Star Wars

Throne Room Duel & A-Wing

The Emperor's throne room, but the lightsabers hum for you now.

Brick Rated Score

3.7/5

Set 75427 · 2026

Pieces962

Minifigs6

Year2026

Set number75427

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The verdict

This is the set where LEGO's brand new SMART Play electronics meet the most famous confrontation in Star Wars, and the result is genuinely fun to mess around with.

The Imperial March swells when Palpatine takes his throne, the sabers hum during the duel, and the A-wing's engines roar, all with no phone and no app. It's also $159.99 for 962 pieces, which is a lot, so how much you love it comes down to how much you want the sounds. Kids adore it, display purists will wince at the price.

Best for: Star Wars families who want a set that plays back

The full review

What it is

There's something a little magical about setting Palpatine down on his throne and hearing the Imperial March start up without you doing a thing. That's the pitch of the LEGO® SMART Play line, which launched in early 2026, and this set (75427) is its Star Wars flagship. You get the Emperor's throne room from Return of the Jedi, a chunk of Death Star turret, and an A-wing starfighter, all wired up so that sounds and lights fire when the SMART Bricks sense a SMART figure or tag nearby. Luke and Vader's sabers hum when they duel, the A-wing's engines roar when it flies, and it all runs on its own, no phone and no app in sight. For a kid who grew up making those noises with their mouth, having the set do it instead is honestly a bit of a thrill.

The catch

Now the price. This is $159.99 for 962 pieces, and there's no gentle way to say it, that's steep. A normal LEGO set this size lands closer to a hundred dollars, so you're paying a real premium for the two SMART Bricks, the charger, the three SMART minifigures and the five SMART tags. If you're the kind of builder who buys a set to admire the engineering, or to put it on a shelf and never touch it again, most of that premium is money spent on features you'll switch off. The build itself is solid but not the reason you're here. It's a play set first, and it knows it. There's also the newness factor to sit with. These are rechargeable electronic bricks, so unlike a normal set there's a battery in the mix, and while LEGO says it's built to last years, only time really tells with a brand new system like this.

Who it's for

So who ends up happy with this one. Families with Star Wars mad kids, without a doubt. This is the set that gets played with every single day, that turns a quiet afternoon into a full throne room showdown with sound effects included, and the early word from parents backs that up. If you're a display collector or a value hunter counting your cents per piece, you'll probably want to wait for a normal A-wing set and skip the electronics entirely. But if the idea of the Imperial March swelling on its own makes you grin, and you've got a young fan in the house, this is a lovely, genuinely novel way into the hobby. Just go in knowing exactly what you're paying the premium for.

The parts story

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

The build splits into three little scenes, which keeps it moving. You put together the Emperor's throne and its raised platform, the wedge of Death Star turret with its window, and the A-wing itself, and each section gets its own SMART component tucked in as you go. The throne room work is mostly angled panels and greebling to sell that dark, cavernous Imperial look, while the A-wing is the more satisfying vehicle build with a proper cockpit and those distinctive twin engines. It's an approachable build aimed at nine and up, so nothing here will slow down an experienced builder, but the fun is watching the electronics come alive as each piece clicks into place rather than at the very end.

The real story of this set isn't a rare printed tile, it's the SMART Bricks. There are two of them here, each packing sensors, an accelerometer and a tiny speaker into a chunkier-than-normal brick, plus a wireless charging pad, five SMART tags and three SMART minifigures that the bricks recognise by magnetic sensing. The bricks even talk to each other wirelessly to sync up sounds. On the figure front you get six in total, five of them unique to this set, headlined by Luke, Vader and Palpatine, with two Royal Guards and an A-wing pilot rounding it out. The plain part-count value is where it stings, roughly 16.6 cents a piece against a normal set's ten or eleven, so you are very much paying for the tech, not the plastic.

Fun facts

01SMART Play was unveiled at CES in early 2026 as LEGO's first self-contained electronic-brick system, running a custom chip smaller than a single stud with more than twenty patented world-firsts.
02The two SMART Bricks charge wirelessly on a shared pad and talk to each other over a Bluetooth-based mesh LEGO calls BrickNet, so the sounds stay in sync with no phone or app involved.
03Sit SMART Palpatine on his throne and the Imperial March plays, while the sabers hum when Luke and Vader duel and the engines roar when the A-wing takes off.
04The set recreates the Emperor's throne room confrontation from Return of the Jedi and was designed by Peter Carmichael, launching March 1, 2026.