Cheerble Wicked Ball Air dog toy review

REVIEW – Pets deserve gadgets too! Today’s candidate, the Wicked Air Ball by Cheerble is an interactive dog toy that claims to adjust to how your dog plays and several different activity modes. It is intended to keep your dog engaged and says that it is “chew-proof”. That’s quite the claim given the wide range of dogs and abilities out there, so I had to see if it would hold up against my lab mix. (We’re not sure what the mix consists of as she’s a rescue. Educated guesses are welcome.) Read on to see how it holds up!

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $44.99
Where to buy: Cheerble and Amazon

What is it?

The Wicked Air Ball is a round dog toy with a foam (E-TPU) exterior and a motorized, rechargeable interior with three different interactive modes.

What’s included?

• Wicked Air Ball
• USB Type C Charging Cable
• User Manual

Tech specs

• Weight: 130 g / 4.6 oz
• Exterior: E-TPU foam
• Charging: USB Type C
• Dimension: ∅ 3.2 in / 80 mm
• Battery: 200mAh
• Operating Temperature: 5-40 °C / 41-104 °F

 

Design and features

This dog toy comes in two colors, Royal Blue and Bright Orange. I got the Royal Blue one, but the Bright Orange might be really nice to have if you have a large yard or if your dog is prone to losing their toys. The ball itself is just a bit smaller than a softball, which seems just about right for my dog. It’s large enough that she can grab and chew on it without having to worry about potentially swallowing it.
The foam exterior has a decent give to it, but is very strong. The texture to it makes it very grippy and easy to hold on to.

The exterior shell screws apart to review a motorized core that provides the movement and other features.

Setup

Basic setup is unscrewing the two exterior halves and plugging the core in to a USB Type C charger to charge the battery. Once charged, you’re set and ready to go!

Performance

There are three different interactive modes with this dog toy. 1 – Normal (Jump or Move); 2 – Passive (Tap to Bounce); 3 – Gentle (Shake or Slow Roll)
The first issue I have with this dog toy is that the interactive modes are awesome on a hard surface, but very muted in grass or carpet. You can see how they behave on a hard floor below, though.

Normal Mode

Passive Mode

Gentle Mode

Size-wise, perfect for this dig.

The motion of the ball when it’s randomly vibrating does seem to intrigue my dog, but it seems more like a fun novelty than a toy that will occupy her for a long time. Your mileage will vary, though, because dogs are weird.

A few minutes into playing with the ball and she’s ready to nap. I think she’s part cat sometimes, though.

Final thoughts

My dog has been playing off and on with this ball for a few weeks now and she enjoys it, but I can’t really say that she enjoys it more than other toys we have around. Part of that may be because we have carpet in the house and it really limits the ability of the toy to roll and bounce around. It’s really fun to watch roll around on the tile floor, but it isn’t quite strong enough to move around on its own in carpet. If we had solid floors throughout the house it would be a very different story, so I recommend with a caveat. You won’t get the full experience on carpeted floors.

What I like about the Cheerble Wicked Air Ball

• Fun to watch roll and bounce around on its own
• Exterior is very durable and should hold up very well
• Gives another option to give pets exercise if you have limited mobility/energy

What needs to be improved?

• Ability to handle carpet
• “Chew-proof” is more “chew-resistant”. You can buy replacement shells for the ball, though.

Price: $44.99
Where to buy: Cheerble and Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided for free by Cheerble. Cheerble did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

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