I have quite a bit of experience by now. I had heard increasingly good things about Lego competitors, and wanted to get my own impression. In addition to that, I was growing more and more frustrated with Lego’s decreasing quality (and still am, btw). So that’s why I got my first non-lego sets.
My experience so far has been pretty positive. If you do a bit of research beforehand, it’s pretty easy to avoid the crappy stuff.
Piece quality: everything that uses Gobricks pieces is gonna be extremely high quality, higher than Lego in most regards. The clutch power is also a bit stronger than Lego though, so stacking plates can be a bit dangerous. Gobricks pieces are used by a lot of brands, including Mould King and Funwhole for example. For other brands, a bit of research will tell you what to expect in terms of brick quality.
Set quality: how well the sets are designed of course varies wildly, but there’s lots of really awesome stuff out there. Another field where a little research will go a long way. There is a lot of stuff you would never get from Lego, for example Funwhole only does sets with fully integrated, nicely thought through custom lighting kits.
Legality/Morality: There’s lots of brands that just do their own stuff, which is nice and unproblematic. Some brands, like Mould King, apparently sometimes use MOC designs without the creator’s permission, which I try to research beforehand and not buy those sets if that’s the case. Some use IPs like Star Wars without proper licensing, or flat out steal set designs from Lego, which, idk, not that great but also I don’t really care about big corporations losing money over that.
Overall, I would say it’s a little harder to know what you’re getting compared to Lego, even within the same alternative brand. You have to put in a little more research effort, but imo, it’s absolutely worth it, not even only looking at the price.
Edit: Just noticed I should probably provide some examples of what I’ve actually tried so far. Give me a sec.
Edit 2: Alright, here’s a couple examples so far:
Mould King Botanical Garden. This was the first major set I got, really happy with it. It’s a MOC, but officially licensed from the designer. Looks awesome, lots of details. Construction is a little flimsy at times, but it’s Gobricks pieces so it still holds together very well.
Funwhole Lakeside Lodge This one is just awesome. Looks amazing, interesting build. Also Gobricks pieces, although I would have preferred the lower clutch power of Lego pieces here since it’s a lot of plate stacking.
Sembo Flowers Got a couple different flowers from Sembo, they were all good. I think they’re also Gobricks, but not 100% sure - the clutch power at least had no trouble keeping together the somewhat delicate builds. There were a couple of 1x1 half round tiles that seemed to be slightly mismolded here, but everything still worked.
BlueBrixx Pro Reichstag Berlin First non-Gobricks set in this list. The design is cool, but the brick quality was a bit lacking, quite a few mold problems in there. Still held together and looks good, though!
Cobi Boeing 787 Cobi produces their own bricks (in Europe, no less!), and has lots of special shapes you don’t get from Lego, as they are much closer to model building, with basically no emphasis on play. There’s no stickers in this set, and the prints are incredibly high quality, no comparison to Lego at all. It’s all more specific, though, so not that great for people who like to take apart their sets and build something else with it. Their tiles don’t even have grooves for the sake of a sleeker look, so they’re really hard to get apart again.
Thanks for the great and detailed answer! Could you elaborate a little bit on the decrease in Lego quality along the years? I’ve just gotten back into it and have been rather impressed by how much more fun it is than when I was a kid. (granted, back then I only got the cheap sets, but even those and become really cool to build.)
Sure! Just as a preface, I still also buy and build Lego sets, and in some ways, they’ve definitely become way better. Sooo many cool pieces and building techniques nowadays! It’s not like I’ve sworn off Lego or something. But after trying out competitors, the flaws are just becoming more apparent.
My main gripes with Lego’s development at the moment are:
Piece quality has in general been deteriorating. Some colors have become inconsistent from one piece to the next, leading to an ugly patchwork of shades on what should be unicolor surfaces. Transparent pieces have become much less clear in a lot of cases, and are often scratched up out of the box. Some pieces (especially smaller pieces) have started showing very big and ugly mold marks in visible places. Some of this might be acceptable for kids toys, but absolutely not for the high-value display model stuff they’re going for so heavily at the moment.
Printing/Stickers: Usually way too many stickers that you’ll mess up while applying, and will be destroyed after a couple of years. And in the instances where they do actually print pieces, the print is only one layer, which just looks really crappy when they’re trying to match the color of other non-printed surfaces.
Set design: Lego nowadays really likes to put the craziest colors inside of models that have no reason for being there. This goes completely against what Lego originally stood for, as it makes it way harder to take a model apart and build something new from it that’s decent looking if you don’t have a bigger collection already. And oftentimes it’s not even completely hidden, just looking at a set from the wrong angle will sometimes start revealing the rainbow vomit.
Instructions: I had quite a few errors in instructions over the last years, feel like that’s increased. Also, I’m not a fan of the extremely simple, slow-paced instructions from today, but that’s mostly preference and not a quality thing. They’re just going for the lowest common denominator.
And then there’s also their behavior as a business - at least here in Germany, they’re doing some really shady things to try and bully competitors off the market.
Again, Lego is still, for the most part, far from being bad. But it’s definitely not the quality leader it wants to see itself as anymore, and for what you’re getting, compared to what you can get with competitors, it’s horrendously overpriced in my opinion. It’s still the most well rounded and consistent offering there is, though. It’s not the best quality, but you mostly know what you’re getting and there’s something for everybody in their lineup, whereas with other brands they’re often more specialized and have a much narrower catalogue. Oh, and also - minifigs. If the Lego-style minifigs are important to you (and as a brickfilmer, they definitely are for me), Lego is basically your only option, unless you want to go for expensive customs.
I have quite a bit of experience by now. I had heard increasingly good things about Lego competitors, and wanted to get my own impression. In addition to that, I was growing more and more frustrated with Lego’s decreasing quality (and still am, btw). So that’s why I got my first non-lego sets.
My experience so far has been pretty positive. If you do a bit of research beforehand, it’s pretty easy to avoid the crappy stuff.
Overall, I would say it’s a little harder to know what you’re getting compared to Lego, even within the same alternative brand. You have to put in a little more research effort, but imo, it’s absolutely worth it, not even only looking at the price.
Edit: Just noticed I should probably provide some examples of what I’ve actually tried so far. Give me a sec.
Edit 2: Alright, here’s a couple examples so far:
Got a couple more, but I’m getting tired of listing these. Open for questions if anybody’s interested!
Thanks for the great and detailed answer! Could you elaborate a little bit on the decrease in Lego quality along the years? I’ve just gotten back into it and have been rather impressed by how much more fun it is than when I was a kid. (granted, back then I only got the cheap sets, but even those and become really cool to build.)
Sure! Just as a preface, I still also buy and build Lego sets, and in some ways, they’ve definitely become way better. Sooo many cool pieces and building techniques nowadays! It’s not like I’ve sworn off Lego or something. But after trying out competitors, the flaws are just becoming more apparent.
My main gripes with Lego’s development at the moment are:
Again, Lego is still, for the most part, far from being bad. But it’s definitely not the quality leader it wants to see itself as anymore, and for what you’re getting, compared to what you can get with competitors, it’s horrendously overpriced in my opinion. It’s still the most well rounded and consistent offering there is, though. It’s not the best quality, but you mostly know what you’re getting and there’s something for everybody in their lineup, whereas with other brands they’re often more specialized and have a much narrower catalogue. Oh, and also - minifigs. If the Lego-style minifigs are important to you (and as a brickfilmer, they definitely are for me), Lego is basically your only option, unless you want to go for expensive customs.