Perhaps you were one of the lucky ones that got their paws on a Silverlit Picoo Z Helicopter in one of its many guises and took great delight in landing the little marvel in Dads Xmas dinner or on Mums head, perhaps buzzing the dog or dangerously skimming past the open fire. You could have been really lucky and grabbed a twin pack with infra red lasers to attacking your opponent sending theirs tumbling to the ground (these were like gold dust).

Well the good news is that we at Lordpercy.com got time out from our hectic schedules (yeah) to enjoy a Silverlit Helicopter for ourselves and to put together this little review. Open the box and slide out the helicopter and you can be forgiven for thinking that it wont last more than 10 mins. It's small very small about the size of a mobile phone in length and weighs next to nothing, its dwarfed by the controller which uses infrared rather than radio frequency.

The controller can work on 1 or 2 channels allowing you to fly in the same room as someone else and that's handy as that can be half the fun. But first you need to charge the chopper, the main power supply is the controller which takes a rather hefty 6 x AA batteries, this both powers the controller and through a little charging lead which plugs into the helicopter it charges the inbuilt battery for the chopper.

Changing takes around 20mins and for that we managed to get about 6 mins serious flying time before needing to plug the Silverlit back into the controller for its next charge. A lamp lights to show you that charging is in progress and goes out to let you know you ready to fly.

The Helicopter itself has a small on off switch next to the charger plug (which is a fiddly plug so be careful) turn this on and a blue LED starts to flash to let you know its alive and adds to the real helicopter feeling Silverlit have managed to achieve with this unit. Next take the controls and lift off, the chances are you'll either go up a bit let go and smash into the ground, or fly right up and whack the roof! but a bit of practice shows you need a steady application of power and then a gentle feathering of the steering left / right control.

Once you gain basic control you may notice that the Silverlit Picoo Z has a tendency towards one side of the other, there is a trim control which will adjust the bias of the tail rota and with a bit of playing you can trim the chopper so it hovers steady and does not turn without you steering it. One sorted you can now whiz around the house with ease taking care to keep in visual range of the unit or it will lose control and stop.

You will still have your fair share of crashes and spills so you soon see that despite its lightweight construction Silverlit have managed to build a tough little device, we managed to really whack into the wall and floor repeatedly and it still flew well.

If you managed to get the fighting helicopters then you get some extras over the basic unit, now you get the ability to fire at another chopper and hear machine gun noises. If you score a hit the opponents chopper comes winding down from the sky in a satisfying death manoeuvre. Certainly worth the extra cash if you have someone to fly with.

Overall a great toy especially when the basic model starts at around £20 with the flying pair being £45, there are many variants too like an Apache version and a desert king, lots of fun for all the family and especially big gadget testers who should really know better. But have managed to learn how to land now!

Published - 04/01/2008

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