LEGO Vidiyo Review
THESE ITEMS WERE GIFTED TO THE REVIEWER FOR THE PURPOSES OF WRITING THE REVIEW. ALL THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE THE REVIEWER'S OWN.
Reviewed by Nia Lock
My children were rather excited when I told them I was going to write a review of Lego Vidiyo music video maker and would be needing their help. We have a long history of Lego building in our house and it’s one of our most favoured activities. Everyone enjoys it, from the toddler who loves her Lego Duplo, to the adults. We normally build farm machinery, so Lego Vidiyo is a bit more interactive than our usual Lego. The sets are quite funky looking and the colour palette is vibrant. Lego Vidiyo was launched at the beginning of 2021.
The Lego kits were built by my 6 & 8 year olds working together and it kept them super quiet for hours. When they eventually emerged from their Lego trance and I explained about the app they were very excited and needed to get scanning straight away.
The Lego Vidiyo smartphone app, which you download from the app store in the usual way, brings your Lego to life. I found the app quick to load and easy to use. Once you’ve built your Lego model, you can scan your Vidiyo bandmate (minifigure) so that you can perform together in your music video, start a band, which you can name from a sort of random name generator, and record videos with your choice of song. There’s quite a good choice of songs available in the app and you can customise the look of your band. The Lego you’ve built, our first one was the candy castle stage, is also scanned in and becomes the interactive backdrop for your performance. Parts of the stage flash on the screen and you can move them around to see different effects, it’s very clever. The minifigures are called things like ‘Mermaid Violinist’ and ‘Kitten Keytarist’ and each set includes beatbits which are tiles you can scan to add special effects to your music videos.
The augmented reality aspect of the app was quite impressive for a children’s toy, your minifigure bandmate moves their lips on the screen as though they’re actually singing the song. You can dance around in the video with them which was the icing on the cake for my little dancers. Any child who loves to perform will be beside themselves with joy. In order to share your videos, you need to join the online Lego community where I believe it’s only possible to share videos that don’t contain live people which feels quite safe. There is new music on here and new challenges each week, there’s a lot for children to get involved with.
The children barely needed any help to build any of the Lego kits, as the instructions are always very clear, each kit took a full morning to build in between meals and other distractions. My children did need a bit of help with the app as it’s not something they have much experience of, but most children will have more skills in this area and should be able to use it without help. They have both played for hours either building and rebuilding or making music videos. I think the extra play element provided by Lego Vidiyo would really encourage children who enjoy technology-based play to get involved with Lego in the same way that it has opened up a new dimension for my relatively non technological children. It’s been thrilling for them to show their videos to their grandparents which are stored in the gallery area of the app.
As always Lego provides a superb level of entertainment for all involved, it’s fun, hugely creative and has far reaching developmental benefits. Lego Vidiyo brings a traditional toy firmly into the 2020’s and will appeal to a whole new audience. I cannot hesitate to recommend it fully.
Rating: for all Lego Vidiyo sets – 5/5
RRP and link to buy:
Punk pirate ship RRP: £59.99
Link to buy here.
K-Pawp concert RRP £44.99
Link to buy here.
Candy castle stage RRP £24.99
Link to buy here.