Mindstrom NXT V2, is it worth to invest?

[innovite]

Hi, wondering if it's worth to invest some NXT v2 now? i am hesitating because EV3 will be out in the market in mid this year. . thanks

David

[Neo]

Hi, wondering if it's worth to invest some NXT v2 now? i am hesitating because EV3 will be out in the market in mid this year. . thanks

David

No. The Lego Robotics are an educational investment tool not a financial investment.

Like the RIS ... the NXT will likley slowly devaluate - albeit it will always be worth something as long as the tested/approved educational course work already developed for it is relevant.

However, I don't expect the NXT to increase in value like the first Batcave set or the Star Wars Motorized AT-AT walker. It's market value is somewhat akin to an educational Apple II or Macbook. ...

Unlike the RIS - the NXT has more third party support which makes it more desirable to hold onto. The
EV3 has potentially one advantage over the NXT - a faster CPU and more memory space - which can allow for larger and more sophisticated programs - However, none of the demo robots appear to have very sophisticated programming and I don't have any details on the EV3 software development kit - so I can not say with certainty that this potential was realized or to what degree in the EV3.

[ricefields]

If you look at recent ebay sales, then yes it still worth investing but obviously not from buying at regular price or even the costco price. chapters indigo had a 30% off this past week and mindstorm nxt 2 qualified so not bad. I made decent money investing and selling nxt 1 and nxt 2 but you have to get your supply for 30% off or more. Before the whole world discovered bn.com; used to buy nxt 2 at 20-30% off and then resell them at 300. They even ship me a free nxt 2!

[ricefields]

if there is any doubt after my initial reply in march 2013, it was definitiely a good investment tool. Have been selling around $350-400 on ebay. Sold my last one cheap at $360!

[Brickred]

The NXT is pretty obsolete and I don't think it will reap any investing benefits, the programming for the EV3 is partially open sourced and can be ported over to some iOS / android apps, development on EV3 v2 is already underway and from prototypes I have seen expect a App kind of a ecosystem to start appearing, at that pace NXT will become primitive - worth investing ? Nope the only value proposition will be in nostalgia

[ricefields]

the historic data does not lie. Just bought more and sold 3 of them already for decent profit to put towards the lego hobby. Obviously good to sell before ev3 comes out but my sense is the classes are still using nxt 2 for teaching/learning, so your buyers will be those needing it for this coming fall session.

[Neo]

the historic data does not lie. Just bought more and sold 3 of them already for decent profit to put towards the lego hobby. Obviously good to sell before ev3 comes out but my sense is the classes are still using nxt 2 for teaching/learning, so your buyers will be those needing it for this coming fall session.

developing course work for the EV3 wll take longer than the NXt2 primarily because the EV3 has more memory and so the software is expected to be more sophisticated and bigger. The bigger source code will be more bug prone and and it will be more difficult it is to create code. Larger software projects will require greater software discipline/skill sets and maybe more frequently it will need a software development team - which are more difficult to assemble and coordinate. The end is near of the lone Mindstorm programmer-developer

[beartrapper25]

Does anyone think that the NXT2.0 will finally start dropping in price at or below RRP now that the EV3 is starting to appear on shelves? I'd like to get one for myself and don't really care about how advanced one is over the other.

[ricefields]

I don't think so in the short term until it is phased out in the classrooms and leagues. It may drop below MSRP on the cdn price (because MSRP is $350) but not below the US msrp of $280US. I even sold the one NXT 1.0 set I had for $370, but not sure if that was for a collector or someone who was ok with the original nxt for projects.