Chessnut Air seems great - is there a catch?

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mpmatthew1985

I'm thinking of getting a Chessnut Air (travel size): https://www.chessnutech.com/products/chessnut-air 

As far as I can tell it does everything I need it to and is much cheaper than even the more affordable DGT eboards. It has an inbuilt battery, bluetooth, integrates with chess.com, and should work on Mac (essential for me).

So is there a catch here? Am I missing something? I guess one drawbacks could be size of the board (I don't need tournament size, but is it big enough to comfortably play OTB?). And perhaps quality of the board and pieces is a concern, though for the price I'm happy with something that's just ok in that regard.

AbundanceEd

I think you should just go on youtube and search for Chessnut air videos there's a ton of reviews or read the Chessnut Air review thread in this forum.

GeorgeGoodnight

I have a Pegasus and it's far too small for me. I think the Chestnut is slightly smaller or is that the eOne? I much prefer the full size DGT Smart Board.

DeDEtlev67

Chessnut and a few others have broken DGT monopoly in terms of e-boards. It is mostly good functional

chessmaster_diamond

There is a HUGE thread on the chessnut air. Why don't you just read THAT to find out about the advantages and disadvantages?

Gallinarius

yes there is a catch, a huge catch in my view. I bought the unit to play tournaments on chess.com. And even though the unit is advertized as being compatible with chess.com it turns out to be only partly true. It works in single game only. Tournaments are NOT supported. So you cant play neither swiss or arena tournament OTB.

So there's your catch

Funny thing is, I did watch all the youtube reviews and really liked the board, but NONE of the reviews mentioned this....

btw. I did contact chessnut support, and they confirm the issue, and also that there is no solution for the "bug"

mpmatthew1985
Gallinarius wrote:

yes there is a catch, a huge catch in my view. I bought the unit to play tournaments on chess.com. And even though the unit is advertized as being compatible with chess.com it turns out to be only partly true. It works in single game only. Tournaments are NOT supported. So you cant play neither swiss or arena tournament OTB.

So there's your catch

Funny thing is, I did watch all the youtube reviews and really liked the board, but NONE of the reviews mentioned this....

btw. I did contact chessnut support, and they confirm the issue, and also that there is no solution for the "bug"

Thanks! Luckily for me I have no intentions to play tournaments any time soon, but now I know not to bother with the Chessnut board for tournaments.

DeDEtlev67

chess.com integration with the E- boards from chessnut and square off is patchy at best. Their arises so frequent bugs that one would be annoyed with the obstructions.

In a rush too capture the market, the vendors seem to have launched half baked products.