LEGO 51515 MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor Robotics Kit, Coding Set for Kids, 5in1 App Remote Control Programmable Interactive Toy

I got this recently, with the intention of teaching my 11 year old daughter the basics of coding. As she already loves building Lego kits, it was an obvious choice.I read other reviews of the product, and I have to laugh at the guy below giving it a 2 star rating, because the parts are not organised neatly in the box! Seriously?!! Get yourself a Stanley tool organiser box, with adjustable compartments, costing £9 on Amazon, and spend some time sorting all the parts so you can find them easily. Problem solved!Anyway, on to my review: Wow Lego Mindstorms just gets better and better. I bought the original RCX Mindstorms kit about 20 years ago. It was good, but suffered from a lack of sensors, and only 2 motors limited what you could build. Not so with this kit. 4 motors opens up a lot more possibilities.The kit comes with sample robots to build, and has clear instructions on how to do this. The parts are good, motors and the control 'Hub' are smaller than previous kits, which helps in the model building. They also include a useful base plate, and frame components. Plus lots of connecting pieces. It's a very well thought out selection. Nice that we can also use parts from my old Mindstorms kit too. If you have previous Technics parts from other kits, these will come in handy.Maybe this new kit could have benefited from a touch sensor, which was in the old RCX kit, but hopefully there'll be more sensors released in due course.Building the robots is fun, as you would expect from Lego. But this product comes alive with the programming aspect. I'm a professional software developer, so I know that teaching someone how to write code can be pretty daunting, and possibly intimidating. But the Scratch based programming environment is a really nice way to teach it. The program is constructed by literally connecting action blocks together, and it introduces all the basic ideas used in a programming language - conditional statements, repeating loops, event handlers, functions. It's an ideal introduction.But best of all, and I think this is outstanding - you can write your programs in Python. This is a truly excellent programming language, and it's used a lot these days in commercial projects such as web application development and cloud based microservices. So once you've mastered the Scratch way of coding, transitioning to using Python is not only a step forward in terms of technical knowledge, it's actually a very useful skill for even a professional programmer to have!The out of the box robots are fun to build, and will keep you busy for many hours. But it doesn't stop there. Use your imagination and creativity to build other things. I'm also glad to see the inclusion of a projectile firing brick. Now it would be criminal not to use the caterpillar tracks from my previous set to build a self-driving tank wouldn't it? :)Another nice feature, is the ability to control your robot via Bluetooth. You can even connect a PS4 or Xbox One controller. Looking forward to doing that!So as you can see, I'm impressed. If you're into Lego, robots, and programming, it doesn't get any better than this!

Having owned both the RCX and NXT (but not the EV3) Lego MINDSTORMS sets I decided to treat myself to the latest set. I haven’t checked back on the older sets but there seem to be significantly more parts in this set compared to the previous MINDSTORMS sets. There are definitely more builds and sub builds in the instructions so there is plenty to keep you occupied with this set. I have been using the iPad app for programming the robots and this works perfectly with the ‘block editor’ but needs a little improvement if you want to program your robot with Python.Given that the set on Amazon is about £100 cheaper than anywhere else I think this is a very good investment if you want to try some robot programming and like Lego.

Purchased for my 10yr old after having the Lego Boost for a couple of years! It Lego, it's EV3, it's pretty awesome bit of kit, but it's far from a toy....It's pretty complex bit of kit for adults and young 'techy' kids, and guessing if you're thinking of buying this kit you pretty know why you're buying it!Lego quality, but few niggles;-1. Why is there no light on the EV3 brick display.....Argh!!!2. Doesn't integrate with Lego Boost or Lego Power Functions motors / sensors / etc....annoying!3. It hasn't been upgraded or changed in a long, long time!!!....but it's still awesome!

I ordered the robot for my daughter's birthday three days before her birthday and used the Amazon prime service which meant to be delivered the day before her birthday, however it didn't arrived until the day after her birthday. I was a bit disappointed with this. Back to the Robot itself. My daughter loved it very much and she tried to build it by herself the first time but unfortunately made a mistake with the cogs (the two side cogs need to be absolutely remain the exactly same position before joining them with the third one) and when the robot moved arms, it made strange noise. It was very tricky even for grownups as it was not very clearly stated in the online instruction book. We had to break it up and rebuilt it from beginning again as we couldn't find out the problem. The robot moves fast. If you just move and stop it as you go rather than a whole series movement, it will wobble (won't fall over) when it stops. Other than these little things (if these doesn't bother you, which not us), I recommend it to your kids. Yes, it is not cheap, but it is a fantastic present. My daughter is absolutely loving it.

Great to use, can be programmed in woodblocks or python

Best investment ever in kids education

Amazing set well worth the money. It’s more like an activity you would find in a science Museum than a regular Lego set. Great fun and educational. The Lego boost robot is better for younger children.

The parts are not organised properly. You and your kids end up spending most of the time in finding parts in various bags instead of enjoying building time. with many hundreds of parts, it is a nightmare. the product itself is awesome, but the whole experience of fun goes to sh..t trying to find the parts.If lego is at least looking at these reviews, I'd say put the parts in neatly organised boxes instead of plastic bags. People pay good amount to buy this product. Proper colour coded boxes with lids easy to open and close with instructions about which box to find a part in would be awesome. Unfortunately I have paid a lot of money and bought it. So me and my kids will have to endure the irritating parts hunt to use this product. Or I will have to organise this. What a shame such a nice product but the experience is spoiled by a nitwit in Lego who decided to cheap out on packaging it in plastic bags instead of properly organised coded boxes.