Customer Ratings & Reviews

Didn’t work when purchased. My son waited so long for this and cried when I tried to return it so we kept it broken. Beyond disappointed. Lights wouldn’t stay on. Pretty sure there was a short because it would occasionally work if he tapped it or shook it.

Cool features if it were to work. Opened it last week to try it for the first time and it does not work. It’s a shame my wife collects all Star Wars and Star Trek novelty items.

Back in 1977, I was a fan of Star Wars before anyone had ever heard of it. I had gotten many press kits, photos and program books from a friend that was a theatre manager months before the first film was released. I sold a lot of it at a Sci-Fi convention before opening day so I knew it was going to be big. Like an idiot, I got to the Loew's Astor Plaza in NY (the largest screen at the time) at 6AM, and was the first one on line and that became a tradition for me for all the Star Wars films. I have been a Star Wars junkie ever since. Between the books, audiobooks, comics, animated series and movies, Star Wars has been a big part of my life. I have owned many lightsabers over the years including the original hilt that I owned prior to Star Wars using it in the movie (it was a Graflex Flash Gun that was attached to my Graflex camera). Of course it didn't light up or make any noises but it was authentic to say the least. Over the years there have been many lightsabers depicted in the movies and the beams were different colors depending on which characters owned them. Most of the lightsabers I owned each lit up in a single color. This Lightsaber Academy Interactive Battle Lightsaber can change color depending on which character you train with. The lightsaber (which needs 3 AAA batteries) connects to your phone by Bluetooth using their app and walks you through battle training. Using the gyroscope in the lightsaber it is able to determine the angle of each strike and movement so it can grade and score your accomplishments. You can train with Master Yoda, Darth Vader, Rey, Kylo Ren,Luke Skywalker and Mace Windu. The hilt opens up to reveal a Kyber Crystal that glows matching the color of the beam but that is just for show. The lightsaber itself makes noises and has various sayings as you do the training. The app talks as well using various character voices and you can train following the motions on the app and play against practice droids and eventually battle against other friends who have the same lightsaber. At my age, I don't plan to play against anyone but it is good exercise to move around and follow the onscreen prompts. I would really recommend mirroring your phone to a large TV as it is difficult to watch your phone and follow the moves. Also make sure you have plenty of clearance where you swing the lightsaber or you will bang into things as you move. It's a fun toy and if I can enjoy it, I'm sure children will love to get one as well. May the Force Be With You!

My daughter really likes this lightsaber so far. She’s barely tried the training part in the app, but it seems like that will be fun to go through every now and then, and try out training/competing with different characters. (The app tracks things like angle and swing, etc. Pretty neat.) I suspect she’ll honestly have more fun though simply being able to just play pretend with the lightsaber by itself. It lights up, makes noises and sounds, has a nice look to it, and is a great entryway into making a kid feel like they’re in the movies. I’m sure some adult collectors will gobble these up as well and probably will not be disappointed. I’m not able to compare it to what else is out there, but I think this will strike a good balance between being interactive with a screen, but not completely dependent upon it to have fun. Obviously, given the app experience, you might want to skip this one if you’re planning to give it as a gift to a child who doesn’t have access to a smartphone/tablet. Even then, be prepared to help them through the process as you’ll have to “tune” the lightsabers sensors, among other things, to get it up and fully running.

It does not stay on long at all. I have spent more in batteries for it then on the actual product. Should be discounted and rethought!

I have a 5 and 8 year old and they have had hours of fun with this toy. The nice part is they can play with it stand alone or with the app. On stand alone they like switching between the characters and using it as Red, Green or Blue. The sound effects are great and when they strike something the saber turns to white. On the app, its very responsive and syncs well with my iphone. The kids like going through the training and the objectives, but the battles are a fail. The battle is too complicated and none of us can really figure out who's winning and why. This next piece of advise is due to the lack of good instructions... we could not for the life of us figure out how to turn it off. After searching youtube we figured it out that its the clear button that the instructions tell you to hold down to disconnect. So I am giving it 4 stars because it has supplied them with a lot of fun but the app is just o.k.

This is a fun toy to play with - has some option to change saber color!! The construction is all plastic and is fairly durable. Batteries are required as this is not rechargable. IT does have a 2 player mode in the app but I wasn't able to test this appropriately as I only have 1 saber. OVerall - this is a toy with an interactive app that detects the position of the saber in accordance with the desired position for the app to do motion. IT was fun for a bit but this is more fun to just play with! It does have built in sounds based on motion so that is great! OVearll a fun toy - buy to play lightsaber wars and pretend and have fun!!!

This is one of the WORST toys I have ever bought from a major manufacturer. We have three of them, and all three of them have been defective. They worked for anywhere from one day to a few weeks, and then they would no longer turn off and/or shut off randomly. It's clear there is little to no quality control and the interior electronics are too fragile for a children's toy.

Okay so I picked this up as a gift for the kids, and I may end up keeping it myself :D As a child (a long time ago in a galaxy far away) I could have never imagined having my own lightsaber. This one certainly looks the part, and the sound effects and colors are great! You can also use the Lightsaber Academy Interactive Battling System app as well. This is designed to let you learn moves from different masters, practice, and eventually "battle" in the app or with your friends in real life *more lightsabers required so I haven't tested this functionality* The technology in the lightsaber can actually track your moves for accuracy, and overall the app is fun, and works well. In the end though most of the time we play with this lightsaber without the app, and it works very well on its own. You have different colors, sounds, and voices. It's also great at stimulating the imagination. I may have to keep this one for myself! This will be a great hit for the kids and Star Wars fans alike this holiday season.

Bottom Line: The saber has enough variety to keep a kid’s attention, but the app experience isn’t great for younger kids. Pros: simple design allows kids to quickly change characters/saber color Cons: app too complicated/not fun; questionable battery life Review: My five year old daughter had been asking for a lightsaber, and I received this on the same day her six year old Star Wars-obsessed cousin was visiting. After installing the batteries and attaching the blade and hilt, I let the two of them have at it. As a role play toy, it was a big hit. Part of the hilt slides down to expose a Kyber crystal that can be pressed to change characters and the blade color (there’s a speaker in the hilt that also provides audio instructions), which, apparently to a six year old, is really, really important. He seemed generally delighted that he could use Yoda’s green saber and then change it to red for Darth Vader (it can also be blue for Rey and purple for Mace Windu). Lightsaber Academy, on the other hand, is definitely too complicated for a five and six year old, and I wonder if older kids would enjoy it. The saber easily connects to the app, where you calibrate the sensors for the game (basically just set it down on a flat surface and wait). Then, you go through “training”, which shows you various stances and ways to hold the light saber. The sensors let you know how well you’ve done, but this wasn’t fun for the kids and they quickly went back to just swinging it around. After my nephew left, my daughter and I attempted a duel against the computer, but neither of us could tell if we were doing well, winning, or losing. Basically you get a static image of your maser (Yoda in our case) and some modest graphics that provide some visual feedback to your performance. After the duel, my daughter just went back to swinging it around by herself and pressing the Kyber crystal every once in a while to change colors. After some modest play for two days, the batteries needed to be replaced. I’m not sure if they used it enough to kill the batteries or if it was left “on”, although I would assume a toy like this had an auto-off.

Fun to play. Product is well made. Easy to install and setup. You can select different master and the color of the blade change with the master you select, very cool. You need a phone with bluetooth to experience the full features but the blade does lights up and produce FX sound based on motion even without the phone.

I’ll start off by saying that this gets a couple shoulder shrugs and a “meh” for me, if I was going to describe this to a friend. The product is advertised for ages six and up, but in reality, you’d need an adult to get the entire experience running. This is designed to be used in accordance to Lightsaber Academy app, so you’ll need a smart phone and access to an App Store for download and pairing, which is I assume most kids that aren’t yet teenagers would have access to. This also means, for the full experience, your child is going to need their own app or smartphone, unless you’re prepared to fork yours over until they’re done playing. For the hardware itself, this isn’t much different from any other toy lightsaber you’ve played with over the past twenty years. A sturdy plastic handle, with the layers of plastic that roll out with the flick of the wrist to form the “sword” edge of the toy. As has been the case, since I was a kid playing with these, the plastic layering gets stuck well over half the time and is incredible frustrating when trying to push the plastic tubing back into each other. Anyone who has played with a plastic lightsaber over the years should know what I’m talking about. It was frustrating then and it’s ever more frustrating now as an adult that this issue has never been fixed. The visual is great, for what it’s worth, when on and extended. The handle, lightsaber, and colors that it displays are great and give off a look similar to what you’d see in the movie. As a stand-alone lightsaber toy, it’s standard. The bread and butter of this product is the Lightsaber Academy App. It’s designed to be a companion app for the lightsaber, differentiating itself from just the stand alone lightsabers that have been on same for decades. The pairing of the app and setup is quite simple, and the app allows you to change the color of your lightsaber, which is a highlight, but the buck largely stops there. The downside to all of this is that the Lightsaber Academy app is frustrating at best. There’s a Training mode that helps get you used to the sword but mostly just has you practice poses, aka just standing there with your lightsaber in some specific position. It’s incredibly easy to get 100%, but even the times that I didn’t get 100%, I’d get a 0% grade, which was puzzling. I’m not sure if you can get between 0 and 100%, but if you can, I never saw it. Additionally, if you get a 0%, there’s no description telling you what was wrong or how to correct it, so you’re kind of left just trying again until you happen to get it right. Lastly, there’s the battle portion of the app, which is the most confusing part of all. It seems to be a rock, paper, scissors game type that plays out based upon how you’re holding the lightsaber. That said... I could never figure out how I was doing, let alone what I was doing, but I was able to win. It’s just really poorly designed. The product doesn’t come with batteries, which isn’t a deal breaker but definitely annoying since most people don’t have spare AAA batteries laying around. Additionally, I don’t really know how they expect you to hold your phone or tablet in hand to use the app, while making motions or poses with the sword. You’ll really need an iPad with a large screen propped up for viewing to make this process the easiest. There is supposedly as an option to play with a friend who is with you and has their own lightsaber. I didn’t have the luxury of trying that out, so I can’t comment on the performance. Pros: good looking lightsaber Cons: batteries not included, the lightsaber always getting stuck when trying to close, and mostly the app, which is the core of the product. Overall, the idea is great, but the execution is a miss.

This product is a fun toy! Fit for any child who is even remotely a star wars fan! The sound effects are realistic, it lights up, and best of all, it connects to an application that allows your child to learn the moves associated with using a "more civilized weapon." The entire lightsaber is light weight, as it is made out of plastic. It also collapses down so the form factor is not bad when you need to store it. The application allows your child to follow through different moves to learn the art of the jedi! All in all, this is a fun toy. My only complaint is that I would like to see it built out of something a little tougher than plastic. This would add to the realism of the toy.

With my daughter being an avid fan of Star Wars and technologically savvy as most kids her age are, I felt like this would be the perfect gift for her upcoming birthday. I decided to bring it to the office and let some of my fellow coworkers give it a whirl. Turns out this isn’t just for kids. It was a difficult task to pry it away from the “big kids” in my office. This light sabre seems rigid and well made. I did have a problem with it randomly turning off. Turns out the battery connection was loose. I had a piece of foam rubber that I placed between the batteries and the compartment door. This resolved the issue. Although it will stand alone, the app is necessary to get the full effect of the device. It’s fun to play against masters and unlock different objectives. I will say that the battles with the masters were a little underwhelming because you don’t actually see the character you’re fighting. The training session were fun though. The light sabre , once calibrated, is responsive and precise. This device can be used in multiplayer fashion with the purchase of a second device. That purchase will be made soon enough. Overall, I would recommend this product for the avid Star Wars fan. A lot of fun and, other than the battery issue, appears to be well built.

Interactive toys, especially those that integrate with smartphones and tablets, are increasingly popular as toy makers look for new ways to get kids to still buy something physical that also leverages their devices. Hasbro has put smarts into their latest toy lightsaber to create the interactive Lightsaber Academy Lightsaber and app experience based on Star Wars. First, the lightsaber. The lightsaber itself is a pretty typical (and well detailed) toy lightsaber with some extra buttons and a slide open section that reveals the kyber crystal (which is also a button). Screw on the emitter with the expandable blade, drop in 3 AAAs and it’s ready to go. One cool thing about this saber is that it has a full RGB led light set, allowing for red, green, blue, or white colors (when all of the lights are on). It even does purple for Mace Windu! This is important for functions in the app. The lightsaber can also be a standalone toy if it isn’t connected to the app. In this mode pressing the kyber crystal changes the voice prompts and blade color. Since it has full spectrum LEDs it will even flash white when it impacts something, complete with clash sound effects. Overall this is a pretty great toy lightsaber, app or no app. For sensors, this thing is packed. A gyroscope, accelerometer, and even a barometer are all in here, allowing the lightsaber to track your movements with a fair degree of accuracy, which is essential for the app and lightsaber to work. The app is a nice looking piece of software. Install it on your device, start it, and it is ready to connect to the Lightsaber. Pairing was straightforward, power up the lightsaber, press the action button above the main switch, and it connects to the app. The voice prompts in the saber and the app make this part easy. Once connected, the fun begins! To get started I picked a master and the training was underway. The app will prompt you to “tune” the lightsaber by laying it on a flat surface, this allows the sensors to calibrate before getting started. The training consists of stances with some interludes of more action like slashing at combat droids. Each stance starts with a holding calibration step where you point the light saber up from the waist and aim it at a target and hold it there. This is to create a point of reference to track the motion that comes next. After you are directed to either move from that position into a stance, or to move to a start position for one of the motion moves. This is where the system could have used more work. Even though the app is tracking your moves, it doesn’t provide feedback in real time. Instead you see a replay with an orange line telling you where you were out of position. After the stance or motion is complete, you get a percent score and some crystals, force power, and XP. Any attempt unlocks the next stage (at least at the early levels), which is good because the lack of feedback and the difficulty in figuring out some of the angles can be maddening. For example, the low guard stance. It looks like the stance is just to drop the blade down as you are facing the figure showing you what to do, but actually you need to just drop the blade about 45 degrees. Since there isn’t an angle view it’s hard to tell what angles to swing or hold the blade. Other than the orange line during replay and the percent score, there is no feedback about what to do to get better other than to attempt it again. This lack of feedback along with the calibration stance that must be repeated every time starts to sap the fun out of the experience. Another option is to battle a master. This is essentially a rhythm game of slash, block, or force focus to power up an attack to break their block. It’s too bad that for all of the sensors in this thing that the master battles don’t involve some more motion or angles. There is also a two player battle mode which need another lightsaber to do. Overall, this is a fun experience that teaches would-be Jedi some of the stances and moves along with the names of each action, which is cool to see what is used in the movies and TV shows. Kids will enjoy the voice acting and interactions. Some things really hold it back though, the lack of instructive feedback and the non-real time motion animations, combined with some confusing animations on angles for stances, make some parts pretty frustrating. As a toy, the lightsaber is fun and feature rich, and provides a good amount of play with or without the app.

My husband is a huge Star Wars fan, so even though it’s intended for smaller kids, I had to get him this lightsaber. They’ve been many variations of lightsabers in the past but this one seems better made with more intricate details. It’s a bit short for an adult who’s over 6 ft., but my husband LOVED it. We were very intrigued that the sound corresponded with your movements and there were three colors (green, red and blue) to choose from. We both totally enjoyed geeking out by swinging this lightsaber around. I personally wish purple was an option but my husband was fully content with the Vader red. The reasons for not giving 5-stars are: a) it’s supposed to easily retract but got stuck after only a couple of tries and it’s fully extended and won’t retract. b) the recording voice to download the app is annoying when you accidentally click on that button. You’d thinking clicking the same button again would stop that recording but it doesn’t. Other than that, this lightsaber is fun for kids of all ages and will make a great gift.

The kids love to watch the movies and then go act it out. The toy has fun sounds and color changes which is nice. The app gives them objectives and the ability to gamify its use. The head-to-head feature is kinda cool and the motion sensing is overall enjoyable. It's just a fun idea and I think any kid into star wars will have a blast with or without the app. Would have loved to have had something like this when I was 6. Would have been way cooler than beating my friends down with sticks. :)

The kids really enjoy playing with this, but you need to have the right area to use it in. You have to have enough space where you can swing it around without hitting anything, and you also need to be able to prop your phone up where you can see the app while you're swinging the saber around. The position sensors in the saber are pretty good, and the app can tell how close you are to making the prescribed moves with it. The lights and sounds add a lot to the experience, but it's more difficult than it should be to turn off the saber and to exit the game. However, both of those things could be addressed with future updates to the app.

This was a waste of time and money. Don’t buy this.

The Star Wars Lightsaber Academy Interactive Lightsaber is just a really fun toy. I really wish I had this thing when I was 10 years old. From the moment you get going, you select who you want to train under such as Luke Skywalker, Yoda, Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, and others. Then the masters of the force will help you perfect your craft by showing you various moves. Once they show you, you have to demonstrate your ability to execute these moves. It is awesome. The lightsaber assembly is all that really comes in the packaging. The lightsaber does require 3 AAA batteries which are not included. You will also need a small Philips-head screwdriver to open the battery case. You will also need some type of smart device such as an iPhone of iPad to operate it. I was a little worried about playing this on an iPhone due to the size of the screen, but it still works out really well so I don't think you will have any problems. The lightsaber in some ways resembles other simpler toy lightsabers. The actual end is telescoping so it retracts when not in use. The end will light up in red, green, or blue depending on which Jedi you train under. The lightsaber also has accelerometers, gyroscopes, and a barometer so it is able to track you moves. The lightsaber even makes cool sounds as you move it. The Bluetooth connectivity to the smart device was quick and easy. Additionally the in-app calibration of the lightsaber only takes a few seconds,. As mentioned, there is a companion app which goes with this system. The app should be free to download. Once in, the app guides you through a few steps to get up and running and then you are off. Jedis will show you moves and then test you on how well you can mimic the movement. Then there are interactive games which you can do to increase your power with the force. The game is set up for one or two player action. So if someone else has a lightsaber, you can even have battles between people. Kids should have no problems using this system. The in-app controls are simple and most actions can be controlled by motions or by pressing buttons on the lightsaber. The biggest thing is to make sure whoever is using this has enough room. There are some motions that require the person to put the lightsaber over there head and also some swinging from side to side. You just want to make sure not to hit a fan, something on the wall, or another person. This really is a fun toy for the Star Wars universe. It can be a little addictive though trying to level up and do all the moves. It really is hard to put down. I would recommend this to a friend.