By now, you might have heard about Lego Smart Play system, which Lego calls the biggest evolution in brick-building technology in 50 years. You may have even heard of the Smart Bricks from your kids. 

Or perhaps you saw Mashable’s own CES coverage of the unveiling, when Lego made its first appearance at the world’s biggest technology convention to officially announce Smart Play and Smart Bricks.

Lego’s first Smart Play sets, which are all part of the Lego Star Wars line, are now available for pre-order and will start shipping in early March.

Whether you know what Smart Play or Smart Bricks are or not, you probably have some questions: More tech for my children? Is this safe? Will their privacy be respected? Should I get Lego Smart Bricks for them?

Mashable is here to help.

What are Lego Smart Play and Lego Smart Bricks?

Lego, the iconic 93-year-old toy company, isn’t known for computer chips or gyroscopes or sensors; they’re known for their simple multi-colored interconnecting building bricks and square Lego people. Yet, at CES, Lego announced they were bringing those chips and gyroscopes, and sensors to their building bricks and Lego people with their Smart Play line, which includes Smart Bricks, Smart Tags, and Smart Minifigures.

Smart what now? Let’s break it all down.

Lego Smart Bricks
Credit: Lego

Smart Bricks are the new Lego brick with all that previously mentioned tech inside. They work just like any other Lego brick when it comes to building. Smart Bricks can snap into any regular Lego brick and vice versa. However, Smart Bricks can also play sounds, light up in different colors, and interact with the world around them.

For example, if you connect a Smart Brick to a Lego airplane, the plane will make different sounds depending on whether you’re a kid flying the plane right-side up or upside down. If the Lego plane is “crashing,” the Smart Brick will make screaming noises as if it’s emitting from the Lego minifigure pilot.

Smart Tags are a thin, flat surface brick that snaps onto your Lego creation and informs the Smart Brick about what it’s connected to. Using that airplane example, you’d need the Smart Tag for that Lego airplane in order for the Smart Brick to know how to make those corresponding airplane wooshing sounds.

Smart Minifigures are Lego minifigures built specifically for Smart Bricks. The Smart Tag is basically built right onto the figure.

And Smart Play is basically just the name of this entire new interactive Lego toy line.

Lego Star Wars Smart Play TIE Fighter
Credit: Lego

Are Lego Smart Bricks safe for my kids?

Generations of kids have played with Legos without any sort of tech add-on. Now, our children will experience a whole new Lego. And, of course, whenever technology is introduced to children, there are certain concerns to be watchful for.  Should parents be concerned?

The main worry is usually regarding privacy. Lego says its Smart Bricks technology does not connect to the internet in any way and is completely offline. Lego doesn’t collect any data. There are no cameras or audio recording devices inside or connected to Smart Bricks.

Another potential issue when introducing tech to kids is whether it’ll affect their playtime or development. This isn’t as straightforward as the privacy concerns, as each parent will likely have their own opinion on this. However, Lego said that it created the Smart Play line in order to enhance physical play. It’s not meant to take over a child’s imagination or creativity. There’s no AI involved, no app that Smart Bricks need to connect to, and there are no screens involved at all.

Kids still have to build their Lego creations in the Smart Play line.

A perfect example of Lego Smart Play enhancing physical play was demonstrated by Lego at CES. Lego had two children race their Lego racecars. Thanks to the Smart Play capabilities, the Smart Brick at the finish line was able to light up with the color of the racecar that won the race. In a neck and neck race, Smart Play can help avoid any potential conflict that might arise between two highly competitive kids, leaving time for more building or racing and less arguing..

What will the Lego Smart Play sets look like?

Lego seems to have a good idea of how to sell parents and kids alike on their new Smart Bricks technology. The first Lego Smart Play sets are all Lego Star Wars related.

Lego Star Wars Smart Play X-Wing
Credit: Lego

At CES, Lego announced three Lego Star Wars Smart Play sets: Luke’s X-Wing, Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter, and the Emperor’s Throne Room Duel.

Since then, Lego has announced five more Lego Smart Play sets — and once again, they’re all Lego Star Wars related: Millennium Falcon, Mos Eisley Cantina, Luke’s Landspeeder, Yoda’s Hut, and Attack on Endor.

Lego Star Wars Smart Play Throne Room Duel
Credit: Lego

The Landspeeder set is the most affordable, priced at $39.99. The Throne Room Duel is the most pricey of the Lego Star Wars Smart Play sets at $159.99.

When will Lego release Smart Play sets?

Lego will release the first Smart Play sets on March 1, but fans can pre-order them now at Lego and Amazon.

Make no mistake. Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model wouldn’t exist without hatewatchers on TikTok.

Though America’s Next Top Model premiered in 2003, content creators on TikTok have been looking back on the competition show with damning critiques of its problematic photo challenges, fat-shaming tactics, and the harsh words from the show’s panel of judges. First, Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model delves into these critiques, featuring TikTok snippets to give a sense of the avalanche of criticism. Then, Reality Check‘s directors Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan (also co-executive producers) offer new interviews with ANTM host Tyra Banks, plus former ANTM judges — including photographer Nigel Barker, photoshoot director Jay Manuel, and runway walk coach Miss J. Alexander — where they’re asked to face the TikTok critiques on camera.

I watched all three episodes of Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model, totaling just shy of three hours. Props to Loushy and Sivan, this mini-series has a sensational understanding of its audience, who want to see not only the ANTM’s most shocking moments but also the famous judges answering for them. And while this doc is definitely tapping into hate-watching, Reality Check satisfies by asking the hard questions — even if the answers leave much to be desired.

Who is interviewed in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model?

Miss J in “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.”
Credit: Netflix

Among the show’s judges, Tyra Banks, Miss J. Alexander, Jay Manuel, Nigel Barker, and model manager Nolé Marin give talking-head interviews. Also featured in new interviews are director/developer Ken Mok and TV executive Dawn Ostroff. 

Former contestants also share their story in Reality Check, including Ebony Haith (Cycle 1), Giselle Samson (Cycle 1), Joanie Sprague (Cycle 6), Whitney Thompson (Cycle 10), Dani Evans (Cycle 6), Bre Scullark (Cycle 5), Dionne Walters (Cycle 8), Keenyah Hill (Cycle 4), and Shandi Sullivan (Cycle 2). They share insights into the brutal truth behind their reality TV experiences, and it’s not pretty.

Who’s not interviewed in Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model?

“America’s Next Top Model” stage is lit but empty.
Credit: Netflix

The most notable absences are Janice Dickinson and Tiffany Richardson, who both have segments dedicated to their time on the reality competition show. 

As a judge, Dickinson was vicious in her opinions, insulting the contestants to their faces and unapologetically writing them off as ugly or fat. Jay Manuel, who throughout the doc series will defend the show and make excuses for many of its most controversial moments, notes he didn’t like Dickinson’s brutal approach to critiques and tried to push back with his own. However, he also suggests that her attitude reflected a segment of the modeling industry, and thus had its place on America’s Next Top Model.

Did the critiques get too personal? It seemed so for Tiffany Richardson in Cycle 4. She is the contestant whose dressing down from Banks became a meme: “We were rooting for you.” And while a substantial part of episode 3, titled “We Were Rooting For You,” focuses on this memorable moment, Richardson is not interviewed for Reality Check.

Another surprising absence is Adrianne Curry, the Cycle 1 winner of ANTM, who went on to use that spotlight to become an actress and TV personality. A less noticeable but curious omission, Kenya Barris — who co-created America’s Next Top Model and produced it ahead of creating hit sitcoms like Black-ish, Grown-ish, and Mixed-ish — is not interviewed or even mentioned. 

America’s Next Top Model’s judges offer excuses, not apologies. 

Jay Manuel in “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model”
Credit: Netflix

In episode one, Jay Manuel says, “It was such a different time,” when speaking to the representation that he and Miss J, as queer people of color, brought to the show. However, this phrase, used to express how America’s Next Top Model broke boundaries, is also employed by nearly every ANTM judge to justify how the contestants were treated. 

Reality Check begins by swiftly recounting how Banks, as a Black woman, faced prejudice in her modeling career due to the fashion industry’s narrow definition of marketable beauty. With America’s Next Top Model, she wanted to open the door for other women to pursue careers in modeling and to show the world the breadth of beauty. However, the very premise of the show set every contestant up to be picked apart for how she looked, from her teeth to her skin to her weight, and on and on. As the face of the show, Banks was frequently seen supporting the very stringent view of beauty she claimed to be breaking down. 

In this first episode of Reality Check, Banks is dismissive of people who criticize the ANTM but “didn’t watch it back then” when it first aired. She claims that binge-watching on streaming led to people rediscovering the show, and “overnight,” the attitude towards it changed to “look how wrong this is.” She ignores that America’s Next Top Model sparked discourse as it aired about the outrageous stunts pulled and the brutal pursuit of the picture-perfect shot.

Banks argues it’s “important to understand where [ANTM] came from,” and so begins the finger-pointing to 2000s culture that was obsessed with skinny women and heroin chic. The early 2000s were a cultural nightmare in that regard, judging every remotely famous woman who dared to have a less-than-flat stomach. But as a show that literally promised to present the next big name in modeling, ANTM bolstered that fixation on weight through their determination of what is beautiful or not.

Banks won’t acknowledge that; instead she blames pop culture, the modeling industry, her ANTM colleagues (claiming she had no power whenever a tough choice was made), and the audience that tuned in. “We kept pushing, and we kept creating more, more, more,” she said of bizarre photo shoots. “You guys were demanding it. The viewers wanted more and more and more.” And with every finger-pointing, Reality Check rebrands Banks as a reality TV villain, just as TikTok has been saying.

What scandals does Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model get into?

Nigel Barker in “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model.”
Credit: Netflix

Reality Check digs into plenty of America’s Next Top Model’s most shocking moments. 

ANTM‘s most disturbing photo shoots

Episode 2 touches on a barrage of gross or problematic photo shoots, including one where the contestants wore meat, another where unhoused people were treated like set dressing, and, of course, the race-swap challenge, where models were painted and dressed to represent an alternate ethnicity.

In this segment of Reality Check, Banks does say, “Yeah, there’s some dumb shit,” but also defends the race-bending shoot by saying, “This is my way to show the world that brown and Black is beautiful.” 

Several models recount how their photoshoot assignments could feel cruel. One particularly horrid example was in Cycle 8, when the models were tasked to be gorgeous homicide victims. Dionne Walters, who was challenged to pose as a woman shot in the head, points out the producers knew her family had a tragic history with gun violence.

“I think they wanted to see some sort of mental breakdown,” she tells Reality Check, noting she’s proud she didn’t give them that. While apologies are few and far between in this mini-series, ANTM director Mok did say of this particular photo shoot, “I take full responsibility for that shoot. It was a mistake. It was crazy. That one I look back and like, ‘You’re an idiot.'”

ANTM makeovers that demanded cosmetic surgery

More disturbing, however, is how the contestants, many of whom were young and hadn’t been away from home before, were put into high-pressure situations that had lasting impacts on their lives. 

Dani Evans and Joanie Sprague from Cycle 6 recount how the show demanded they get cosmetic dental surgery to continue in the competition. The former was pressured by Banks to get the gap between her two front teeth filled. The other went through hours of painful surgery to get rid of her snaggletooth. 

To this, Banks replies, “I’ve actually apologized for the issue with Dani and what happened. That was between a rock and a hard place for me, because there were agents that would tell me she will not work with those teeth. It’s just not going to happen. That’s what they told me… But hindsight is 20/20 for all of us. It just so happens that a lot of things that are 20/20 for me happened in front the world.” 

Evans responds in her Reality Check interview, “Bull fucking shit.”

Sexual harassment on ANTM

Tyra Banks attends”SMiZE & DREAM” Hot Ice Cream First Taste at Artechouse NYC on December 10, 2025 in New York City.
Credit: Manny Carabel / Getty Images

Other contestants, including Keenyah Hill from Cycle 4, share how the pressure to keep off weight was intense, leading to girls passing out. Footage from her season shows how Manuel had her pose as “Gluttony” for one photo shoot challenge, then as an elephant in another, with the judges calling her fat in critiques. 

Beyond that, when Hill was sexually harassed by a male model on a photo shoot, she was chastised by the judges for speaking up. In the America’s Next Top Model episode, Banks told Evans from the judge’s panel she should have said something “in a fun way, where he knows to back the heck up, but it doesn’t put static in the air.” Essentially, Banks suggested it was on the model being harassed to manage others’ comfort about what happened. 

In her interview for Reality Check, Hill gets emotional watching this footage back, pointing out that the male model is groping her legs in the photo that producers chose for judging. 

Looking back on this incident for Reality Check, Banks admits, “It should’ve been stopped down. We now all understand the protections that women need. And so I say to Keenyah, ‘Boo-boo, I am so sorry. None of us knew. Network executives didn’t know. And I did the best that I could at that time.’ But she deserved more. She did.”

“We were rooting for you” wasn’t what it seemed.  

We all know the meme. But those of us who watched Tiffany Richardson get screamed at by an uncharacteristically furious Tyra Banks remember how shocking that moment was. Reality Check provides context by presenting footage from America’s Next Top Model. Tiffany’s arc had been one of a bad girl redeemed. Previously cut from the show because of a physical altercation, she was back and thriving in Cycle 4. Then came the teleprompter challenge. 

The contestants were tasked with reading from a teleprompter without first looking at the copy. Many stumbled on designer names like Hermès, and Tiffany angered the judges by rejecting this challenge, which was clearly designed to make these aspiring models look stupid. When she was told she was no longer in the running to be America’s Next Top Model, instead of crying, Richardson laughed as she said goodbye to her fellow contestants. And then Banks went off on her. 

On TV, the dressing down was intense, in large part because it broke from Banks’ persona as a gentle, smizing mentor to the contestants. Within the televised rant, Banks said she was yelling but insisted it came from a place of love.

In Reality Check, Banks admits she went “too far.” Manuel reveals that Banks said “a lot more” than what was shown and “some of the things that were said were really not well-intentioned.” He declines to explain what else was said. But Marin adds, “All I know is next week we had all the lawyers on set.”

In an archival interview with E!, Richardson said, “If she loved me, she wouldn’t have shown that the way she showed it. If you love someone, you won’t humiliate them.”

The reality behind Shandi’s slut-shaming

Reality Check uncovers the harsh reality that Cycle 2 contestant Shandi Sullivan faced after the show made a spectacle of her “cheating” on her boyfriend. America’s Next Top Model presented Shandi’s story as a one-night-stand that betrayed her boyfriend back home — and was caught on tape. The morning after, Tyra had an unexpected “girl talk” with the models (while cameras rolled), talking about how bad she felt when she was cheated on. When Shandi called her boyfriend to confess, she wept while he called her a “bitch” on national television

In her interview for Reality Check, Sullivan reveals that she was blackout drunk that night. She notes that while camera crews filmed what happened, no one intervened. She felt the show exploited her to make “good TV,” which is a refrain echoed across the model interviews. 

For her part, Banks distances herself from the incident by saying that part of production wasn’t her territory. Meanwhile, Mok argues, “We treated Top Model as a documentary,” to explain why no one intervened. However, Sullivan notes the show’s makers only gave her a phone to call her boyfriend after she threatened to quit the show. And then, they only gave the phone to her if she’d take the call with cameras rolling. She also reveals that after the show, strangers would slut-shame her on the street in front of her boyfriend.

Calling America’s Next Top Model a documentary is intellectually dishonest, as it implies the producers weren’t intervening at other times. But they were. His argument that the girls signed on knowing they’d be filmed at all times is infuriatingly insufficient. If these girls were in a fishbowl, even if they agreed to that, they had no say on if someone shakes the fishbowl to see their reaction. They were all pretty meat to the America’s Next Top Model grinder.

Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model is now streaming on Netflix.

Best Buy Presidents’ Day deals at a glance:

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The Best Buy Presidents’ Day sale is officially live. The official sale runs through Feb. 16, meaning you can grab discounts on Apple, Sony, and Samsung right now.

A quick heads-up: Amazon is matching most of these prices, so your decision really comes down to shipping speed and preference. I combed through the listings to find the best deals on TVs, laptops, and headphones you can shop now.

Best TV deal

Why we like it

Insignia is Best Buy’s house brand, and while people love to hate on generic labels, the 55-inch Insignia Class F50 Series has a pretty good track record. It’s known for being budget-friendly, but it doesn’t lack in performance. I’m considering buying this for my living room because the price is right and it hits all the specs I want, like DTS Virtual-X audio and Fire TV integration. It currently holds a 4.7-star rating across thousands of reviews on Best Buy and Amazon, proving that you don’t need a premium nameplate to get a reliable, wall-mountable smart TV.

More TV deals

Shop more Presidents’ Day TV deals at Best Buy.

Best laptop deal

Why we like it

The Yoga 7i gives you enough screen real estate for multitasking while also being portable enough to throw in your bag, and the 360-degree hinge lets you prop it up for movies without the keyboard getting in the way. At $400 off, the specs are hard to beat: you get the snappy Intel Core Ultra 7 and a 1TB SSD, which is double the storage you typically see in this price bracket. It’s a little heavy to use as a handheld tablet for long, but as a flexible workstation, it’s solid.

More laptop and tablet deals

• Acer 15.6-inch Chromebook 315 (Intel Celeron N4500, 4GB LPDDR4X, 64GB eMMC) — $129 $299 (save $170)

• HP 14-inch Chromebook (Intel Celeron N4500, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) — $139 $329 (save $190)

• Samsung Galaxy Tab A9+ (WiFi, 64GB) — $139.99 $219.99 (save $80)

• Lenovo 14-inch IdeaPad Slim 3 (MediaTek Kompanio 520 2022, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC) — $169 $399 (save $230)

• Apple 11-inch iPad (A16 chip, WiFi, 128GB) — $299 $349 (save $50)

• HP 15.6-inch Full HD Touch-Screen Laptop (AMD Ryzen 5 752OU, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $319.99 $599.99 (save $280)

• ASUS 14-inch CX34 FHD Chromebook Plus (Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD) — $379.99 $599 (save $219.01)

• Samsung 15.6-inch Galaxy Book4 (Intel Core 7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $499.99 $899.99 (save $400)

• HP OmniBook X Flip 2-in-1 (AMD Ryzen AI 340, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) — $549.99 $849.99 (save $300)

• Apple 13-inch MacBook Air (M4, 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD) — $899 $999 (save $100)

Shop more Presidents’ Day laptop deals at Best Buy.

Best headphone deal

Why we like it

Read our full review of the Apple AirPods Pro 3.

There’s a reason we named these the “Best AirPods” in our 2026 headphone roundup. Apple claims the noise cancellation is twice as powerful as the previous generation, and our testing backs that up — reviewer Adam Doud found they could silence a crowded room instantly. They also feature a new built-in heart rate monitor and live translation, making them a major functional upgrade over the Pro 2. At $40 off, they’re an easy buy.

More headphone deals

Shop more Presidents’ Day headphone deals at Best Buy.