Cambridge Brainbox ELKT92100 Electric Toy

A great starter set. All parts click together and can be put in different combinations. Bought as a present for a 6 year old boy and he loves it

This is a great toy - I initially bought it by mistake thinking it was for five year olds but the box says age 8. Nevertheless we decided to give it to our son for Christmas to see how he would get on with it and he absolutely loves it - best present of the year. Admittedly with a five year old you might well want to supervise them so that they don't blow any fuses or break any parts but it is a very educational and fun set.We've since bought the same set for two other children as birthday presents and will investigate the other products for our son in due course.The parts all clip together well and there is an explanatory booklet which is very clear.Since making this review a few months back I am pleased to say that my son still loves the set. We had one problem which was wiring on the red LED part breaking as my son is a little heavy handed. No problem as I emailed the manufacturer and they came back to me really quickly with details of how to get a replacement part at a reasonable cost.

This Kit is actually called Primary 2 Electronics.This is a great idea with excellent play value as well as being educational. My cousin's son certainly appears to enjoy it.It is very quick to assemble the components in different configurations and experiment. And the sound generator andflying fan make it great fun.Unfortunately the manual appears to be aimed at teachers rather than the child using it. Which makes it seem a bit less attractive as a home toy. Perhaps there should be two manuals or the pages split L/R for seperate teacher's and child's instructions. The build quality does leave a bit to be desired. On the kit I received there was one battery pack with a faulty connection (quickly rectified by the marketplace seller, TheLearningPlace, sending a quick replacement).The stud connections do not seem to be always 100% reliable and as others have said it can be tricky to fit thecomponents on the baseboard, at least when new. For a kit aimed at teaching the principles of circuits it is a shame that the symbols printed on the components does not always reflect what is inside them. The main glaring fault is that there is a 3 way connector strip without any internal connection (I never did work out what this was for) but which still has the white line printed on top, making it totally indistinguishable from the working ones. Guaranteed hours of frustration, and a cause of numerous returns!Find and mark this one very obviously as soon as you get the kit. Similarly the LED lights have series resistors for essential protection (not shown on the symbol) and the battery packs have a very obvious protective fuse, which according to the printed symbol, appears to be across the battery terminals. The sound chip is an unmarked block. There is nothing marked on it, or decribed in the manual, to indicate what the function of the terminals is (These will be specific power, speaker and control pins). You are just shown how to wire it up. There should be some sort of table in the manual to show what sounds are produced by the different configurations of control pins. The nature of this kit encourages experimentation, and it may well be possible to misconnect this block to destruction - others appear to have done so!. Finally there are no spare bulbs or fuses in the kit. The addition of fuses to the battery packs are H&S overkill as they will blow immediately if you accidently make a short, however briefly, when connecting up. And the low voltage (2.5V) bulbs in a kit with two 3V batteries are a liability for boys with enquiring minds......8/10 , but could do better

I bought this for my 8 year old son for Christmas and he loves it. Although a very competent reader, he prefers me to read out the instructions and ask him the questions. I actually enjoy us working on this together. At the end of each section you get given a 'situation' and have to build an appropriate circuit to meet that situation. My son and I struggled for a bit on one of them but perseverance, discussion and trouble shooting got us there in the end. It was good fun and my son has learned a lot already. I would definately recommend this. The pieces are very strong and brightly coloured, as well as number coded and the instructions are clear and well set out.

Not bad, and provides a fair amount of scientific explanation understandable by ages 7+ I'd say, but if I'd known that I could have a product almost exactly the same but with more interesting experiments for just £10 more I'd've passed. That's what I found in "John Adams Hot Wires Electronics Kit" – experiments including light/dark-activated switches, radio transmitting/receiving, even logic switches. On the plus side, all the parts of Cambridge Brainbox's kit will connect easily with the John Adams kit – but the latter also has a less fiddly board, which was an element I glossed over in other reviews of Brainbox that I read here before my purchase. It's not necessarily important (you can build the circuits without the board), but if you're trying to keep your circuits neat then it's very useful – so especially in classroom settings, I'd say!

This is definitely our best Christmas present for our 6 year old son, he adores it. It's very robust, the book is very clear and it's enormous fun. He is really getting the idea of building circuits and the only downside is that he wants more bits for it and to push it further already. Excellent value in terms of fun per £!

I read all the favourable reviews before choosing this product, and am pleased to say that it has totally lived up to my expectations.My 6 year old son sat down with his dad on Christmas day and got some initial help with understanding how it works. But he was soon carrying out electrical connections all by himself - proudly showing me light bulbs, a fan and a buzzer. He went back to this toy on several occasions throughout the Christmas holiday, and I am confident that he will enjoy getting the kit out again in the future.Quite obviously, this has educational value because it teaches children about electrical circuits. It gives your child the chance to use his/her initiative in working out their own circuits. It is creative because at the end of the activity they are rewarded with a light, or a sound which they have cause to happen. It is also fun, because it looks bright and colourful.