One day I was scrolling through Instagram and this robotic fish ad popped up. As you may know, I have 2 toddlers and I just figured – this will be fun to try and show them (I also absolutely love robots and remote controlled toys). So the fish was immediately in my shopping basket. Two days later – the fish was in my hands.

The robo fish is made by a toy company called “Zuru” and is fairly small – around 5 cm long. Comes in different colors, mine is orange. Also comes with 2 different tails – a standard orange one and a fun yellow one wit a different shape. Both are rubber. It cost me 20 leva, which is around $12. It also comes with a remote control and a built-in battery. The fish charges wirelessly by sitting on the remote control (which uses normal AA batteries). It starts working when it senses it is placed in water.

Controls

The remote control has two joystick-like control sticks.

One stick is the speed of the fish, the other one controls the heading of the robot – ahead, right or left. There are buttons for auto play where the fish decides where to go by itself. Also, there is a reset button and a button to select the channel that the remote control is broadcasting on. Lastly, there is an on/off button that has a “CHA” side which is for charging. Controls are real easy and don’t really need a lot of thought to use.

Something very important is that the fish needs a lot of space and to be completely submerged in water. It can not be used in the sea or ocean, just at home. The first couple of tries I placed my fish in a bowl of water so it didn’t really have enough space for anything. It couldn’t be controlled properly so I thought that my robot was broken or not working for some reason. Later on I decided to try the fish in one big basin (I use it to bathe the kids) and it was like magic – the robot was controlled very easily, it did turn wherever I wanted, even the different speeds worked.

Charging

To charge the robot fish, you simply plug it on top of the remote control and you switch the on/off button to “CHA” (which means charging). At first the fish starts wiggling its tail, in 2 minutes it stops and the button “CHA” blinks in red. When the robot is charged, the light becomes constant green. The fish charges very fast, the whole battery’s capacity fills for around 8-10 minutes.

Ways to use the robot

1. Free play – you just play around with the robot in your huge basin, not doing anything special
2. Add objects – if you add objects (heavy enough to stay in the bottom of the water) in your basin, you can play setting a challenge like “Don’t hit the objects” or “Do a full circle around each object”
3. Speed race – if you have more than 1 fish, you can always play a speed race. All Zuru robo fish are the same, but depending on your reaction time, some might be faster than others, depending on when you click the buttons, are there any objects to avoid etc.
4. Aquarium – if you have always wanted to have a fish, but you never did, you can put the Zuru robo fish in a fishtank (or in a bowl, like I did), press the auto play button and the fish will start moving by itself. It will become a cool background, just like a real fish and it will move for a while, at least until the batteries run out.

YouTube video

I have created a YouTube video of testing the fish in a big basin. If you want to see the fish move, how to use the controls and what each button does, you can go to my YouTube channel by clicking here.