I had a few minutes to dig into the new D&D Starter Set - Dragons of Stormwreck Isle. Here are some summarized thoughts:

• It's thin like the original Starter Set. $20 seems steep. Six dice (no percentile, no second d20), five pre-gen characters (new ones), a short rulebook, and the 48 page adventure book. It'll be a great deal when it's down to $9 to $12 on sale. Given the similar price, the Essentials Kit is a better deal.
• No connection to D&D Beyond. No free digital version. No mention of D&D Beyond at all. I expect this got put together before WOTC bought D&D Beyond.
• The QR code goes to a survey. There’s mention of a link and a QR code for a WOTC start here page with some videos and general info. No discount codes. No free DDB version like the Essentials Kit has.
• No new D&D 5.5 sorts of changes. No Tasha style changes. It's straight forward 5e rules.
• It's designed for four or five players. If you have two or three players they can double-up on characters. No one-on-one rules or scaling. The cover of the box is misleading. It’s really 3 to 6 players (including one DM).
• No character creation rules. It depends on the pre-gens.
• The adventure is solid. It's designed to "fail forward" even on the first encounter. No murdering 1st level characters! Yay!
• The adventure is shorter than Phandelver but has lots of advice for running it useful for new DMs. It does a better job of hand-holding new DMs I’d say.
• One thing Phandelver excelled at is including commonly used locations like castle ruins, caves, worked stone dungeons, ruined towns. It also included some of the most reskinnable monsters. This made Phandelver really useful to build your own 1st to 5th level adventures far more so re-skinnable than the monsters in either Stormwreck Isle or Icespire Peak. I’ll miss that when Phandelver is out of print.
• The adventure has an optional intro combat encounter and then a quest hub followed by a choice of two quests done in any order, and then a final big quest.
• It uses Story-based advancement. You gain a level after each of the big quests.
• It takes characters to 4th level but you'll need the PhB or Basic rules to level beyond 3.
• The cartoon characters are in the art but that’s it.
• Excellent art, very readable design, good hand-holding for new DMs.
• Available now at Target in the US. Coming out in general release on 4 October 2022.
• I think it's an excellent way to get started with D&D.

https://www.target.com/p/dungeons-38-dragons-dragons-of-stormwreck-isle-starter-set-game/-/A-85017140

https://www.target.com/p/dungeons-dragons-essentials-kit-game/-/A-76151594