Lego Star Wars Smart Play Throne Room Duel and A-Wing Review

It has been three years, five months, six days since my kids announced they were too old for Lego (not that I’m counting). As kids grow into teens, they may feel the need to distance themselves. It’s a natural part of growing up, so I’m told. Parents with younger kids: Brace yourself for a rapid-fire series of painful parental purges.

No more bike rides, no more playing in the park, and no more hugs are tough, so I don’t know why Lego hit me so hard. Perhaps because we spent so much time building sets together. Perhaps because dragging the old suitcase of Lego out from under the bed was my happy place as a kid, and as an adult with money, I was free to spend far too much of it on Lego. The kids loved it, I loved it. Win-win.

Many adults pack up Lego for good at this point, or maybe pack some away in the loft for potential grandkids. But I have to test the latest Star Wars set with Smart Bricks in it for my job. Oh, how I’ve missed it. Those numbered packages of colorful bricks. The thrill of new pieces, the concise instruction booklets.

Building sets is somehow simultaneously exciting and soothing. I fall into a fugue Lego zen flow state. There is only the next piece, the satisfying click together, the gradual emergence of the picture on the box. But looking beyond the old comforting and familiar Lego experience, the big question is: Do the new Smart Bricks add much?

• Photograph: Simon Hill
• Photograph: Simon Hill
• Photograph: Simon Hill
• Photograph: Simon Hill

Lego

Star Wars Smart Play Throne Room Duel and A-Wing

Smart Bricks: A New Hope

The Lego Star Wars Throne Room Duel and A-Wing is one of Lego’s new Smart Play sets featuring Smart Bricks that add light and sound. This 962-piece set includes two Smart Bricks, three Smart Minifigures, five Smart Tags, and a Smart Charger. It enables you to recreate the final lightsaber battle in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi as Emperor Palpatine sits on his throne, watching Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker fight. It’s an easy build that also includes an A-Wing and a gun turret in a nod to the space battle raging around the Death Star.

Smart Bricks are the same size as standard 2 x 4 Lego bricks, but can connect to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags, interacting with them in real time. Each Smart Brick contains a custom-made chip, an LED light array, accelerometers, light sensors, a sound sensor, and even a miniature speaker. Lego is initially releasing them in a series of sets featuring its biggest license, but the potential for these Smart Bricks is huge and stretches well beyond Star Wars.

Copper coils enable Smart Bricks to sense distance, direction, and orientation and correctly trigger different sounds and light effects when you play. Data is shared between bricks using a Bluetooth based “BrickNet” protocol and NFC in tags and minifigures. It may be Lego's biggest innovation in years, but that’s no guarantee of success (just ask our Lego Dimensions collection). You can find out more about how it was developed in our inside look at the new Lego Smart Brick.

Everything works without the need for a screen or an app, though there is an official companion app for Android or iOS that explains more about how the Smart Bricks work and enables you to register them, update the software, and tweak the volume.

With this Throne Room set, you get two Smart Bricks, but there are five potential spots to slot them into. Pick the Emperor’s throne, and you get a synth version of “The Imperial March” with an occasional cackle. The A-Wing produces engine noises and laser sounds, then powers down when you land it. Naturally, Luke and Vader make lightsaber noises and the odd gibberish babble.

Smarter is how the different tags and bricks interact, so a swooping ship will make pew-pew sounds as it bears down on the gun turret, and after a few passes, one or the other will explode. I love the A-Wing startup noise when you plug a brick in and the powering down when it lands. You also get flashing lights in different colors, which work nicely for spaceships and gun turrets.

The Empire Strikes Back

All the audio is generated by tiny synths in the bricks, and it's a bit of a disappointment that there are no movie-accurate sounds. The quality is tinny, and the sound effects are generic. The potential plus is that kids could put the A-Wing tag in any spaceship they build and get spaceship noises as they fly around, but Star Wars fans expecting real sound effects or dialog from the movies will be disappointed.

Vader and Luke produce lightsaber-clashing noises as they duel, and Vader does his heavy breathing, but Luke doesn’t sound especially Luke-like. I thought maybe different minifigures interacting would produce different sounds, like Darth Vader and the Emperor might have a special exchange, but they don’t seem to. I also found that the effects didn’t always trigger when you bring two Smart Bricks together. It’s all a bit hit-and-miss.

You must charge the Smart Bricks up when you first unpack the box, and they have about 45 minutes of active play time after a full charge. The charger is a tiny Lego wireless charging pad, and it can take up to 150 minutes to fully charge each brick. Lego says the internal battery will continue to work even after years of inactivity, but it is not replaceable.

As you might expect, the price per brick for a Smart Play set is higher than a standard set, and it feels like Lego has been a bit stingy with the Smart Bricks. Some of the smaller Smart Play sets don’t include a Smart Brick at all. Even when they are included, there aren’t enough. The set I tested has two Smart Bricks and five spots for them, so you are continually moving the Smart Brick to the bit you want to bring to life.

Return of the Jedi

I was surprised when my eldest teen agreed to help me build the set, and as it neared completion my other teenager joined us and watched with vague interest. I explained about the Smart Bricks, and we tried each of the tags. Everyone agreed the A-Wing worked best, but their overall verdict was “meh.” Of course, teens are contractually obliged not to be enthusiastic, but they clearly enjoyed the building experience more than the Smart Bricks. Neither thought the sounds and lights added enough to justify the extra expense.

Predictably enough, neither of my kids has shown any interest in the set since we built it. My wife caught me playing with it and agreed it was pretty cool, but I’m not sure adult collectors will like the Smart Bricks much either. Maybe if they lit up the sets in interesting ways, like those third-party light kits you can get, but they don’t. While I think they’re fun, Lego is already a pricey product, and most folks will get more for their money by buying a regular set.

Ultimately, Smart Bricks sound like a good idea, but the reality so far is underwhelming. I’m sure some younger kids will get a kick out of them, and they may develop into something more interesting given time, but the enduring joyful core experience of Lego doesn’t really need to be embellished. We can all make whooshing and pew-pew sounds ourselves. Maybe that’s why the customer reviews have been so polarized: This is another step away from using your imagination for play.