The Lego UCS Xwing was one of the first UCS sets ever made back in 1999 when Lego took possession of the Star Wars license.
I used to have this set way back then, but sold it off about 5 years ago now and presumed I would never see it again as the used price is about $1000.
In the meantime Lego actually re released the Xwing in 2013 with some minor changes to the look, the Lepin 05039 UCS X-wing is based on the 2013 redesign.
The set comes in at 1586 pieces and is a very straight forward build.
Much like their other sets there is no real numbering system to the bags, so sorting becomes a bit of a challenge.
I have found that the best Lepin sets so far are the ones directly based on Lego set, as the instructions are typically 1 to 1 and there is little to no difference, this makes things a lot simpler as the MOC sets leave a lot to be up to interpretation.
The set goes together in a traditional manner, the body is assembled first, then all 4 wings.
The fuselage has some cool designs elements, there is a mechanism that will retract or open the wings by the turn of a dial on the rear of the ship. There is a gear like mechanism concealed in the rear of the ship that does this.
The cockpit itself is well designed as well, with the addition of the tactical HUD that retracts.
The wing design is a little bit flimsy, not by any fault of Lepin, it is just the overall design of making something so long that has very little support.
The only real downside to the Lepin set is the weird sticker design for the cockpit canopy.
Now I am not sure if this is the same for the Lego version, but on the Lepin set there is a thin film like sticker that needs to be applied.
Now the issues is these stickers are a cheap as cheap gets, it is like trying to appli a sticky piece of Seran-wrap, it is very very flimsy and prone to bubbles and picking up finger prints if you touch it in any way.
Additionally you have to actually use scissors to cut them to proper size.
All in all it ended up less than perfect.
The finished model does look nice despite the cockpit glass.
It is a nice addition to the collection and hindsight being 20/20, I would suggest just leaving the glass clear.
A 7 / 10 only due to the shoddy stickers.
The Compulsive Canadian Gamer 