Lego Smart Play hands-on: Using Smart Brick technology to get kids to play together

Lego’s Smart Play system announced at CES 2026 earlier this week is a new embrace of digital technology that we haven’t seen from the company before. While the demo Lego gave at its press conference on Monday was a good start to showing what Smart Bricks are capable of, it really isn’t a substitute for seeing it in person. I was able to get an extended demo that answered many of my questions about how the system will work once Lego fans of all ages get their hands on the first Smart Play sets.

As I detailed yesterday, the Smart Play system contains three elements. The Smart Brick is packed with technology like proximity sensors, an accelerometer, color sensors and a speaker, all powered by a tiny ...