I've Tried Lego’s New Smart Bricks, And I Have Mixed Feelings
It may prove to be worth the investment if you're rich enough.
In case you missed the news, Lego has a fun new gimmick on the toy scene in 2026.
Revealed at CES 2026 earlier this year, Lego unveiled the new Smart Brick—a new type of Lego brick which plays sounds and lights up, reacting to movement and ‘smart tags’ to trigger such impulses.
Lego calls this the company’s “biggest innovation ever”, where smart bricks react to motion by playing sounds and generating light. Pop one in a vehicle, and you’ll hear the sound of a car engine revving up and accelerating.
It’s an interesting piece of technology, and as someone who has been a fan of Lego since the 1990s, I was genuinely curious what this would be like.
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Lego sent me the SMART Play: Luke's Red Five X-Wing set. It’s a Lego Star Wars set based on scenes from the end of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. It comes with a Smart Brick and seven different ways for it to interact with the set.
And yeah, it’s cool. The audio coming from the brick sounds like the effects that appear in the Star Wars movies. It’s a neat gimmick, but I don’t really see the appeal outside of that.
I’ll start with the obvious, the audio being emitted by the smart brick is not a real substitute for the “pew pews” and “vrrr vrrrs” I can make with my mouth.
When I was a kid, this was half the fun with playing with my Lego Star Wars sets. I’d make Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader fight each other, and I’d let my audible vocal stims fill in the blanks. You can obviously still do this without the smart brick, but the set exists purely as a demonstration for what the bricks can do.
Still, Lego has spent millions in research and development with actual children, so I, a grown man, am not going to sit here and say “who asked this for this?!” when this is clearly a market the company saw worth investing in.
This does bring me onto my next point though, which is that the set also feels massively overpriced for what it offers. Lego is currently selling this set for $149.99, which gives you 581 pieces split across the X-Wing, a computer terminal, a cannon, and a small cargo loader.
Meanwhile, Lego’s earlier Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing Fighter set, which I also own, cost around $100 less, and gave you 474 pieces. That’s 18% fewer bricks at 66% the price. If we’re being honest, I also prefer the earlier set too. The X-Wing is much larger and more detailed, and feels a lot more fun to use as a toy.
Obviously, the cost of the Smart Bricks comes into this price point, but with Lego sets getting so expensive nowadays, I really have to question if parents are going to pick this up for their kids (or themselves, who am I to judge?).
For example, despite having five different ways Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures, the set actually only comes with one Smart Brick. If you have multiple children playing with the set, they’ll either need to share the Smart Brick or pick up another set featuring them.
As far as I can tell, you can’t buy Smart Bricks separately either, so you’re essentially forced to buy another set, and the cheapest one to come with a Smart Brick costs $99.99.
That’s not even taking into account that only three of the eight SMART Play sets actually include Smart Bricks, so this becomes an even bigger challenge if you’re buying some of the “SMART Play Compatible” sets which don’t include the bricks.
Altogether, I’m a little disappointed by Lego’s new Smart Bricks. I think the technology is cool, but it just seems to be at odds with what Lego wants them to be. The sets are expensive and not that impressive compared to stuff Lego has released before, but I’m hoping the more Lego invests in it, the better it’ll become.