First Impressions of the Chessnut Evo

[Yarc]

I've just received the Chessnut Evo computer and here are my initial impressions after a quick test. I have also posted this on Schachcomputer.info so some of you may have already read this.

Positive points:

It seems to have good build quality. A large and quite heavy board approx 32cm x 36cm, so not really portable.

Piece recognition works flawlessly and so it should of course.

The chess pieces are plastic but have a nice design and size. This King is 6cm tall and the base is 2cm in diameter. They have a reasonable weight so don't easily fall over in my experience.

The display is large and very clear, essentially an Android Tablet as we all probably know.

I have only briefly tested using the Evo with Chess.com and the Evo's so called Chessnut Vision technology, and this far is working very well. Rapidly identifying board positions from the web site and highlighting positions of the pieces on the board with white coloured LED's. Changing colour schemes on Chess.com does cause issues though, but using the default scheme causes no issues.

I don't know if the Google Store App would work, it is not pre-installed and I suspect not. Chessnut say that APKPure works and I can confirm this is the case. Using APKPure was able to install F-Droid which then enabled me to install DroidFish. This program partially works with the Chessnut vision. Moves made on the board are entered into the program automatically and moves made by the engine are highlighted on the board. However, for setting up positions, this has to be done manually from the Droidfish program, but the Evo then highlights the positions on the board. Overall this works very well.

Negative Points/bugs

If any 'bot' is set to play with the White pieces on a time control it will never make a move and lose the game on time! I have emailed Chessnut about this and they say this will be fixed in the next release. It will play as white when there is no time limit which leads to the second issue.

Whatever time control is set either no time limit or to the maximum of 3 minutes, any selected 'bot' eg Stockfish, Maia etc. will always moves virtually instantly not making use of the available time to consider positions more deeply. This is the case with any of the available ELO settings. So setting the built-in Stockfish16 engine to the highest ELO rating available on the EVO of 2850, it will still make its moves instantly. Now for me, even with SF16 moving instantly at 2850, I'm still going to lose! But, if we are hoping to test a Maia bot with say the CGPro, something I will do, then I wonder how accurate the Evo's ELO level settings are? Is Maia set to 1900 ELO going to win against CGPro set at a similar strength or lose badly because its not thinking for long enough?

When playing a game, there is an evaluation graph which is good, but we don't get the traditional analysis info, node count, best line, eval etc. Although the graph does show the eval on the curve.

There is no infinite analysis mode with the built in SF or other bots. There is an analysis option and this will work out a move for a position but you will just see a spinning disc for a couple of seconds and then it displays a move. So no good for a deep thorough analysis. The fall back solution of course is to use F-Droid and then everything is possible! I have sent Chessnut my thoughts on this suggesting they add normal levels of play and an infinite analysis mode.

There is an option to take back moves with onscreen buttons when playing a 'bot' but this is not working perfectly. I find that sometimes it will take back a ply but then sometimes nothing is taken back until I go back two ply. If I try taking back to the start it won't take back the first move of the game. Of course, we could just start a new game, but obviously this is not working as it should. I have since discovered that it's possible to take back moves just by moving the pieces back. I should have though of this!

I get the feeling the built-in engines (bots) are just meant for human/machine play and move instantly on purpose. This is fine and I'm not disappointed because the playing strength is going to be more than enough for me.

I do feel this is quite a departure from a normal dedicated machine. The Android tablet really enforces this idea. That said, it makes some sense to use such a device with its high processing power etc., but then have the advantage of a real board and pieces, so I feel this is a plus point.

It was good to find out I could install the Droidfish program that certainly provides the missing features but at the same time this somehow feels even more of a departure from a dedicated machine.

The Evo must be considered as just a tool for learning and playing chess in a very convenient form factor, and indeed it is very convenient. So although we have the Android tablet bolted onto the side, playing with nice chess pieces on a real board that seamlessly integrates with many websites is quite pleasurable in my opinion.

Ray