ChessUp 4+

Yes, there are some issues but the team is slowly working through them. In time, these problems will be resolved. And I can tell you that I have purchased two others that are just horrible. They are far worse. I had to return them. Stay the course and be patient.

I preordered the board and waited for it to arrive. When I first for it, the board looked great but the app was a hot mess. It had a lot of problems and the firmware on the board had some issues as well. Since that time, there have been a somewhat steady releases of updates and it has finally reached a fairly decent level. There are still some areas where it could improve because the app isn’t the most user friendly, but I can finally use it without it glitching out on me constantly.

The board itself is fantastic. With RGB lights, it is considerably better than alternatives. The sensing of pieces was never an issue, but I feel like it has been improved in newer firmware. It rarely misses a move.

Overall, it works fairly well if you can get past the clunky interface and I’m fairly happy with the purchase. Of all my chess boards (both electronic and standard) this is my 9 yr old daughter’s favorite one to use when we play. The assist levels are good and she finds the RGB feedback to be better than the rest. And if it gets her interested in playing then it is worth it.

This is a review of the app, not the board - though the board is very fun to play on with a lot of attention given to the lights and effects. If any or all of these points are addressed this would be 5 stars for sure

Overall when the app works its awesome. Moved from humans and ai are responsive and clear. I do agree with other reviews that currently the ai seems a bit miscalibrated, it feels harder than humans of an equal elo.

A lot of parts of the app seem to not work or be finished though. For example I have never been able to play more than one game against ai in a row without turning the board off and on again, which is small but easily noticeable. There is a section in the app to scale the elo range you want to play against based on your current lichess elo, but again I cannot figure out how to connect my lichess account nor update the elo baseline away from the 1500 default. Finally there is a lesson section but it only goes up to a few intermediate lessons and above that is currently empty. When playing ai I also feel this is a little feature dry - there are things like hints but no way that Ive found to undo moves to explore additional lines - something ai players are perfect for

Finally, unless its in a lesson somewhere, there is a huge missing item - no puzzles! Either on the app or over the board (or both!) feel like theyd be perfect though maybe a small nuisance to set up