LEGO SMART Brick lands on BrickLink: is it a better deal?

The full LEGO Star Wars SMART Play range is now listed on BrickLink, and some sellers are already parting out the kits and offering the SMART Brick by itself. But are you better off buying it solo?

Three of the initial eight LEGO Star Wars SMART Play sets include a SMART Brick, while the other five are ‘SMART Play compatible’, and only include SMART Minifigures and SMART Tags. If you want to unlock the full potential of those, you’ll need one of the trio of starter kits. But the cheapest of these is 75421 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, which rings in at £59.99 / $69.99 / €69.99.

If you’re hoping to get the most functionality out of (for example) 75426 Millennium Falcon, you’re looking at paying £149.98 / $169.98 / €169.98 at minimum at retail. But BrickLink sellers are already parting out the sets on the secondary market and listing the SMART Brick individually, offering another route to adding full SMART Play functionality to your SMART Play compatible sets.

At the time of writing, there are 15 BrickLink stores selling SMART Bricks on their own, with prices starting from around £16 from one German seller. Most stores only have one or a handful of SMART Bricks up for grabs, although one US seller has 27 available if you’re looking to get really smart. Now, £16 is obviously much cheaper and more accessible than £60 for Vader’s TIE – but it’s not the whole picture.

First up there’s shipping to consider, but beyond that you’ll also need the proprietary SMART Brick wireless charger that’s included in the three starter sets. Right now there are 19 sellers listing the charger on BrickLink, with prices starting from around £9. So that’s around £25 plus shipping for the SMART Brick and charger. You'll also need a cable, but any USB-A to USB-C lead should do the trick. The question now is… are the rest of the contents of 75421 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter worth £35 to you?

Those are a SMART Darth Vader minifigure, a standard Rebel Trooper minifigure and around 470 pieces, which comprise a stubby version of the TIE Advanced, a refuelling station and a tiny rebel base with turret. If you’re not interested in those but want to give the SMART Play system a whirl with Mos Eisley Cantina, an AT-ST or Luke’s Landspeeder, picking up the SMART Brick separately could be the way to go.

Even if you already have a SMART Play starter set, though, heading to BrickLink is still a viable option for adding a second SMART Brick to your collection without having to pick up another full box at retail. SMART Bricks are able to interact with one another to allow (for example) ships to engage in dogfights, so if you want your Falcon and TIE Fighter to go toe-to-toe without buying 75423 Luke’s Red Five X-wing, BrickLink may have the answer.

There’s also a good chance that the prices listed here will change in the weeks and months ahead, as more BrickLink sellers part out SMART Play sets, the market shifts and the laws of supply and demand see stores undercutting one another (driving the cost down). This is really just the initial benchmark for the prices of individual SMART Bricks and wireless chargers, so it’ll be interesting to see how that evolves over time.

It will also be impacted, of course, if the LEGO Group eventually decides to sell SMART Bricks separately through official retail channels. For now, they’re walled off behind 75421 Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, 75423 Luke’s Red Five X-wing and 75427 Throne Room Duel & A-wing (which includes two SMART Bricks for Luke and Vader to duel).

Check out the full range of LEGO Star Wars SMART Play sets in the table below.

LEGO Star Wars SMART Play 2026 sets

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