MONROI - Experiences - Beware!! Before Buying

Hello,

I saw some postings debating the usefullness of Monroi, and the value for the money you pay for the device.

I got this for my son with a lot of hopes and was dissappointed with it. It is basically a "One Trick PONY", and records the games and all the time hardcodes the name of one of the players as the owner of the device.

It is not cheap by any means as it costs $360 and all you get is it is good for one thing. While for the same money or less, you get gaming consoles that doubles up lot of features and functions to make it more usefull. Here are some the things I was hoping the device will do:

1) Make it easier to record any game that you may be analyzing while reading a chess book. - This is not possible as it always uses the owner as one of the player in the recording mode

2) I was hoping that one could dump all the database of games from Fritz (all the games of famous players on a SD card and review them during your free time. I guess they are selling another $400 product for this feature/function.

I was dissappointed to find out that it cannot handle anything over 1GB SD card. I had to use a 256 MB SD Card for Monroi to work in transferring games from Monroi to computer.

I sent few emails to get answers for this BIOS limitation and did not get any where as they do not want to accept and fix it.

So what good is this device, if I can't dump all the games into an SD card, and analyze them when one is free ???

I understand that this can be an issue if one uses in this mode during a competition, they can use other technology means of preventing this during a competition without limiting the features

3) The transfer of games from Monroi to the computer for further analysis is very time consuming and tedious. I wish they had a direct dump via a USB to the computer instead of using a SD card to transfer back and forth.

I was hoping that this would double up as a PDA based chess software to further one's game (scaled down features of Fritz) for the price you are paying.

For the functionality that MONROI currently does, it should have been priced under $150 and not at $360.

Hope this helps!

Sunny

Very useful comments Prak.  I was looking at this item.  After reading your review I wonder why PDA or laptop software couldn't do the same as this and more.

Use a pen and a notation form when playing over the board games. When you get home store the game with the free downloadable Chess Base Light on your pc.

Costs? not more than 3 US dollar.

Hello Prak,

Yes i agree with you, better spend the money on a PS3 or XBOX to amuse family and friends.This Monroi is pretty useless

Why would you need anything larger than a 1GB SD card? The whole point of the Monroi is to record your moves during a game, nothing more. It was completely engineered for that one process. The only reason there is a market for it is because you can't use a pda or a laptop to record your games at a tournament, because of the possibility of there being other software on those devices. So you have a choice of using pen & paper, or the monroi. I agree it is way overpriced, but they have no competition so they get to set the price to whatever they want.

Edit: I think probably it's only redeeming quality would be that automatically notes the time spent on each move in the gamescore, which is a useful thing to know.

I can't help but smile when I hear the SAME arguments about the Monroi: its price and its redeeming features in newer posts two years later.

My challenge question is: What is your accuracy rate for recording ALL your matches by hand?

Please join us here for an ongoing pros and cons discussion of the PCM.

I believe that a MonRoi is a very useful device. In the short term, it is not a good investment. But within a couple of years, and depending on how many tournaments you play in, it's a good investment in the long term. Also, it's not as messy as scoresheets. If you want to look for a particular game in a particular tournament, you can easily find it on the MonRoi. If you want to find your scoresheet, you have to search all around your house for it, unless you're using a 100-game scorebook. But you don't usually have to worry about messy handwriting and messing up the notation. I would say that it is fairly overpriced, but I find it to be a very useful tool, and is a good investment in the long term. There are more features than just notation. I just ordered my MonRoi on Friday night, so I have yet to use it. But from what I've seen and heard about it, I feel it's a very useful device.

I was looking at this a couple weeks ago and was on the fence at first, because I was assuming it cost about $50-$75 at the most.

Yeah, I will wait until it drops about $300 in price. Maybe then. Maybe not.

Pencil and paper from the dollar store. 

$360???? for this device? 

I still use pencil and paper. Its a lot easier to make notes on the paper after the game.

When I get home I can input all the moves, complete with notes, on a PGN reader. I can then add the game to my collection.

Cost of pencil = $.25
Cost of paper = Free
Cost of PGN reader = Free (I downloaded a free version)

Saving an masterpiece of a chess game - Priceless

Since it serves only a single purpose (recording chess moves), it was able to receive FIDE certification. If it were able to have a chess engine (like Fritz), then it could be used to cheat. Since it is only a single purpose device the price should be a lot less, but that is capitalism. It is worth whatever the market is willing to pay for it. I'll stick to my 100 game scorebook that I bought for $5.

Monroi now has a competitor; the PlyCounter (available at http://www.plycount.com/plycounter). It is currently pending USCF and FIDE) certification, and it currently sells for $169 (less than half the price of the MonRoi PCM).

Hi everyone, and hopefully somebody who truly knows about the MonRoi device can help me... I recently bought one that was previously owned, and I can't seem to change the name on the unit .... I watched the video on how to change the name, and tried re-calibrating it, but this device will let me change pretty much everything except the name....  Can somebody please help? Thanks all, and have a great weekend!  J.S. 

J.S. from my understanding of the device there is no way to change the name once it's inputted. Sadly Monroi no longer responds to email or phone calls. If you want a solid solution check out ChessNoteR http://chessnoter.com. We are USCF certified and also working with FIDE for certification.

For $360 dollars at the time when they use to sell, I would expect only serious players would be inputting their personal name only.