LEGO Art

The Beatles

A chill, tile-by-tile pointillism portrait of your favourite Beatle for the wall.

3.8/5

Set 31198 · 2020

Pieces2,933

Minifigsn/a

Year2020

Set number31198

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The verdict

If you love the Fab Four and fancy a relaxing, low-stakes build that ends as proper wall art, this one is easy to recommend.

You place thousands of little round tiles into a portrait of John, Paul, George or Ringo, and the finished piece looks genuinely great from across the room. Just know going in that it is repetitive by design and you only get to build one face at a time, so temper the expectations if you want a fiddly, technique-heavy build.

Best for: Beatles fans who want a calming build that doubles as framed wall decor

The full review

What it is

So here is the pitch. The Beatles is a LEGO® set from the Art line, and instead of building a spaceship or a castle you are building a portrait out of thousands of tiny round tiles, pointillism style. You pick one of the four band members, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr, follow the guide, and end up with a 40cm square canvas you can hang on the wall or stand on a shelf. It landed in 2020 as part of the first wave of LEGO Art, and it was the only music one in that launch group, so if you are a Beatles person it hits a very specific sweet spot.

The catch

Now the honest bit. At 2,933 pieces this sounds like a monster, but almost all of those pieces are 1x1 round tiles, so the number is a little misleading. The actual build is you placing tile after tile after tile in a grid, matching the guide as you go. Plenty of people find that soothing, a proper switch-your-brain-off evening activity, but if you want clever techniques or a build that surprises you, this is not that. It is repetitive on purpose. The other catch is you only build one face at a time. Want all four Beatles side by side? That is four boxes, or a lot of rebuilding. A couple of common gripes worth flagging too: early on the tiles like to pop off before the frame locks everything in, and the QR-code audio that comes with it is a spoken-word soundtrack about the band rather than the songs themselves, which disappointed some folks expecting a playlist.

Who it's for

So who is this for? If you love the Beatles and the idea of a calm, hands-busy build that leaves you with actual wall art, grab it without much hesitation. It is a lovely gift for a music fan and the finished result really does look the part. If you are chasing an engaging, technical build with lots of variety, or you get bored by repetition, you will probably find this one a slog and should look elsewhere in the LEGO catalogue. It sits at a fair 3.8 on Brickset, which feels about right: not a showstopper build, but a genuinely satisfying object at the end. Note it retired at the end of 2021, so it is aftermarket only now, which nudges the price up a bit.

The parts story

What the build is actually like, and the pieces worth knowing about.

Building this is less construction and more mosaic work. You start with a set of flat canvas baseplates, snap them together into the frame, then work through the portrait section by section, dropping 1x1 round tiles into the grid according to the guide. There is a rhythm to it. You sort your colours, you find your place on the map, and you just go. It is the kind of build you do with a podcast on or a cup of tea beside you, and the pacing is dead even from start to finish. No difficulty spikes, no fiddly sub-assemblies, just steady placement. The one thing to watch is that loose tiles can nudge out of place before the border frame goes on and pins everything down, so a light touch helps early.

On the parts front, do not expect exotic new molds here, the star of the show is the humble 1x1 round tile in bulk. What you are really buying is a giant, sorted pile of those round tiles across a range of colours, which is a genuinely useful haul for mosaic builders and MOC-makers who want tiles for their own pixel art. The set also throws in a purpose-made tile-removal tool, a small but genuinely clever separator that makes prising tiles back out painless when you want to rebuild a different Beatle. At around four cents a piece it is decent value on paper, though remember most of that count is those little tiles rather than varied bricks, so judge the value as an art canvas plus a tile stockpile rather than a normal set.

Fun facts

01The Beatles was part of the very first wave of LEGO Art sets in 2020, launching alongside Marilyn Monroe, Iron Man and a Star Wars Sith design, and it was the only music-themed one in the group.
02The nine-tile canvas can be rebuilt into any of the four band members, John, Paul, George or Ringo, so one box technically holds four different portraits.
03Because of music licensing, the QR-code soundtrack you listen to while building is a spoken-word audio piece about the band and its history rather than actual Beatles songs.
04The finished portrait measures over 40cm square and is designed to hang on a wall using an included brick-built hanging element, so it functions as real framed decor.