to turn the thing on. So I was curious about how that's gonna go. We get welcome guide, we get stickers, including parts and the whole thing here is that it has a whole bunch of sensors built in to help it be able to navigate. So that's why a lot of the logos and stuff for it are arrows I guess. I was excited to actually get to meet this thing boy, We haven't had a home robot with this many capabilities ever that's actually come to market. We don't know if it's going to be fully coming to market or if it's going to die like a number of other Amazon products. It still fills me with some nerves and some trepidation here because it is also kind of a home surveillance nightmare. It's recording everything from your home and it can go anywhere.
We notice buttons up top, this is where you're going to be able to mute it and turn off the camera if you want to preserve your privacy. We've got volume buttons and a periscope camera, it's going to be able to pop out and look around.
Plugging the Amazon Astro for the first time
So I plugged the Astro, Set it up, Charged and Powered it on and Astro just opened its eyes for the very first time and it was looking around. We see it's periscope cam for the first time and it's a little smiley eyes as it does circles. The beeps and boops it makes are cute.
So the next step we have to do is set up the app so that we can sync the app with the robot. It tells us specifically to open the doors where we want it to be able to access rooms, closed doors to closets, clear the floors of small objects. As I did that, It gets to the lay of the land it's got to get to know things coming into the workout room. It's took a look at the master bedroom and being like I know no one actually lives here.
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It took it three tries to be able to map our floors. The first time I was really hopeful it was making good progress but after way more than 30 minutes it stopped because it got confused by the stairs. The next time after only like 10 it got lost when it was standing right next to its charging station. It could be we have a faulty unit. We talked to Amazon and they're going to send us a new one. It could also be that, this is an experimental product because it succeeded when we made accommodations for it. We blocked out the sunlight to make our floors less shiny. Techronicle office have hardwood floor but they're not like particularly shiny, so that would probably be a deal breaker for some folks.
Also you'll notice our lovely new cardboard decorations we have in front of the railing of the stairs because, it was getting confused by that railing. Because it didn't read it as a wall, so unusual architecture in a home might be able to mess up this experimental product.
It's did a pretty good job, I now have my own personal helper, It's a little bit creeping me out as we go that. I had this thing chasing me even though I told it to do that. My fight-or-flight reaction was kicking in. It just told me it can't keep up but it's cool.
It still very much feels like an experimental piece of technology. We had to put cardboard around the railings of the staircase in order to stop it from getting confused while it was mapping. Similarly we had to block out the sunlight because the floors were too shiny. So this legitimately might not work for some homes that seemingly have nothing out of the ordinary about them but we don't know that for sure.
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We're going to talk to Amazon and we're going to test those capabilities much more in depth in the days to come. Still what we can say, it is probably because this is an experimental piece of technology and an expensive one at that a thousand dollars. To put an experiment in your home feels like a lot but I gotta tell you, I still find it kind of adorable. Like really when it was following me around and being like slow up I'm trying to keep up with you or when it was trying to deliver me a beverage and then it seemed like it was excited when it recognized me and it dashed towards me. Man I wanted to pick it up and give it a hug so against my better judgment I kind of like it, but I still don't know if there's any chance I'd be able to recommend it. But that's what we're gonna test it for so stay tuned to the site and please subscribe to our newsletter if you enjoyed the post and we're gonna have much more on Astro in the next couple of weeks including full in-depth review covering all of those features. Thank you very much for reading.
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