“Bought this for my 6 year old who has recently started playing and loving chess - he was immediately obsessed with this chess board! I’m so glad he can now play against the computer and we can set the difficulty level - he has won and lost a good balance so he is continuing to remain engaged without being discouraged.
I have found sometimes the settings are a little buggy or frustrating to set right (for both the 6 year old and myself who did read the instructions!) but nothing we can’t stumble thru. I also wish it came with a bag to store the chess pieces - this feels like an obvious miss. But overall extremely happy customer.”
“Absolutely incredible. I’m a novice’s novice when playing chess and this has helped me teach my 5 year old in chess in ways I didn’t know possible. Highly recommend!”
“Exactly like the ads. My 8yo daughter loves it and has played daily since getting it with her friends, US, and her grandmother. She is learning quickly and now teaching friends.”
“I received my chess board as a gift. I have been using it consistently since then. I appreciate the quality of the product and the interaction with the App. I also purchased a carry-on case to travel with it on my trips.
It is a good product that I hope to become more price-competitive for the game's sake. If the mission of Chess Up to have more young people learn and appreciate chess, then that will be the case.”
“I'm a mediocre chess player, but am learning strategies and special moves with Chessup. I also purchased the checkers so that when I'm tired of losing in chess, then I can play checkers! LOL!! Great set in my opinion. Quality construction! A little pricey, but worth the money.”
“I was so excited for this purchase that I didn’t mind the 2.5 week wait to receive it. The ChessUp board has failed every expectation I’ve had since receiving it. Playing online is useless as you Will be at a significant time disadvantage and likely lose massive amounts of elo. I have received multiple bans for the apps inability to connect to games, where it then aborts, or fails mid game and doesn’t allow me to make any more moves. This occurs both on Chess.com and LiChess. The AI function seemed fun until it got to the point where it takes 5 minutes for the AI to make a move. No one has time for that long of a game when I could just play stockfish online. So essentially the board has boiled all the way down to only being used to play against friends who don’t understand the game and can see where pieces are able to move. Is that really worth $300? I think not. Chess up has all the potential, but an awful execution.”
“I saw the board at youtube and wanted to have it! In the beginning everything was fine. The board is very handsome and every function worked. I am a CM and wanted to play with a board at lichess and chess.com. My problems started wird the firmware-update 1.9.2: Lichess is still fine but chess.com is not working anymore. The board shows the first move of my opponent and is not accepting my first move! This problem is unsolved. The next problem: With a full loaded board I can only play 4 hours and not 8! And I would recommend an improvement to the board updates: If the board uses the actual version, why don`t you use the sentence "It ist no update available"? I am waiting for more developments of the board in the future!”
“The ChessUp chessboard has exceeded my expectations! Its seamless integration of physical and digital play provides a truly immersive chess experience. The sleek design, coupled with the app's insightful analysis, enhances both casual and competitive games. A must-have for chess enthusiasts seeking a modern and interactive gaming experience.”
“I ordered checker pieces and phone stand and never received them. It has been well over a month waiting for them and i was never told they would not arrive with the chess board”
“It’s a great concept, but the software is an absolute mess. Requires connectivity with the app to do anything but a *very* stripped down game against low level AI. Which would be fine…but the app is essentially nonfunctional. Erases games in progress if you get out of range sometimes, almost always reverts back a varying amount of moves if you get out of range of the board. Saving a game to resume later is a crapshoot if it’ll remember the game correctly or remember it at all.
The fancy assistance lighting that’s the selling point of the board periodically stops giving assistance even if you’re connected and in range.
The board also doesn’t recognize what individual pieces are, just that there’s a piece on the square. I suppose they didn’t say it did, but it still seems cheap for a $400 board to not recognize a pawn vs a queen.
I’ve documented all this at length and out of 104 games I’ve started, I’ve been able to finish a total of 2 without some part of the functionality or software failing.
Pretty sad.
Update: A patch was released that fixed some of the issues….for about a week. Now the board is back to being unplayable if it connects to the app at all. Essentially all it can do is play offline with only the settings that the board can handle without using the app…which is a very small fraction of what it was advertised to be able to do.”
