Evo AI Chess Computer — Built-in Maia Engine, Customizable Chess Bot, Full Piece Recognition, LED Lights — Play Online on Major Chess Platforms — Smart Electronic Chessboard

I find the Evo more fun than I was expecting. I highly recommend this board for people wanting an electronic chess computer. Chessnut vision reads a webpage chess board and works very well with Chess.com and ChessKid.com. I use vision for puzzles, lessons, playing bots, etc. Chessnut vision makes this the most versatile electronic board available. It's helpful to get some 3D puzzle recognition practice. Evo works for playing online opponents, but it is best at longer time rapid games where the time to move pieces is less of a penalty. It you are going to play online opponents, you will want to learn how to flip the board on the screen by swiping down and selecting the flip option, since you don't know if you will be black or white before the games starts. When playing online bots with no clock, Evo performs really well. Evo comes with built-in chess engines, so you can play locally against the Evo as well. A wall charger is NOT included. A Power Deliver (PD) charger is recommended to get 18 watts of charging. Without a PD charger, it will charge at 5 watts. I use an Apple 20 watt charger and an extension cord. My initial negative experience was that Evo doesn't recognize sliding pieces, so until I got into the habit of picking up a piece and placing it, it would record the wrong move and cost me games. Chessnut recommends setting a recognition delay of four tenths of a second if you want to slide pieces. Since Evo can't know when you stop touching the piece, it is better to just never slide your pieces. You can slide the opponent's pieces since evo will wait for the piece to get to the right square. The screen is high resolution and looks great. The speaker could be improved, but it works for my usage. I use the speaker to listen to chess lessons and follow along with them on the Evo physical board. It is faster to do lessons purely online, but it is sometimes fun to do a lesson on the physical board. I tried Evo with the beta of Chess.com API and didn't have any issues. Evo comes with two queens per side. If you are ever in a situation where you need three queens, it will not be able to continue the game. You can purchase an additional set of chess men on the Chessnut website. The pieces are nice. The size of the board and pieces are a good compromise considering the additional board size with the screen. Evo comes with additional felt bottoms for the chess men and felt bags to store the chess men. I also purchased the optional carry bag, which is a great way to store the board. The bag has handles for carrying in the vertical or horizontal orientation and shoulder straps for carrying it like a backpack. The bag is a bit expensive for the quality, but it is a great companion to the EVO, so I am happy with the bag purchase as well. Although Evo is sold on Amazon directly from Chessnut, the prices on Amazon will vary from the prices on the Chessnut website. There are times when Evo will be $100 less on the Chessnut website, which is unfortunate since Amazon makes it simple to click a few buttons and order the Evo. I bought the board from Amazon when the price on Amazon matched the price on the Chessnut website.

Excellent all around. Seems to be well made. Very convenient to have the tablet built in. No paring with phone or tablet, just turn it on and it works. This also keeps you phone free to use. Offers wide range of Bots and difficulty levels. Castling and move take backs work well. The lighting on the squares is easy to see. In Youtube videos the board lights are hard to see, in real use they are easy to see.

I love my Chessnut Evo, it's different. I have several electronic chessboards, all good and following more or less the same operating principles with some special functions that differentiate them from each other. The Chessnut Evo, on the other hand, operates on a completely different principle; for example, it allows me to instantly convert games I'm watching on YouTube into PGNs. There's nothing like it for studying games directly from a book if you prefer to play OTB (over -the-board). This is just the beginning; they still have a lot to improve, but what they offer is already worth every dollar invested.

Amazon box arrived completely fine; Chessnut box was burned, punctured, and damaged. Not kidding. Would not start up open actually opening; then finally, when “started”, it only defaulted into boot mode. Absolutely ridiculous for something that normally costs at least $500.

Great chess set and yes it does what is advertised! Only pitfall is lightweight plastic pieces but they don’t bring it down. Also lift pieces don’t slide em…computer reads the chip instantly on the piece.

It is awsome. It motivate me to play chess again after not being able to play real people on a board in florida since people here dont have much of a chess culture.

At this point I recommend not buying still buggy. Training bots stay in queue as if locked up. Chess.com does not run seamlessly if it runs at all. Support sends links to down load that should help but you need a higher computer knowledge than I have. Why not let it update automatically? Well, it appears to be stuck on and not doing anything. If I toggle it off when I come back it is on again but has not up dated any thing since a few days after getting it. Support is a slow process because it takes at least a day to get an email back. Often all questions are not answered and there are more than one usually. For a 500 dollar system I am very unhappy with it. Lichess seams to work (go figure) Maia and stockfish bots work. But what I bought it for does not. Chess.com, custom trained bots. Update, customer support got my training bot working. Will next one work, time will tell. Link they gave to update Firefox did seem to fix chess.com disconnecting. Adjusting rating to 4 stars since there are still small issues I can work around at this point.

I bought this for my grandson. He already plays on line so I thought this will cut Down on his screen time. Saw him playing and enjoying it hence so far so good. The unit appears to be solid and mobile in the case provided. There is a risk of losing pieces in travel so extra care is needed. The pieces are well recognized by the board.