Your favorite tween or teen is likely all about tech, and these robots are the perfect way to let them explore their creativity! Robotic is pretty high on the list of freaking cool techy STEM gifts you can buy, but it can be hard to sift through all of the crazy options. I’ve picked five of my very favorite robotics kits to help you out! I’ve ordered these kits from the most simple kit at the beginning, to the bigger and more complicated ideas at the end.
5 Incredibly Cool Tech Gifts For Teens Who Love To Build Robots
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OWI 14-in-1 Solar Robot
If you kid is geeking out about real robots, a great start is the OWI 12-in1-Robot. This is a solar powered robot kit that actually makes fourteen distinct robots. This is a great kit for someone who is just starting building robots that can achieve a basic task. I think this is a fab first robot kind of kit for older kids as a basic introduction to how robots work in a budget friendly way.
Hubsan X4 4 Channel Quad Copter With Camera
Not all robots are on the ground! Drones are popular because they are fun, but also will be used more often as we find even more uses for them. The Hubsan X4 4 Channel Quad Copter with Camera is a great starter drone for your teen or tween to explore. This is a budget friendly drone, but you may want to pick up extra batteries and an extra SDHC card to store the videos you record!
Sphero 2.0: The App-Enabled Robotic Ball
Progressing further into the world of robots, the Sphero 2.0 is a very cool bot that you program yourself, but don’t build. This robot is a rolling ball is operated through an app on an apple or android phone. Sphero boasts to be waterproof, pet-proof and tons of fun! Along with controlling Sphero, this robot comes with many games that you can lead Sphero through and has quite a bit of functionality. This is great for the tween or teen who wants to further explore the programming side of robots but maybe isn’t quite ready to build their own robot from scratch.
Lego Mindstorms EV3
Go big or go home with the Lego Mindstorms EV3. Lego has long been a leader in robotic kits for all ages and has so many bells and whistles with this gigantic kit. This set includes directions to build five different robots and includes lots of good extras like connectivity to apple or android products via Bluetooth, a micro SD card, an infrared sensor and over five hundred and fifty building pieces to bring your robots to life. This kit leaves plenty of room for imagination and will have them building for days. If your tween or teen is geeking out over robotics, this is the kit you want to seriously consider.
Raspberry Pi Starter Kit
If you’re not deep into the world of computer tech or robotics, you may not be familiar at all with this Raspberry Pi 3 Starter Kit. If you have a teen or tween who is progressing further into computer programming and robotics, this is the gift you want to get them. These tiny computers can be programmed to do a variety of simple projects, but make no mistake this computer is powerful. Basic Raspberry Pi projects include setting up a motion sensor, creating a basic digital picture frame or streaming media to a new screen. This kit will get them started for a budget-savvy price, and most add-on accessories are fairly inexpensive. The Raspberry Pi is the most versatile item on this list for learning how to program robots, but I would recommend this for teens and tweens who have started learning basic programming skills.
The Lego Mindstorms Ev3 set sounds incredible. I think that will get a lot of use and will encourage critical thinking and creativity.
These all look like awesome gift ideas! I wish they had some of these when I was younger and into this kind of thing haha. I bet my nephew would LOVE all of these options!
Robots are definitely in these days with the kids and the teens! It’s awesome to be able to give them these for Christmas, I’m sure they’re going to love it!
What a great robots such a perfect gift to my nephew
I love this – I have an 11 year old and while he’s not a teen – he would be so excited to get one of these! Perfect gifts 🙂
I like this! and I bet this is a perfect Christmas Gift to my nephew.
With the holidays coming up in a couple of months, these robots would make for the perfect tech gift. I know a couple of people on my list who would love them.
My daughter is on the robotics team at her school. I bet she would love any one of these ideas!
I love Hubsan quad copters due to their designs and amazing features. I am pretty sure that robotic enthusiast kids will love all these items.
Cool toys! I’ll have to remember these for my sons when they get a bit older. Thank you for sharing them.
This would be great idea! Thank you for posting this kind of ideas!
the drones are fun to fly