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Lego boost has two major appeal to me: - relatively cheap - easy to get into But very fast there was a set of hurdles we bumped in, and the boost hub is seri
by makeitdouble 5y ago
Lego boost has two major appeal to me:
- relatively cheap
- easy to get into
But very fast there was a set of hurdles we bumped in, and the boost hub is seriously limited compared to the twice more expensive spike hub.
- It’s way slower (you won’t be able to balance the most basic structure like two wheels with two motors in an autobalancing loop)
- its sensors can have weird edge cases. For instance the gyro only reads from 0 to 180, so it’s a PITA to use it verticaly
- It doesn’t have recharging optons which makes it a PITA in many ways. Apart from dealing with AAA batteries and their size and weight, you also need to plan your builds for changing easily them as they won’t last long,
- the size is awkward, it’s not a full stud count between the anchoring parts, and matches badly with full technic blocks.
- The programming blocks are cute and all, until you realize there’s no manual nor official explanation of what they do and the params they take, and there’s around 50+ of them.
- at the end of the day it’s Lego, and education is a checkbox in their marketing slides more than a focus. There’s parts that are only available in the spike educational pack. Some only in other sets. You get sanctioned scratch only with the prime hub, the app requires a tablet (phone screen is just ridiculously hard to use), and there’s no way to back up/restore programs (up until 6 month ago at least, I haven’t checked since)
The most disappointing part was that it didn’t feel like a gateway drug to something beautiful (the spike hub ?), more like a taste of nickel and diming, no visibility into the future of the ecosystem, not giving a fuck about kids deeply learning (really, no epxort/import, no block explanations ?)
I feel kinda burned and will wait a while to get back to it in a better state of mind. For anyone getting into Lego Technic, I’d recommand the “my first born and an arm” priced Spike option.