K'NEX Education – Robotics Building System Set – 825 Pieces – For Ages 10+ Engineering Education Toy

I bought this as a birthday present for my 8 year old son and he loved it! Always been a fan of K'Nex toys so this was a great next level up for him.

The set itself is awesome and enables you to do tons of great stuff with knex, but 550 dollars is absolutely absurd, I've seen this elsewhere recently for around 100.One major problem with the set though is it does not include the programming software but directs you to a website that no longer exists to download it. Luckily the wayback machine still exists and can be used to get the software though I wasn't able to find the firmware update.

Knex has taken down the links on their website that enables you to use this product. You must download info from them to program and build the different designs. We bought this to give to our children to use during their summer break which just began and they cannot use it. We love Knex products and are very dissappointed.

It is very good and my nephews and their friends love it. However I bought it like a year ago and they haven't used it that much because they have many other K'nex. Unfortunately after 7 month of use the control "heart" of the robot just died. It didn't work at all and we changed that batteries and check that everything was ok but it is just dead and without that piece the robot does not work at all. I was trying to contact customer service but sometimes contacting amazon customer services is more difficult than contacting the CIA. Can somebody from customer services please contact me and let me know if that piece can be replace and what I have to do. There is any warranty?Thanks

As a father, I love watch my kids play with building toys. Recently, I invested in the Lego Mindstorms EV3 set for my son which is comparable in cost to this K'NEX set. I got the K"NEX set to evaluate with the thinking being that I could compare the two of them. I will say that both are great building sets, and I really like what both Lego and K'NEX have done to make both robotics and programming accessible to children at a young age. Both sets are great because you can build the recommended models, or you can make just about anything you can dream up.One advantage of the K'NEX set is that the K'NEX building system itself is far more conducive to robots and mechanical parts than Lego. I have always love the system and think it can make great things. The controller itself is powered by 6 AA batteries - we used AmazonBasics rechargeable. The controller box has 4 motor drive outputs, 6 sensor inputs, and 2 light outputs. With the set, you get four motors, an ultrasonic sensor (to make robots that don't hit walls), a tri-color LED, a push-button and a color/light sensor. The control box itself has an LCD display, a speaker, a microphone, and an LED on it..As is typical with K'NEX sets, the manual contains 3 models you can build, but the other 6 need to be downloaded online. The nice thing is that these 3 models are fairly well described, so a kid can get up and going quickly with the set. Unfortunately, unlike the Lego EV3, there is no way to manually control the K'NEX from the control box, so you will need to get the software installed and a program loaded to do anything. The EV3 let me actuate the motors from the control box, but I can't do that here. When I went to get the software, it wasn't on the K'NEX website (and its not in the box). Apparently they were having technical issues and had pulled it. When they put it back a few days later, it was a corrupted zip archive. When I finally got good software, it installed quickly and easily, and quickly programmed up the control box.The language is a simple graphical language which any kid can learn pretty easily. It seems pretty quick and easy to program up your creation. My son did struggle a bit with the connectors - they kept coming loose. It was frustrating for him because the control box would check and say the sensor was not connected, but he'd push on it and it still wouldn't register. He had to pull the cable and push it back in. Something isn't quite right with it, but once it was registered, it worked.Ultimately, in comparing it with the EV3, I'd say the K'NEX set is a bit more "fun" and perhaps good for a younger child, but the EV3 set is more advanced and can take you further in your robotics. Part of this is due to the K'NEX set being new. There are EV3 books, websites, YouTube videos, etc. There is a huge history and ecosystem which you can build from. The K'NEX set feels a bit more approachable and easy to use than EV3. K'NEX supplies you with a teacher's guide, user's guide, and lots of model ideas. But there's no ecosystem of users out there yet, and certain sensors aren't available, such as a the gyro sensor, infrared remote, SD card reader, etc.I'd say K'NEX would have a real hit here if this product were priced about $100 less than EV3. But at the same price, it is hard for me to say right now.. Hope this helps you decide between K'NEX and EV3. I will likely update this review as my kids have more time with it. Please let me know if you have any questions.

This was a surprise Christmas gift for my twelve year old grandson. He is excited about it!!!

It looks cool. It was a lot of fun to assemble but the functionality is limited and sometimes flaky. Plus expectations from kids are pretty high for toys like this and this one doesn't deliver. I'm thinking of using it as a scarecrow of sorts to keep the dog out of certain areas of the house.

Would have been really helpful to know this kit is not MAC compatible. I bought it for my boys for Christmas and after they spent hours putting it together we discovered it does not have MAC compatible software. Very disappointed this information was not listed better in the description or on the box