Alo, Ola! ~ Minna Ola Review

Ever had that moment where you want a pattern to speed up or slow down, get harder or be a little more gentle, so you cycle it through a bit and find that nope! next setting is too little/much?  And, frustrated, you dither between the two closest until you settle on the least 'wrong' and try to suppress that urge to yell at the toy manufacturer for not being psychic enough to anticipate this exact level of need?  Only me then?  Clearly not, since that's exactly the problem the Minna Ola seeks to address!  Now, aside from my rather unreasonably high expectations of toys at times, it appealed to me as a gadget geek precisely because of the utterly unique feature that the whole shebang is centred around: user-controlled patterns and speeds.  Literally programming in your own pattern, or just 'free-handing' and letting your touch dictate the pace of things.  Pretty nifty!  However, that's a lot of hype to live up to, and when you get right down to it, the entire performance is reliant on that sole feature living up to expectations.  That's a tough gamble at one-two-oh a pop

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