Zoon + - egg discontinued by Love To Love - review by Red

The Zoon+ offers things not seen in any toy, much less any vibrating bullet. It is rechargeable, completely waterproof, remote controlled *and* internet enabled. Sadly, however, it's not really as good as it should be at any of these functions, especially when the price is considered.

The Zoon+ comes in a hard plastic box with a foam insert that keeps all the bits and pieces in order. The box is nothing stylish, but totally robust and practical for storage. The Zoon+ comes with a whole pile of stuff: the remote control, the egg, the egg's charging stand, a USB-to-"two mini-USB" cable, a wall plug USB charger, and a thick instruction book.

One of the best features of the Zoon+ is how it charges. The Zoon+ egg charging dock, and also the remote, charge via a mini-USB connection – the same connection used in many personal electronics like cameras, cell phones, GPS, etc. This is nice - using a popular connection type means that the toy automatically provides me with a multitude of charging options from what I already have available. I don't have to pack special charging cables for the Zoon+, the ones I carry for my cell phone do the trick...and if I lose my charging cables getting a replacement can be quick and easy. I can charge the Zoon+ off my computer, off of the included wall-USB or the cigarette lighter in my car.

The egg itself is silicone encased and charges via contact with the hard plastic stand. How it does this is not entirely clear to me - there is no metal on metal contact, the bullet just seems to rest in a perfectly shaped depression in the charging stand. Charging is reasonable, taking 2.5 hours to yield approximately 1.25 hours of use. The bullet and the remote do not generally run out of charge at the same time, but should both be charged at the same time anyways. The remote generally works to a distance of ~10 m (~30 ft) or so, but its effective distance decreases as it dwindles in charge. Even with its dying sparks of energy, it was able to control the egg in “solo use” distances effectively.

The Zoon+ egg itself is truly a thing of beauty. It feels like velvet - and yet, it's silicone. And amazingly, it doesn't pick up hair as readily as silicone products generally do. How such a thing is possible, I have no idea. It buzzes at seven different intensities, and is completely controlled by the remote. There is only one pattern – steady buzz. To turn it on, its only button is pressed and the bullet lights up. To synchronize with the remote, the same button is pushed and held till the light flashes rapidly, at which time any button should be pushed on the remote and everything will be good to go. That same button on the bullet can be pressed and held till the bullet turns off, whether it is vibrating or not. Power wise, the bullet buzzes shallow and strong at intensities from whisper light to a good solid buzz to match the intensity of many other rechargeable vibes I have tried. It is quite quiet as well – easily muted beneath blankets or clothing.

The remote is velvety as well – plastic this time – and sits comfortably in hand for use. It features four buttons – an I-Gen (which turns the egg onto power setting '2') button, a +, a -, and finally an off button. The off button on my remote does not work, it jammed the first time I ever pushed it. The remote's buttons are sensitive enough to be toggled by a bump in the pocket, but it does come with a small place where a lanyard could be attached – my test partner felt having it dangling off his wrist in his off hand would be the best way to use it. The Zoon+ didn't come with a lanyard, however, which seems remiss. Without a lanyard, and since the buttons are way too sensitive, the remote just has to be carried when in use, which is limiting. The other negative about the remote is that it provides no feedback as to what is happening with the egg. The buttons don't exactly click, so it's actually a little tough to tell if a button was actually pushed successfully, or what vibration level the egg is at for that matter, without feedback from the person wearing/holding the egg.

Overall, the Zoon is leaps and bounds better than any other remote controlled egg out there – but it is WAY too expensive, and it's got flaws in its design.

This is a French product, but it does have an English section in its manual. Unfortunately the English is a flat translation of the French section, so cross-referenced pages still list pages in the French section, and the instruction for using the online application are of little use. For example, when following the instructions, you're directed to click on buttons on www.i-zoon.com that are called things like “plugin”. These don't exist. Instead, the plugin (for example) can be found after pressing the “Aider Ms. Zoon” button and clicking a hyperlink that is worded “télécharger le plugin”. The whole online component of the Zoon+ is like this – the instructions don't match the options available on the website, and the entire website is in French.

I can't keep faulting the Zoon+ online program for being French – after all, it's made by a French company. I assume that they're working on an English site for their English speaking market – it would be foolish not to, really, as the English speaking market is much larger than the French speaking market. I have a passable understanding of French, especially written, thanks to the Canadian school system, so I was OK with the Zoon+ site in French. But for those with no real grasp of French will have serious issues figuring out the online portion of the Zoon+, because not only is the website in French, it is heavily flash based and thus can't be translated by Google translator.

At any rate, with a bit of patience the site's simple layout can be understood. The person who will hang onto the egg (Ms. Zoon) needs to log in, connect up her remote control, open a little plugin panel, and get a unique access code. She can then give the access code to Mr. Zoon, who can open up the Mr. Zoon panel, input the access code, and as long as Ms. Zoon has the remote connected to her computer, the Egg can be controlled by Mr. Zoon's panel.

In theory anyways. I can't get it to work.

I'm still not entirely sure I've done everything I need to do to make the Zoon+ work online, because even after installing a driver, a plugin, something that was called setup.exe, updating Java, restarting my computer, and trying both Internet Explorer and Firefox...nothing. I just get error messages that tell me to do these things I have already done. And the messages are all in French, too. It could be a technical issue I am having, I suppose, but I kind of doubt that.

Mon ostie de saint-sacrament de câlice de crisse!

I think the plugin/program just isn't very good.

Zoon+...tu ma vraiment déçu.

Despite other attempts, spaced out over months, the Zoo+'s internet connectivity never worked. I got a tragic email from someone on this site who had purchased a Zoon+ (elsewhere) to play with her partner while he was away, and she was unable to make it work either. I'm not exactly sure what the company was up to with this product, because the connectivity function was a major selling point, and clearly it was just not functional. Its a shame that this great idea never came to proper fruition.

The Zoo+ still stands out as the only wireless remote bullet where the bullet AND remote are both rechargeable. I wish more companies would work on doing this.