It’s time for an update on the local cost of the LEGO Mindsorms kit. LEGO Mindsorms is a great concept. The combination of LEGO which so many kids have parts for, and experience in building, with a programmable micro-controller, sensors and motors is great. But, wow, is it expensive. If you buy the latest EV3 kit direct from the LEGO store, you’re looking at $500 plus postage. So are there alternatives? The first thing to consider is going for an older version. The previous version is widely available on Ebay and sits more at the $350 mark, new, and cheaper second-hand. It was an excellent version in terms of the hardware and can run the same programming software. Realistically, though, buying an old version is often not an option when you’re buying for kids. In the same vein you could look at alternative robot kits. But they lack the LEGO familiarity, cool marketing, and peer support: Although they’ll often work better and teach more. So back to finding cheaper versions of the EV3 kit.
Sadly the options are limited. You can again hit Ebay and find new kits at around $430-460 with free postage. Those are from reputable sellers with solid reputations. Often the major limitation with that approach is that you’re buying from the USA and delivery can take an age (and you need to have a plan to get a local power-plug). The best deal by far seems to be to buy from Amazon in the US at US$349 which even once you take exchange rates and shipping into account isn’t bad as a price. But you need to arrange local delivery in the US, re-shipping to Australia, and all the fiddly stuff that goes along with that. If you prefer to buy from a local online retailer there going rate seems to hover around the $460-mark sometimes with postage on top, sometimes not. One major online retailer is selling, or at least offering, the kit for an astonishing $699 – so simply don’t go there. With a bit of patience and searching there do seem to be some local deals available (like this one) that can bring the price down to the mid-$300s.
But you have to be lucky and quick to find them. The lowest local online price I could find today was the excellent value $392 from JustBricks. If you want to go into a shop and get the kit you’re simply looking at $460-$499, unless you hit a lucky sale. So in summary this is a premium kit and you’re going to pay a premium price whatever you do. If you’re looking at a Christmas present don’t wait until the last moment – nothing will make this cheap, but some pre-planning can get you a more reasonable price. Lego Mindstorms Fix the Factory Sign In or Join to save for later Devices: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android What parents need to know Parents Need to Know About our ratings and privacy evaluation Puzzle & Dragons Z + Puzzle & Dragons Super Mario Bros. Edition Tynker - Learn programming with visual code blocks What parents and kids say There aren't any reviews yet. Be the first to review this title.Build and program cutting-edge, computerized LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ robots.
(Area may be unavailable during school group sessions.) This set inventory has been obtained from LEGO Customer Services replacement parts page. Important note: We do not control this inventory and cannot currently make changes to it. Use it as a guide to the contents of the set, or to find out part numbers when requesting replacements. Download the inventory as a CSV file » inventory for this set » LEGO Rare & Hard to Find! LEGO DC Super Heroes LEGO Marvel Super Heroes LEGO Books & Accessories 3 & 4 Years DC Super Hero GirlsToys”R”Us, Babies”R”Us are registered trademarks of Toys”R”Us (Canada) Ltd. Use of this site signifies your acceptance of Toys"R"Us Website Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.Robots are hard to build from scratch unless you have degrees in engineering and programming. That's what makes LEGO's Mindstorms sets so amazing. They're flexible robotics kits that combine sensors, motors, and an electronic brain with LEGO Technic components to make robots anyone can build.
LEGO has stepped up its robotics game with its newest Mindstorms product. Over four years since the launch of its Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit, the company has released LEGO Mindstorms EV3. This $349.99 (direct) robotics kit is faster, smarter, and more flexible than the previous version, and stands as one of the best ways to dabble in robotics without investing in tools. Its price tag might seem like a lot for a toy, but it's much more than that; LEGO Mindstorms EV3 is a remarkably powerful and functional robotics kit people of any age can use to build some impressive and complicated projects. ContentsFor your $350, you get the Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick (the "brain" of the Mindstorms EV3 set), an infrared remote control, three servo motors, a color sensor, a touch sensor, an infrared sensor, and 550 LEGO Technic pieces. The 550 bricks and other building components might not seem like a lot against the nearly 3,000 pieces of the $320 LEGO Sydney Opera House Creator set, but you're mostly paying for the robotic parts.
In fact, the Intelligent Brick itself would cost $150 separately, and each other robotic component can be purchased piecemeal for $20 (servo motors, touch sensor) to $50 (infrared sensor). Since this is a LEGO Technic set with a robotic heart, you can use any of your standard LEGO or LEGO Technic components with the set. That's one of the great things about LEGO: universal backwards compatibility. In fact, with a few small exceptions (six big sword/scale pieces, a handful of curved, white cover pieces, and a few specific mechanical pieces), all of the bricks that come with the set are universal and could be turned into nearly everything (a feature not seen very often with complex, licensed building sets for series like Star Wars or The Hobbit). The set doesn't have any exact dimensions because it's over 500 different pieces, but you can build a robot about the size of a shoebox and have it still be structurally sound. Of course, you can also get more LEGO parts and build a robot as large as you'd like, as long as the moving parts are still light enough and have enough leverage for the servos to move them.
View All 7 Photos in Gallery The Intelligent BrickAs the brain of the kit, the Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick features a ton of connection features. It has eight Mindstorms connection cable ports (modified RJ12 ports with the plastic tab on the right side of the jack), a mini-USB port for connecting to your computer, a microSD card slot for expanding the memory, and a full-size USB port for an optional Wi-Fi dongle or daisy-chaining up to three additional Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Bricks for a total of 32 connection ports—useful if you want to build a much more complicated and expensive robot than the kit allows on its own. The Intelligent Brick also features built-in Bluetooth for directly controlling your robot with your mobile device and the Mindstorms iOS or Android app. The top of the brick holds a monochrome LCD display, four direction buttons, a back button, and a confirmation button on the top, and the right side of the brick holds a small speaker for playing sound files.
The Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick uses an ARM9-based processor with 16MB of memory (and storage expandable exponentially with the microSD card slot). This is a massive leap in power from the ARM7-based Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Intelligent Brick, which only 256KB of memory and no microSD card slot. The NXT 2.0 Intelligent Brick had Bluetooth, but it was only Bluetooth 2.0 compared to the EV3 Intelligent Brick's Bluetooth 4.0, and couldn't be used to directly control your creations. The sensors have also gotten a power upgrade, and are able to send new values to the EV3 Intelligent Brick 1,000 times per second, three times more often than the NXT 2.0 sensors. The color sensor can also now detect seven colors instead of six and has a Reflected Light mode that removes background light. All of these upgrades mean your robots can be much more complex than with Mindstorms NXT 2.0. One of the biggest additions to Mindstorms EV3, thanks to the more advanced Intelligent Brick, is Bluetooth control from your mobile device.