LEGO Smart Brick preview: These next-gen blocks rock

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LEGO has seen a couple of really important changes over the years, like the introduction of LEGO Technic in 1977 and the minifigure in 1978. However, it’s been almost 50 years since those original innovations.

LEGO has remained the world’s most popular toy by consistently collaborating with popular franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, Minecraft, and Super Mario, appealing to what kids already love.

I just got a sneak peek at the new LEGO Smart Play system, and it’s seriously cool! It’s coming out this year and uses things like sensors, speakers, and lights to completely change how you play with LEGO – it’s the biggest update in decades, apparently. I got to try it out at CES in Las Vegas, and I’m excited to tell you all about it!

What is the Smart Play system? It centers around the ‘Smart Brick‘ – a device with built-in sensors, speakers, lights, and special chips that powers the entire experience.

Check out LEGO Smart Play at LEGO

This technology lets the brick sense things like motion and how close it is to other smart toys. These toys, including Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures, tell the brick what to do. For instance, if you attach a tag to a duck, the brick will quack! Or, if it detects a Darth Vader minifigure, it will play Darth Vader’s breathing and sound effects.

What’s truly impressive is how LEGO’s engineers have programmed the Smart Brick to take LEGO play to the next level, making it more engaging and interactive. Maarten Simons, the Design Manager for the project, kicked off their CES presentation by showing a simple demo: attaching a Smart Tag to the Smart Brick caused it to play music and flash lights as you tilted and moved it.

One of the Smart Tags can turn a building brick into a car, complete with sound effects like an engine running, tires squealing when turning, and a crash when it bumps into something. Similar demonstrations showed it working as a helicopter, a duck, and even a dinosaur.

Combining LEGO sets with Smart Bricks is where the real fun begins! These bricks interact with each other in interesting and unexpected ways. We saw this happen when a child used a Smart Brick to give a LEGO dinosaur a birthday cake with candles. The dinosaur then lit up green and made a sound like party streamers!

When you blow out the candles on the cake, the built-in Smart Brick plays a “Happy Birthday” tune, and the dinosaur lights up again! It’s a simple feature, but we could tell within minutes of testing that kids will really enjoy it—and that was before we even got to see the upcoming Star Wars versions.

Let’s look at some other cool features first. The Smart Brick can detect colors using a special tag. If it sees blue, it plays underwater sounds; yellow triggers beach noises; green makes it act like it’s on grass; and red sets off a fire alarm. You can even connect multiple bricks by simply shaking them together. Once paired, a second brick will mirror what the first one senses, up to 15 feet away, using its own fast wireless connection called BrickNet.

We then explored how LEGO minifigures work with the Smart Brick. Smart minifigures have a special symbol on their back – a circle containing speaker, sparkle, and mystery icons – which shows what actions they can trigger with the Smart Brick.

Smart Bricks respond to objects placed nearby based on which side they’re on, creating unique gameplay options. For example, a police car with a Smart tag can interact with minifigures: if a robber gets close, the car alarm sounds. Conversely, if a police officer drives the car towards the robber, the siren activates.

Smart Bricks can sense how far apart they are, using different colors to show the distance. This lets builders create features like a protective zone around their LEGO creations, triggering an alert if something enters or breaks that zone. They can also detect when they’re facing each other and will light up to show it.

I got to see a really cute demo with a mother duck and her four babies! It was amazing – the little ducklings would chatter away when their mom wasn’t looking, but instantly went quiet and well-behaved as soon as she turned around. Then, to top it off, when that dinosaur character showed up, they all broke into a birthday song for him! And get this – we even played duck curling with them… on skateboards! Seriously, it was a blast!

The game revolved around getting a small, duck-shaped device as close as possible to a gold trophy. Players would shake their duck to activate it, then gently push it towards the trophy. The duck that ended up closest was highlighted with lights and sounds – in our version, it was the green duck – and a celebratory firework display followed when a duck was successfully placed inside the trophy’s cup.

After showcasing some fun examples, the presentation moved on to Star Wars LEGO sets – some of the first to include smart features. They revealed the Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter (£60), Luke Skywalker’s Red Five X-wing (£80), and the Throne Room Duel set (£140), demonstrating how these sets can connect and interact with each other.

This X-wing set includes Luke and R2-D2 minifigures. When you move the ship by hand, it makes engine sounds, and doing a barrel roll triggers a whooshing sound followed by R2-D2’s signature beep!

At the back of the ship, you’ll find a button to fire the lasers, allowing for a laser battle with the TIE fighter. When a laser hits a ship, it will flash red, sound an alarm, and then show an explosion if enough damage is dealt.

The throne room playset lets you position Luke and Darth Vader facing each other for a lightsaber duel before the Emperor. It even features realistic lightsaber sounds when their blades clash – it’s a really neat effect!

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Each set includes two Smart Bricks and a charger that can power up both at the same time. You can expect around 45 minutes of playtime from each brick, and it takes about 2 hours to fully recharge them.

The building blocks will automatically turn off when not in use, which is helpful for kids who might forget to charge them after playtime.

LEGO’s new Smart system was a hit, bringing genuine joy to a group of journalists – many of whom were feeling weary from a busy event in Las Vegas.

This is likely to be a huge hit with kids, who will probably find all sorts of creative uses for it that its creators haven’t even imagined.

You can now pre-order LEGO’s first-ever Smart Play kits, which will officially launch on March 1st, 2026.

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Authors

Guy Cocker

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2026-01-24 11:37