Chessnut

Chessnut makes electronic chess boards. Real wooden boards with embedded LED indicators and full piece recognition — every piece identified by type and colour on every square, no button-press required. The boards connect to Chess.com, Lichess, and ChessKid, with opponent moves lighting up the squares in real time, and run two engines locally: Stockfish for analysis and Maia for human-style play. The product range covers five models, from a compact $162 starter to an Android-based $799 chess computer with a 12.3-inch screen and a custom OS.

The detail worth naming is the AI choice. Stockfish gives you the strongest engine at any difficulty — the chess equivalent of a benchmark. Maia is a research engine developed by Cornell, the University of Toronto, and Microsoft Research, designed to play like a specific human at a specific skill level rather than to play optimally. The move it suggests at 1500 ELO is the move a 1500-rated human would actually make, not the move a hobbled supercomputer would. Chessnut also lets you upload someone's game history and generate a personalised engine that mimics their style. For a smart chess board, those are unusual choices. The product is built around the idea that a useful opponent is one you can learn from, not one you can't beat.