My son loves this kit. He’s 11 and is having a great time building the various robots.

The Lego Mindstorms Kit is a good introduction to robotics for young children. The basic components and the programming software are well tailored for young children to master quickly.

Beware of this toy. After receiving this item, we immediately put it together and attempted to use the internal test programs to make it run. No luck. We sent it back to Amazon. For the record, Amazon’s customer service can’t be beat. We sent the item back on a Friday and we had a new package at our door the following Monday. Thank you Amazon! Unfortunately, Lego could learn a thing or two about customer service from Amazon. The second item has the same flaw as the first. We contacted Lego’s customer service and tech support and were told that the internal programs were, indeed, faulty on these bricks and we should just go ahead and use the computer to program the figures. Not exactly the response I was looking for. Seeing as we will be mainly using the computer to program this, I went along with it. Well, guess what? That didn’t work either. After another call to tech support (and 4 or 5 hours trying to get this thing to work on my own), I was told that my problem was too advanced for the person I was speaking with to handle. (I was attempting to build the very first robot in the building guide with a simple two block program – pretty basic stuff!) He claimed he would refer my problem to another team that would contact me. It’s been two days and I haven’t heard a thing. So far, all I have received for my $280 is whole lot of frustration (and great disappointment for my 11 year old son, who so desparately wanted this thing). For the record, both my husband and I have engineering backgrounds, so we are extrememly familiar with programming. I believe that a Lego toy should be within our capabilities. I am convinced that this one is also defective, and Lego just doesn’t want to admit it. Get ready, Amazon, because I will probably be sending this one back to you in few days as well! (at least you know how to take care of your customers)

Update – Aug 2,2009 – We returned the second set to Amazon and purchased a new set from a local business. It worked perfectly (using the exact same programs we had written earlier and built exactly the same way as the two from Amazon) The two sets purchased from Amazon were, absolutely without a doubt, defective. I even got Lego tech support to finally agree on that. Don’t be too quick to blame the user fellow reviewer!

I’ve been interested in this for the past few months. I hear that the new mindstorms is version 2.0. Then I look at very old versions and they are also version 2.0. So it’s confusing as to whether this is the new 2.0 or the old 2.0 still on sale.
I’m interested in the new version because I read it has more memory and other updates. And yes I see 8547 but for my short term memory it means nothing….

I love Lego and the NXT, but i expect more inovation. A tecnology acording to our time. Once this game was a revolutionary game but now…
Think, how much do you you pay for your cellphone? you get good compact stereo speakers. a camera, a memory card reader. But here almost 10 years after,nothing new. Tecnology, like design means more for less. now you get the same 32 bit brick for the same money. This make a toy more expensive.

fun? …a lot. but better than ever? ….a little.