You can’t replace the battery in Lego’s Smart Bricks, and many of its sensors aren’t available yet

The first Lego Smart Brick sets are based on star wars, Not quite what my kids and I were hoping forAnd I suspect a lot of that is due to programming. But smart bricks may also have some technical limitations out of the gate. The first sets do ship with a number of their sensors enabled, including a voice-recognition microphone, an ambient light sensor, Accurate distance measurementAttitude and orientation.

“There are more sensors that will be unlocked with future products,” explained Elisha Zed, sound designer for Lego Smart Brick. In the last live broadcastciting ambient light, position and direction as missing outside the gate. These features may require a software update to unlock: Lego Smart Brick app It explains that the brick’s built-in microphone is currently broken and will need to be updated if that changes.

The smart brick has other working sensors. The NFC reader registers nearby Smart Tiles through up to seven Lego plates (about 22mm), which I tested, and nearly every interaction uses motion sensing. The color sensor detects red, green and blue objects hanging on the side of the Smart Brick when its LED indicator flashes. There’s also a basic multi-brick interaction – when one star fighter or tower explodes, all the others will score a “hit” and eventually “explode.”

But this is the only multi-brick interaction at the moment, confirms Jack Rankin, Lego’s director of communications Edge; Even a two-brick lightsaber battle doesn’t currently sync those two bricks. In the company’s demos at CES (One of which she saved for posterity), the bricks can connect to each other wirelessly to share colors, sync sounds, and play different games.

The other thing that the Lego app has going for it is how careful it is to protect the little Smart Brick’s battery from draining too quickly. The Smart Brick only provides about 45 minutes of active play, and puts itself to sleep within three minutes if idle. (Shake him to wake him up again.) But he’ll also go into a deep sleep after 13 hours; You have to put it on its wireless charger, just for a moment, to bring it out of deep sleep.

Batteries Really small – Only 45 mAh, compared to 4000 mAh in my Samsung Galaxy S25 – and is not user-replaceable. As you can see in The devastating destruction of JerryRigEverythingIt is difficult to even reach the battery without passing through the thin, hair-like antennae. LEGO instruction manuals recommend safely disposing of the entire brick, rather than in the regular trash.

For another look inside Smart Brick, check out These are StoneWars’ X-rays. Also, Martin Ruszkiewicz has discovered that it is actually possible to clone Lego’s NFC-based smart tags, perhaps allowing people to create their own tags after the community has analyzed their cryptography. On this GitHub page.