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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

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Lego

Star Wars Smart Play Throne Room Duel and A-Wing

$160 Amazon

$160 Lego

$160 Walmart

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.

Photograph: Simon Hill

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

Photograph: Simon Hill

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, l

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