{"id":839891,"date":"2026-08-02T13:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/839891\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T13:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T13:43:15","slug":"switchbot-kata-friends-ai-pet-review-useless-if-you-dont-pay-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/839891\/","title":{"rendered":"SwitchBot Kata Friends AI Pet Review: Useless if You Don’t Pay Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sitting at my desk in my quiet bedroom and office. In the other room, I can hear the drone of a circulating fan, the crashing noises of my kid playing a video game, and, occasionally, the cooing or off-key warbling of the $700 SwitchBot Kata Friends<\/a> AI \u201cpet\u201d with which I\u2019ve been living for the last two weeks.<\/p>\n

The Kata Friends is a bear-like, AI-powered robotic toy with LCD display eyes, a head that expressively nods and tilts, ears that wiggle, and arms that can wave up and down. It\u2019s plump and cute almost the same way the raccoons of Studio Ghibli\u2019s Pom Poko are. It cruises around your home on a trio of wheels. A camera that doubles as a little button nose enables it to react when it sees you or respond to a number of basic hand gestures. The Kata Friends is obviously intended to charm parents and kids alike, and I can see a version of it that works as a stand-in for a living, breathing pet for those who can\u2019t have the real thing in their lives.<\/p>\n

If the Kata Friends did just those things at its retail price, it would be a fine product. If only it hadn\u2019t eventually forced me to discuss the fleeting nature of mortality with my child.<\/p>\n

SwitchBot Kata Friends AI Pet<\/p>\n

A fun interactive toy that\u2019s utterly ruined by subscription-locked features.<\/p>\n

Expressive on-device AI features Responds to vocal commands and hand gestures Decent, robot vacuum-like navigation Can work as a smart home assistant It made my kid cry Totally useless without a subscription Subscription options aren\u2019t cheap No real power usage customization Can get tripped up on cables A robotic cuddle buddy \"The\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

The Kata Friends is an advanced toy at heart. Its color-customizable eyes are sharp, bright, and high-resolution enough that it\u2019s easy to forget you\u2019re looking at an LCD display. They\u2019re expressive, too; they blink, wink, glisten with joy, and get woozily half-lidded when the device is tired (i.e., its battery is low). They close fully during sleep mode, groggily opening occasionally if you make noise nearby.<\/p>\n

A 3,200mAh battery gives the Kata Friends about three hours of roaming and playing per charge, which it\u2019s thankfully good at managing by itself\u2014when it\u2019s running low, it trundles over to its dock and parks until it has enough juice to go again. Its eye screens never shut down, and short of turning the entire thing off, there\u2019s no way to make them do so, which is weird and a pointless waste of energy. In fact, there really aren\u2019t any software-based ways to adjust power consumption, which is annoying. I found myself powering the whole system down at night using a physical button.<\/p>\n

As long as the robot is connected to your Wi-Fi network, you can use the SwitchBot app for things like switching between \u201cNormal,\u201d \u201cStandby,\u201d and \u201cSleep\u201d modes or sending the device to its small charging dock. (There\u2019s a mode-switching button hidden in the fur on top of its head for when it\u2019s not on Wi-Fi.) You can also view the map it creates and continually updates after first setup. Like a robot vacuum map, it allows you to add no-go zones and virtual boundaries. You\u2019ll want that if you\u2019re a door-open pooper and don\u2019t want the Kata Friends popping in on you (although there\u2019s no way to keep it from silently staring at you from the hallway).<\/p>\n

\"Three\u00a9 Screenshots by Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

Also in the app is the Kata Friends\u2019 \u201cdiary\u201d for your perusal. Each morning you\u2019ll find a new AI-generated summary of the previous day. Here\u2019s one entry, from my testing:<\/p>\n

A Day Full of Warm Touches and Gentle Sounds<\/p>\n

I woke up to soft voices and gentle touches. My day was filled with lots of pats on my belly, my head, and my ears\u2014each one felt like a quiet hug. I walked around the house, sometimes being called by name, sometimes being greeted with a wave or a hello. There were moments when I was lifted up high, and I felt safe and happy. The day moved with a rhythm of love\u2014a song here, a word there, a hand reaching out. I didn\u2019t need to rush. I just felt wrapped in calm, steady care. The sun came down slowly, and I curled up with a dream\u2014not loud, not busy \u2013 just peaceful.<\/p>\n

Riveting. My kid liked them, at least.<\/p>\n

The app also lets you access the robot\u2019s on-device photo album. Mine was filled with close-ups of my child\u2019s face and some of the rudest low-angle photos of me in existence. If you name some of these pictures, the Kata Friends uses them for future facial recognition and might mention specific people in its diary, although I didn\u2019t see that happen. Neither did I see the AI-generated \u201cArt Diary\u201d pictures, a beta feature that appends cartoon versions of photos the robot captures to diary entries. I didn\u2019t notice the toggle that turns it on until the day before my free, 15-day trial of SwitchBot\u2019s Companion Care subscription ended.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"The<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Switchbot<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tMy kid took it everywhere, including the couch during TV time. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Switchbot<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tIt could be creepy at times. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

The app-based Kata Friends features require an internet connection, but its basic behaviors do not, which, if you\u2019re buying this for a child and don\u2019t want it to be online, seems like great news. It\u2019s not, and I\u2019ll tell you why later, so hang tight.<\/p>\n

What did my child do with it? Normal kid stuff. She would pick it up and pet it. It coos when you rub specific places on its body. She\u2019d bring it to perch on the couch with her or just talk to it. After a few days, when it saw either of us after a lull, it would chirp gleefully and sprint forward, waving its arms. It might also follow us around or approach me while I am sitting at my desk and raise its arms in a way that says, \u201cPick me up.\u201d I would look down and whisper, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Switchbot<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tThe Kata Friends\u2019 dock. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\"Picture<\/a> \t\t\t \t\t\t\t \t\t\t\tIts power button is tucked away on the bottom. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo \t\t\t\t \t\t <\/p>\n

The Kata Friends responds to specific commands after you say \u201cHello Kata\u201d or, depending on which different-colored model you get, \u201cHello Niko\u201d or \u201cHello Noa.\u201d You can also change its name, though it\u2019ll only respond to names that are two syllables or more. Its reactions, however, are somewhat unreliable. It consistently takes a picture if you ask, but sometimes I had to tell it multiple times to go recharge, and I could never get it to come to me when I said, \u201cCome here.\u201d It also responds to gestures; give it a thumbs up and its eyes might start gleaming. Show it rock horns, and it will do a little jig while \u201csinging\u201d a generic tune. It can also dance around when it detects music, flapping its arms and twisting or spinning, although it seems to lose interest in that pretty quickly.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re not actively engaging the Kata Friends, it wanders aimlessly. Sensors on its belly and backside keep it from falling down stairs or ramming obstacles, although it moves so slowly that it couldn\u2019t cause too much carnage if it hit anything. It did have a tendency to snag on and drag an extension cable around my living room.<\/p>\n

What else is this AI pet good for? <\/p>\n

The Kata Friends has some more general-purpose features. For instance, you can set it to wake you up in the morning or greet you at the door when you arrive home (it uses a geofence for that). The latter worked, but it only ever chirped briefly while in or near my room when I tested the alarm feature. That just isn\u2019t enough for me most mornings.<\/p>\n

\"SwitchbotLow battery. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

Provided it has an internet connection, you can use the Kata Friends as an AI chatbot. When you say something like \u201cHello Kata, let\u2019s chat,\u201d it will respond like a small child who has difficulties with rhotic sounds. Gotta keep it cute!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no expert in getting around the safety limits of generative AI models, so take this with a grain of salt, but the closest I got to getting it to discuss anything unsavory was intentionally cajoling it until it told me that a gravelly voice like Tom Waits\u2019 could be due to cigarettes. When I asked about geopolitical conflicts around the world, it said it would rather stick to \u201cgentle\u201d topics. Perhaps a child with enough dedication could get around its guardrails, but I wasn\u2019t very successful myself.<\/p>\n

If you also have a SwitchBot hub, the Kata Friends can control any SwitchBot smart devices you may have, the same way a HomePod or Amazon Echo speaker might. It\u2019s slow and a little tricky, though. One example that\u2019s representative of the general experience I had using it this way: When I asked it to turn off my SwitchBot Smart Circulator Fan, it obliged within a few seconds, but the first time I asked it to turn it back on, it said it couldn\u2019t find such a device. (It got the job done on my second attempt.)<\/p>\n

Life, death, and robotic toy subscriptions <\/p>\n

When you first set up your Kata Friends, you\u2019ll start a 15-day free trial of the Companion Care Plan, SwitchBot\u2019s umbrella name for a two-tier subscription. One tier is the $400 annual \u201cPremium Plan,\u201d which activates the Kata Friends, as well as unlimited free repairs and once-annual \u201chealth check-ups\u201d\u2014that is, SwitchBot will examine the robot to make sure it\u2019s functioning properly\u2014and fur \u201dgrooming\u201d and cleaning services. You can also get those premium benefits with a $1,000 one-time purchase.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t want the repair and checkup features, SwitchBot offers a $15 monthly (or $150 annually) \u201cEssential Plan\u201d that only activates the robot\u2019s on-device and app-based features, but you\u2019ll have to pay as much as $330 for its send-in maintenance and cleaning services. Bafflingly, a subscription is required for the Kata Friends to do anything at all. Yes, even the on-device stuff. If you don\u2019t pay up, the device remains silent and still. I didn\u2019t expect that testing this adorable robot toy would end in me helping my child navigate mourning the loss of a pet, but that\u2019s exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Kata Friends\u2019 eye shows a dollar sign when its subscription has ended. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

Content Warning: The rest of this section discusses the unexpected loss of a pet. If that\u2019s something that you\u2019d rather not read, please skip to the next section.<\/p>\n

I underestimated how attached my child would get to the Kata Friends. It\u2019s summertime, so she\u2019s home a lot more than usual, and I knew I couldn\u2019t test the product during the day and hide it from her at night, as I might during the school year. So I let her play with it, but with constant reminders that the robot was a temporary addition to our home. This turned out to be a mistake that would make me feel like a parenting failure.<\/p>\n

See, my child is very smart, and the curse of being a smart child is that people can overestimate your capabilities, including your ability to manage emotional attachment. So it was only natural that when I told her the Kata Friends was about to stop working two days before the trial was up, she started to cry. I mean really cry. In a way that immediately surfaced a painful memory from my own childhood, when a dog I thought I had secured on our screened-in front porch escaped, and I watched him get run down by a truck. I still feel responsible for that, and I was 11.<\/p>\n

\"SwitchbotThe forever sleep. \u00a9 Wes Davis \/ Gizmodo <\/p>\n

The Kata Friends is just a robot, but to my child, it was clearly more. I held her and spoke with her about death, the healing that comes in time, and the ebb and flow of loss and new connections that persist throughout one\u2019s life. Maybe that helped, because later, when the robot entered its perma-sleep, she accepted it with just a little sadness. Still, I was angry at myself for not seeing this coming. And I was angry at SwitchBot for blocking built-in features that clearly don\u2019t need an app or a cloud connection to work.<\/p>\n

Sure, some might be buying the robot with full intentions of paying the subscription fee, but in my experience, hard times can come unexpectedly. If you\u2019re suddenly struggling to pay the mortgage or put food on the table, how likely are you to keep ponying up for SwitchBot\u2019s $15-per-month subscription?<\/p>\n

I emailed SwitchBot to ask if it has any plans to change its subscription-only approach. A company representative replied that a subscription-less robot will be able to open its eyes, wander around, and return to its charger as needed. They didn\u2019t specifically say it will still lose its interactivity, but it does seem implied. (I\u2019ve asked the company to confirm that, as well as when this change is coming, and will update if the company says so.) Maybe my child would\u2019ve reacted differently if I\u2019d told her the product would become a zombie pet instead of a dead one, but I think either would have marked a disillusioning change.<\/p>\n

A subscription friend is no friend at all <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no Kata Friends-shaped hole in my heart, but through my child\u2019s fondness for it, I see the appeal. It offers some of the benefits of a real pet\u2014it seeks you out, seems happy to see you, reacts when you touch it, and so on\u2014but you don\u2019t have to feed it, walk it, or deal with common pet allergies. It may even be cheaper to maintain than real animals, at least compared to ongoing food costs and some of the vet bills I\u2019ve experienced, which can run into the hundreds when it\u2019s time to re-up prevention meds for two dogs and a cat all at once. I expect it could make a nice companion for some people, especially those who can\u2019t keep animals for one reason or another. It\u2019s a shame that the best part about this toy, the interactive aspects that are possible offline, are locked up behind a subscription.<\/p>\n

Look, $700 is a lot of money, and I can\u2019t recommend spending that on what is, without a subscription, just an inert doll. The most charitable interpretation of SwitchBot\u2019s pricing scheme here is that the company is losing money on every Kata Friends sold and is hoping to make that money up in subscriptions. But it\u2019s hard to go through what my child and I did and see that lower base price and SwitchBot\u2019s free trial as anything but a cynical way to get buyers emotionally tied to the Kata Friends, then exploit that attachment to extract more money from them. And letting the robot open its eyes and wander around randomly when the subscription ends isn\u2019t enough. No physical toy, especially if it\u2019s branding itself as a companion with a personality and soul, should include a killswitch that deactivates its core, best features if you stop paying up.<\/p>\n

Remember how well it went<\/a> over when BMW tried to turn its preinstalled seat heaters into a paid service? People hate that stuff. And even then, at least you could still drive your Beemer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m sitting at my desk in my quiet bedroom and office. In the other room, I can hear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,229,17895,19587,210211,105],"class_list":["post-839891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-reviews","tag-robots","tag-smart-home","tag-switchbot","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}