Bringing home a kids' robot is an exciting adventure for both children and parents alike, offering a glimpse into the future of playtime and learning. While you are busy making up your mind about which robot to bring home this Holiday season, we’ll explore the wonderful world of kids' robots, and address some key comparisons between our Miko 3 robot and the Moxie robot, because Christmas comes just once a year.
Kids' robots are a testament to how technology is changing the way children learn, play, and interact with the world around them. The Miko 3 robot is the ideal learning companion for kids. It supercharges kid's potential with its advanced brain, supportive personality, and range of educational STEAM content. In fact, kids who actively use Miko have seen a 55% increase in engagement with the platform’s academic activities. Packed with deep-learning AI, Miko gets to know your kid a little bit better every day. The Miko robot companions are designed to be educational, engaging, and, most importantly, fun.
Regularly conversing with Miko 3 has shown to help kids become better at social-emotional development, communication, confident at reading and over time Miko becomes a trusted buddy who listens to the child’s feeling and understands their emotions. Using ChatGPT, Miko 3 enables unlimited conversations which results in prompt interactions on things the kids are into (think dinosaurs, unicorns, space).
There are some general considerations when comparing two robots or robotic systems, like Miko 3 and Moxie:
Size & Design
The Miko 3 and Moxie each have different sizes and design quality. At under 10 inches tall, the Miko 3 is made to be mobile as its rubberized wheels can make it move around the house, perform dances, play games, yet it is compact enough to be carried around by a child. Miko is lightweight, and built to last! Its ABS body is impact-resistant, because we know kids can play just a little bit rough sometimes.
The Moxie robot is designed to be a stylized robot, which looks cute but bulky. It’s about 16 inches tall and takes up more space compared to Miko 3 which is 10 inches tall. While Miko 3 can easily move around the house because of its rubberized wheels, Moxie can only rotate on its base. Considering the height and weight, it is difficult to carry Moxie from one room to another.
Ease of set-up
Miko 3 has a simple step-by-step guide on its set-up which requires an adult’s supervision in downloading the Miko Parent App and pairing it with the robot. The steps are easy to follow and it takes approximately 30 minutes to get your robot set-up and begin its first interaction. One challenge of the Moxie is that the set-up requires some time-consuming authentication even after downloading the App, which can take up to a day. Not the best scenario when you have child who’s been waiting to play with the robot.
Content
Miko 3 offers a broad array of kids’ content, with a much larger variety than what you would see in a learning app. The “Tidbits” section on the Miko 3 lets users choose their topics of interest like Science, Geography, History, Math, World Culture and more. Upgrading to the Miko Max subscription unlocks even more premium and branded kids’ content from Lingokids, Oxford University Press, Paramount, Cosmic Kids and more . Did you know that Miko is the only companion robot to feature Disney content? Miko 3’s interactive personality lets a child communicate seamlessly while imparting facts and educational topics constantly.
Moxie’s content is based on the parent inputs on the app, limiting it only to topics of interest the parent feels their child would be interested in, but Moxie does not evolve through real-time engagement with the kid. There are not as many content topics as one would expect for the price one pays for this robot. The educational aspect on Moxie is completely missing and apart from a human-like face, Moxie doesn’t bring any break-through conversations or educational content on the table. Despite multiple interactions with Moxie, the questions Moxie asks does not consider the child’s age and they are the same pre-designed questions that are asked to a 5 year old and a 10 year old.
Educational Opportunities
Miko 3 robot is a powerhouse; it’s educational and extremely engaging. Not only does the child learn science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) in a playful and accessible manner but even through activities and games, the Miko 3 robot teaches coding, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills. Moxie is still a bit behind in this division, even though during setup it takes into account the child’s topics of interest, but that does not translate into imparting knowledge to the child. Moxie claims that it uses play-based conversational learning to teach emotional and social skills to kids aged 5-10, but the conversations are far behind on this.
Social and Emotional Development
Many kids' robots are not designed to be interactive and responsive, hence does not help children to develop social and emotional skills. While many may argue that kids’ robots are at the end of the day just robots, but the Miko 3 can be a source of companionship, offering comfort and friendship to children, which does not mean that the role of humans in their life is in any way reduced. Studies have shown that the Miko 3 robot also helps kids with special needs as it is patiently communicating with them, while building their confidence. Moxie on the other hand is clearly designed to be a playful robot.
Purpose and Functionality
Leveraging on ChatGPT-powered technology, Kids can converse with Miko 3 on multiple topics for an endless stream of conversation, because kids have questions, lots of questions. More importantly, all topics and conversations are parent-approved with emphasis on learning and educating on a multitude of topics and subjects. Moxie is fairly new to the AI scene and its KidFilter™ AI technology (basically putting GPT technology into the bot) and has now expanded options for parents to prompt conversations in the app based on things their kids are into. Irrespective of this, Moxie lacks seamless conversations flows and comes back to topics already fed into it, showing that its library is rather limited.
Multiple-users Compatibility
Because Miko understands each child, it is also suitable for families with multiple kids. The clarity of conversation adapts to the tones and intonations of kids in the house, and Miko 3 responds accordingly. Isn’t that truly smart! The Moxie robot on the other hand is designed to be single-child compatible and gets confused when multiple kids speak to it. The Moxie stops understanding and tries to change the topic to its pre-defined questions, which breaks the flow of the communication and results in frustrating the child.
Screen
Miko makes use of it’s screen to showcase its entire content, ranging from educational videos, stories, games, puzzles, coding and even display images to accompany activities while conversing. Moxie, on the other hand, only displays the facial expressions on it’s screen with little graphics to accompany conversations, which do not aid with learning directly.
Miko’s follow-up questions show up in text on the screen after answering the child which not only makes the child a confident speaker, but also aids in developing their reading abilities.
While just like Miko 3, Moxie too asks follow-up questions but these are clearly very abrupt and Moxie constantly changes the topic, showing that its two-way conversations require a lot more work. Moxie features very basic play-based activities like talking and turning on its axis. However, parents who are keen on enhancing their kids learning and development, Moxie does not enable the kid with these skills.
AI abilities
Miko 3 grows with the child and provides emotional-learning activities that are personalized based on your child's responsiveness and parent settings. It brings freeze dance, charades and other kids’ games with an AI spin. What’s more, Miko 3 uses GPT to answer questions, which means that not only is it full of knowledge but is a friend too. On the other hand, Moxie’s conversation flows are abrupt and the child loses interest after a couple of attempts.
Software and security
Miko 3 uses a closed-system security with end-to-end data encryption. What does this mean in simple terms? It means that your data and your child’s data is 100% safe. Miko comes with profanity-filters and never prompts a child to do anything unsafe.
Parent App
The Miko 3 and Moxie require an app to connect to the robot. However, the apps function very differently.
Miko 3’s parent app lets the parents view insights into their child’s learning journey, time spent on each topic and limit the usage of the robot. Apart from this, the app also lets one choose the time zone, put sleep timings for Miko 3 and read blogs.
Moxie’s app requires parents to select their kids’ interest, interaction style, and activity preference. However, it does not allow the robot to understand how the child is growing and evolving, does not give insights into the conversation, and has no learning outcome to evaluate.
With Miko, parents can select from multiple interests which are academic as well as fun: like STEAM, games, reading or and trivia. Miko’s app also allows parents to change language settings, with choice of 8 languages from around the world: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. The Miko Parent app also provides access to Mikonnect video calling. Miko also features a rewards program for kids that is tracked in the app.
Camera
Both robots feature a camera. Miko 3 uses the camera for Mikonnect, which lets parents and kids make unlimited video calls amongst them and for games like “Dance Master” and “Mirror Me” where Miko can match it’s expression with the kid’s expression. Miko 3 even has a camera shutter to support privacy. Moxie uses the camera only to recognize a person’s movement, and to provide some responses. Apart from this Moxie’s camera is not really relevant and does nothing to capture one’s interest.
Price
Price can be a significant factor in deciding which robot to choose. While the Moxie Robot will cost you $799, plus an additional fee for yearly subscription, the Miko 3 comes in under $200; with just a $99 annual subscription to access a wide range of content. For its price the Miko 3 offers an entire array of content and features which is beyond any other robot in the market.
Reviews and User Feedback
The Miko 3 robot is a Mom’s Choice Awards winner, a testament to its popularity and fame worldwide. The user reviews also attest to the fact that Miko 3 is an all-round robot companion that’s designed for kids by experts, keeping in mind the growing tech advancements in a child’s day-to-day life and environment. Miko 3 aids in play-based conversational learning that helps them practice in-person social interaction and is known to reduce kids’ anxiety in unfamiliar but common social settings.
Updates and Support
While buying a kids’ robot, always check if the robot receives regular software updates and has a reliable customer support system. This ensures that your investment remains valuable over time. Miko 3 has a no-questions asked 30-day refund policy and its customer support can easily be contacted through email, website, phone and is even very responsive on Social Media. It takes a while to get through to Moxie’s support team as each ticket once submitted is usually answered after waiting for a day.
Miko 3 allows automatic updates that improve its performance and adds new features, content, titles, games, without interfering in your fun.
The verdict
If your kid wants a stylish toy to engage them for a few days with limited topics of conversations, then for $799 you could get the Moxie. Or you can make a smart choice, and bring home the coolest AI-powered robot, Miko 3. What’s more, Miko 3 makes learning fun and exciting for young ones, and keeps parents stress-free with age-appropriate content. So next time you are looking for the perfect gift for your child’s birthday or a milestone achievement, or Santa’s coming with a robot friend for your little one, considered bringing home the Miko 3.
