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. As kids grow into teens, they may feel the need to distance themselves. It’s a natural part of growing up. Parents with younger kids: Brace yourself for a rapid-fire series of painful parental purges.

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?

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.

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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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

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.