Premium Wooden Pieces for the Chessnut PRO | Unboxing and Review
#chessnut #chessnutpro #premiumpieces
Premium Wooden Pieces for Chessnut PRO: https://www.chessnutech.com/products/premium-whole-wooden-chess-piece-set-for-chessnut-pro
Use my coupon code for a discount on checkout: CHESSNOOB64
One of the criticisms I had of the Chessnut PRO was that the included pieces, which were hand carved wooden chessmen, were clearly rather entry level. Now, those pieces are perfectly fine, but there was an aesthetic gap. An tournament sized wooden board deserves higher end wooden pieces!
Chessnut clearly knew this themselves as they offered the sensor chips for the chess pieces for sale on their website and encouraged their customers to create their own custom chessmen, including at one point running a competition! I’ve personally made two sets of custom chessmen for my Chessnut PRO, one using the Zagreb ’59 set, and another with an Austrian/Vienna Coffee House set.
When Chessnut announced they were releasing “Premium” wooden pieces for the PRO, I knew I had to get a set, and they finally arrived today! This review is not sponsored and I purchased them with my own money as a regular customer on their store.
Effectively, this set is pretty much a perfect match for the Chessnut PRO and would be great to be a standard option for purchase with the PRO. Quality-wise, they are equivalent to tournament sized wooden pieces from the larger Indian chess manufacturers (e.g.,
Royal Chess Mall, Chess Bazaar, Chess Empire, etc.) at the $200-250 USD range. The chessmen are a very standard Staunton design.
The pieces weigh substantially more than the Chessnut PRO original pieces, and indeed, even more than my customised Zagreb ’59 chessmen. Chessnut must have been able to find a way to add weights to the chessmen bases without affecting the sensor, which is fantastic! In the hand, the pieces feel much closer to a regular set of weighted tournament chess pieces, than the original pieces which are quite light. On my jewelry scales:
Premium vs Standard Chessnut PRO pieces
King: 43 g vs 31 g
Queen: 37 g vs 24 g
Rook: 32 g vs 17 g
Bishop: 29 g vs 15 g
Knight: 39 g vs 22 g
Pawn: 17 g vs 10 g
These are massive improvements in the feel of the pieces in the hand in play!
As per the video, I have two minor nitpicks. Firstly, the pieces are a very conservative Staunton design. That’s completely fine, but I think I would have preferred for a design with slightly more flair. Secondly, the felt on the pieces are coloured brown… Again this is fine, but aesthetically, a dark green, burgundy, or even black velvet would have been better. Yes, first world problems!
