LEGO is one of the most picturesque, fantastic and biggest brand in the entire toy world. Their program, the Creator’s game, features many different sets with which children can develop their construction and building skills and entertain themselves at the same time.
Lego’s Technic sets, like the Mindstorms require the most building skills, and are seen as the most amazing ones, as they bring the most excitement. Lego’s Technic sets are very flexible and combine a lot of different elements including sensors, motors and an electronic brain along with other Lego components. So, if your kid is into building and constructing things, you should buy LEGO Mindstorms set to get him started on developing those engineering skills.
The LEGO Mindstorms EV3, which is a better and far more advanced version of the Mindstorms set, is a faster, smarter, and more flexible set that can make robotics easily understandable without the need of investing in expensive tools. The set consists of the Mindstorms EV3 Intelligent Brick (also known as the “brain” of the Mindstorms EV3 set), an infrared remote control, 3 servo motors, a colour, touch and an infrared sensor, and 550 LEGO Technic pieces. The set is versatile and diverse, so you can easily use bricks from your other Lego sets, which only proves the universal backwards compatibility of Lego games. In fact, all bricks from the Mindstorms set can be used to make any type of creation, from The Hobbit to the buildings in the licensed Star Wars set.
The Intelligent brick is the heart of this set, so if you decide to buy Lego Mindstorms , you should know that without this brick, which can also be bought separately, you can’t build a robot. Or at least not a functional one. The brick has eight Mindstorms connection cable ports, a mini USB port for connecting the robot to your computer, a micro SD for increasing the memory and a full-size USB port for chain connection with three more Mindstorms EV3 intelligent bricks, or optional Wi-Fi dongle.
And if you’re ready to buy Lego Mindstorms, you should be prepared to open your wallet as well. The set costs about $350, which does sound high for a set of toys. What you should know is that you’re mostly paying for the robotic parts of the set, since they cost a lot more than the 550 bricks and other building components. The intelligent brick itself costs only $150, and every other robotic component like the servo motors, the sensors and similar, can be bought for a price from $20 to $50 per piece. If you’re looking for the best birthday gifts for 14 year old boys, this might be the right gift to get.
All in all, if you think your kid will benefit from playing with the Mindstorms set from Lego, get it (if you can afford it, of course). With all the developmental benefits this set offers, it is the case of ‘the sooner, the better’.
