An Honest Review of the Pokemon GO Plus. (And a Picture of the Niantic HQ)

#1

I got my Pokemon GO Plus in late 2016 for the holiday season, but only just got it to work, reading the instructions and building and connecting it to my phone. Honestly I wasn’t that interested by it before because no one did a review like this, or one that I read was not detailed. In this review I’ll focus on the pros and cons of the Pokemon GO Plus.

Pros

  1. Usefull to catch a huge cluster of Pokemon in a short amount of time.

  2. In a area with many stops, you can have the GO Plus catch Pokemon while you spin the stops.

  3. You can use it while doing something else (as long as it is running in the background) . For example, while writing this my GO Plus caught 14 Pokemon and spun 5 stops.

  4. Uses one pokeball but has a decent catch rate. I would say 40% average but for common Pokemon it has a much higher rate.

  5. Lowered cost since release.
    Cons
    1.Connectivity issues, usually takes one or two tries to connect it to my game

  6. You never know what it is catching.

I give it a 8/10 after using it many times. If you are able to, it is a very good choice.

#2

If you go for the Gotcha,look here:

#3

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A picture of my Pokemon GO Plus in front of the Niantic headquarters, taken about 6 hours after squirtle squad was announced. #SquirtleSquadorRiot

#4

Gotcha has bad reviews…

#5

But the Gotcha has better catch rate

#6

It does not, they both throw a standard pokeball at the pokemon. You can make a gotcha review if you want but this is for the GO Plus.

#7

In 2. you mean you can let Go+ spin the stops while you catch Pokemon, right?

#8

I don’t think that’s true. Gotcha just mimics what a plus does, so the catch rates would be the same

As for the go+ I think it’s useful, I am disappointed with the catch rate overall. I think if you pay $30 for something it should be better than the lowest possible catch rate in the game (one regular ball, no curve, no candy and no throw bonus) and immediately flees if unsuccessful. With so many shinies in the game I am using it less and less.

#9

Ya

#10

If you catch the Pokemon you do receive the first throw bonus

#11

Big every day user of Go Plus and Gotcha here.
The most important thing IMHO is both devices are tools to supplement your game play and are not for replacing the traditional look at screen and manually flick balls at Pokemon. If your thinking it will replace that than your going to be very disappointed.

Go Plus
The Pros
Great for spinning stops and Gyms to quickly restock the bag quickly. It’s much easier pressing a button to spin than clicking the item and swiping the disk. Even quicker for Gyms that have to be opened. This allows you collect theBalls and Health items while on the move (provided your under the 40k cap).
It saves me 30-60mins using the Go Plus restocking the bag over pulling over, parking legally, pulling out phone and swiping screen.
When set on Pokemon as well as Stops it can catch Pokemon that you would normally be driving straight past not bothering about because of the pull over, park, flick ball. Every one you catch is bonus Star Dust IMHO plus the small amount of XP gained as well. We all know the game is a grind so every little bit extra helps build those tallies.

The Cons
It can be a painful process pairing up with your device.
It only throws 1 Red Ball and if you run out of Reds that’s it.
The catch rates is a bit on the low side IMHO and may have got worse since the introduction of weather boosting. I did a catch study a long time ago now. Sample size was 1300 encounters and catch rates was averaging between 50-60% back then.
There’s a very high chance the Pokemon runs due to the low catch rate/red ball/straight throw.

#12

I had the gotcha and the go plus. The gotcha is identical to the pokemon go plus. Same connection, same catch rate, same bugs. There’s a mod for the go plus (connecting the vibrator to the button) that makes it practically a gotcha. Imho they are overpriced and lack of some essential features.
In order of importance:

  1. On some phones they simply can’t connect. I had to switch to a custom rom on my moto z2 play to make them connect. On my galaxy s7 the connection was really unreliable and connect 1/3 of the times.
  2. They disconnect themselves after a random amount of time. Sometimes 1 hour, sometimes 5 minutes. People often use them while driving car/scooter and sometimes, when you arrive at your destination, you realize that they disconnected halfway.
  3. There’s no way to prioritize pokestop spinning. They always prioritize pokemon catching. The gotcha has an option to avoid automatic catch of pokemons but it does not work well. If you are running out of pokeball you have to disable ‘‘nearby pokemon’’ in the app settings, otherwise you will miss a lot of pokestops.
  4. There’s no battery left indicator.
  5. You can’t choose wich pokeball to throw (only red balls)
  6. Since the introduction of weather, the catch rate is ridiculous.

Pokemon GO is one of the most profitable apps. Those devices are sold at ~30 euros in Italy. So those problems are unacceptable. Especially points 1) and 2). I sold mine.

#13

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