Nabaztag Nabaztag review

What the hell is a web rabbit? Loved by women almost as much as their Rampant cousins, Nabaztags are ridiculously cute little plastic bunnies that hook up to your Wi-Fi network to send and receive messages, read the news, tell the time, play music and a whole lot more.

Does your Rabbit read your emails?

They also have a bunch of lights that glow in different colours, and a pair of magnetically attached ears which spin round.

And, pray tell, why would anyone want to bring this type of mutant techno-rabbit hybrid into their house? Because you like rabbits but live on the fourth floor. Because you’re a social type but fear one-to-one interaction with real human beings. Truth be told, we’re still figuring out the answer to this ourselves.

Servicing your electronic pet

Once he’s talking to your network, you head off to the Nabaztag website to set up services – making it flash and whir when you receive emails from certain people, telling the time on the hour, reading RSS feeds, and sending messages to other Nabaztags.

So far, the messages are our favourite bit: it’s like a physical, talking and rabbit-shaped inbox.

Connecting it to your Wi-Fi network is relatively easy, but the website is a bit of a joke. Several bits are still in French – nice if you enjoy recalling your GCSE vocab – and much of the translated stuff is done in a Borat-worthy fashion that muddies the meaning.

The cost of cool

Several of the services are free, but if you want some of the cooler stuff, such as emailing your long-eared friend text-to-speech messages and reading RSS off any website, you’ll have to pay around £2.50 a month. Not much, but seems a rip-off for stuff you’d expect to get as standard.

Lovable, and certainly unique – if you discount AIBO on price, this is the first web-connected chum for your home – Nabaztag’s more of a work in progress than the finished article. Although the newly-released ears with different patterns may seal the deal for us, suckers that we are.