Solid review as usual; but I feel like 2 stars for the looks is harsh. For me, it looks great especially considering its Technic. There's no denying that its recognizable; it definitely looks like the source material to me. The fact that its the first Technic Space set since that shuttle is enough for me to be interested.
Surprised you didn't compare it to the Curiosity set at all. I was expecting a slight upgrade to that set but this is massively different. Over twice the size and completely different construction. I bought Curiosity just so I could understand the Rocker-Bogie system. This includes that and now all of the wheels are steerable with a brand new mechanism. Just amazing to my mind.
This looks like such a cool set to have and would be even better if LEGO could of figured out how to maybe motorize it and maybe end up bumping up the price to accommodate that.
Exactly my thoughts about the model! The steering has an awfull amount of play and the wheel frames have no side stability at all. Thank you for another great review! Will still get the Set tho. Can't help it, I'm a space-nut after all. :)
I really wish that Lego would produce the technic connector pins in a greater range of colours. It would make their usage of exposed technic elements far less noticeable and the final product would look better.
The suspensions doesn't work when the set is pushed, because it reality all wheels are powered, which cooperates with this kind of suspension Pushing it makes it less stable because forces are acting in reverse (pushing wheel over surface vs pulling surface under wheel) This kind of suspension can climb over obstacles up to three times of wheel diameter (Imagine you car going over curb three times the wheel diamater). That's also one of the reasons why the rover is so slow
It's such a massive missed Opportunity to not include a few pages describing which part represents which instrument and what function it serves on the real rover. However, I'm sure such a document could be compiled with a bit of Ingenuity and Perseverance. Hopefully, a fellow Sojourner of this blue planet, a kindred Spirit has already done so to quell the innate Curiosity in all LEGO builders.
Heh, nice pun... I feel like the more gradual instructions are perfect for people with ADHD. This set is a worthy successor to the not-so-old 21104 CUUSOO Mars Curiosity Rover set from 2014.
I had my doubts about that rickety suspension+steering setup and it seems they have been confirmed. The mechanisms are genious, but Lego bricks are just not the right medium for that. Thanks for the review!
Unfortunately this has been my experience with any kit involving steering or suspension. I lost most of my Interest in building my own stuff over the years because of that. Unfortunately there's really no good fix and ultimately I suppose I'd rather see these kits exist with the problems than not exist at all.
Thanks for the review. I've done some tests with that kinda suspension before, and I suspect ('cos we know it works) that it is only good if the wheels are all powered. Which makes me wonder what has happened when some of the wheels have locked in previous missions. I've been meaning to build a model to test this....
A couple fun facts about Perseverance. The white "box" with the blue 1x1 round tile on the sampler drill. It is developed in Denmark by Technical University of Denmark or DTU. The second one being the black sticker applied on the arch frame above the rtg powersupply. On Perseverance, the plaque has 3 silicon chips with nearly 11 million names nano engraved on them from people worldwide that signed up to have their names engraved on the chips. Im actually one of those people and after i had signed up, received a "flight ticket" to Mars as proof of registration.
Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the suspension and steering would work a lot better on rough terrain if the wheels were powered (as is obviously the case in the real thing). It's a shame there's no low-profile lego hub motor that could be used to run the wheels, since powering them from a central location on the chassis would be almost impossible, especially when you already have that complex steering and suspension system.
Well, i know it wasnt exactly a technic set as it was under the discovery theme, but the previous rover was still mostly a technic build, isnt it? Btw, what do you think about it?
How do you see a chance to motorise it? Mine still seats in bags, didn't have time to assemble it, maybe on weekend. I was truly disappointed with the instructions, they could have put there so much interesting info about the mission. Like you wrote in the review it was a missed opportunity (pun intended;). My Technic AR app still doesn't have rover, there is only porsche and shelby:/. I tried to reinstall it but no luck, nothing changes. Why did you give Building Experience only 2 stars? Is it boring or nothing interesting about techniques? I thought that due to being something unusal for technics the building experience will actually be fun.
Well, you can probably motorize the two arm functions, but driving the wheels borders on impossible. As for the building experience, I didn't see anything fancy and there's a lot of repetition, and a lot of LEGO assuming you're a dumb person. I've had early beta access to the app, so I guess that's not public yet.
I remember Lego technic instruction where you had to add like 20 pieces (10 different ones) in a single step. Dunno what this says about people these days. Though to be fair, I did play/build with Lego for as long as I can remember. But still, people can't be that dumb, right? ....right?
