Otamatone Deluxe White

The quality of the instrument is disappointing to say the least. There are also some practical issues.
The nut of the line-out jack fell off as soon as I pulled the instrument from it's box, screwing it back on resulted in it falling off again.
The springs of the mouth make an annoying squeaking noise as you squeeze the sides. This is loud enough that it prevents recording through a microphone.
The sound quality coming from the speaker also isn't good but depending on your expectations, it might be acceptable.
The strap rings occasionally resonate at certain pitches with the instrument and rattle, you have to move them around each time to stop the rattling or tape them.
The line-out signal, is regulated by the volume knob and, even at full volume, it is very weak. It needs a lot of gain, enough so that the noise floor increase is rendering it useless. Also, using the line-out does not mute the speaker, so in order to use the line-out you have to also hear the speaker at full volume.
Overall this is an interesting toy, but is under no circumstances worth the price. The smaller one is likely a better deal.

The first Otamatone that got delivered was defect (mine stayed at a low volume all the time even when turning the volume knob. According to some websites this specific Otamatone has a lot of defective ones), but the customer service of Thomann really helped me through this one and I had a new one soon after (this one did work correctly).

I purchased mine just out of curiosity for the product itself. After playing it, I can say it's really fun and it brings a smile on the faces of friends when they see it for the first time. To me it was pretty easy to get used to, because it's very similar to playing a piano/keyboard.

The Otamatone doesn't have many features. Just a volume knob and a button for switching between 3 modes that change it to a higher/lower range of notes.

If your reason to buy this is to have a first instrument , then you probably should avoid this and get a real instrument first (although, with some practice you may still be able to play it, but to me something like a guitar or keyboard would be a better option than a Otamatone).

The initial reason I got the Otamatone, was to try it out for my instrumental electronic productions. Something like having a talkbox sound or an interesting replacement of having no vocals.

Although it's hard to be played seriously, it's really expressive and offers quite a good range of sounds even for a professional recording/session.

It also does a great job being a music toy (as it was intended) that you can just pick up and make sounds in just a moment.

The handling is quite tricky but manageable with some practice. I only wish it had a few fret markings to give clues of what note you're about to play because the pitch distribution is sort of all over the place.