We picked these up at Wal-mart for $20 as an early Christmas present. I was very disappointed in how these functioned. For one, as soon as you turn it on, you just hear static, so obviously it’s not ‘smart’ enough to only blurt out sound when it hears it. There are also no volume controls, so if you can’t hear your buddy, too bad.

Reception was pitiful, even only about 20 ft. apart. My wife and I even tried to pick them up and communicate over them, even yell directly in the microphone, and had great difficulty, you couldn’t hear much of anything over the static. I also found I had trouble with a local radio station that was coming in loud and clear at times over the walkie-talkie. Unfortunately there is no way to change the frequency to avoid these issues.

There are two separate buttons on the walkie-talkie, one to hear Diego say something, and one to talk to your buddy. My 4-year olds were having trouble remembering what to do with each button, since they are not labeled. In order to hear Diego, you hit and HOLD the top button. (If you don’t hold it, Diego will stop). Holding the bottom button will allow you to use the walkie-talkie functionality.

As you can tell from my review, I am not satisfied with this product and definitely plan to return it!