It sits on a swivel stand (which was an achieved stretch goal in the kickstarter), which allows the screen to fully twist around (not just 90 degrees left and right) for easy front access to the slots and ports in the back. It also allows limited up and down movement, which is surprisingly useful.

Turning the monitor to the side reveals one of two speakers built into the monitor, similar to the 1084S which I believe it is modelled on. This means you don't need external speakers, although you shouldn't expect amazing audio and bass feedback with such small speakers - the sound is fine though.

Turning the monitor around on its swivel base reveals the star of the show, the multiple slots. There is also a built in handle to make lifting and moving the monitor around easy.

Let's take a closer look at the slots - there are three in total, and for my monitors, two of the slots are populated. Some backers chose to have the MISTER or Raspberry Pi options mounted into the third slot, creating an all in one computer!

There is ports galore here. Even a RGBi connector for connecting C128 output for CP/M mode. Nice.

The monitor is intended to be operated with the remote - there are buttons on the display itself for more common features, but generally speaking, the remote is what you will be using.

As I was one of the kickstarter backers who did a bank transfer via wise.com, Steve included a full colour ring bound User manual with the monitors as a thank you. For everyone else, they will get a PDF version of the manual (which I also have). 

Not sure if there is language localisation of these stickers, or they are only in English. Of course for me, English is fine!

It doesn't matter if you choose black or white. Both look great :-)

Personally I would have painted the checkmate lettering on the front in white on the black monitor, and in black on the white monitor. It is hard to see unless up close.

An interesting observation that is relevant to my setup is that the low profile external floppy drive just fits underneath the monitor, which is great for me. It wouldn't work if it was a Commodore 1010 or 1011 floppy drive though.

Next I found a SCART to RGB port cable to connect from the Amiga 1000 RGB port to the SCART port on the back of the Checkmate display - it also has the RCA audio to capture the audio into the checkmate display to play via it's internal stereo speakers:

Great thing about the swivel stand is I can rotate 180 degrees to access the rear of the monitor. Much easier for connecting the cables.

The User manual explains the ports on the back quite well, and the operation of the remote control:

As mentioned in the manual, there is a second remote control if you ordered the RF in/S-Video in option, but since I didn't do that, I just have the main remote control:

While I had the monitor rotated with the slots facing me, I applied the included port name stickers to the back:

This of course makes everything so much easier to understand what it is!

I turned on the Amiga 1000 also. The Checkmate logo appears and I am then greeted with a RGB message and nothing else. I was expecting the kickstart disk prompt, but nothing.

It turns out the default input is expecting 1280x1024, but in reality the SCART input is being scaled to work at 480/576.

The GBS control module has this small front mounted display and jog dial to adjust common parameters like screen resolution and Presets which are stored in the settings to adjust the display. 

I then changed the resolution to 480/576 using the jog dial, and pushing it in to select the option.

The Amiga 1000 display then appears, although the positioning is not ideal.

Referring to the manual, Preset profile #4 is for the Amiga, so I selected that using the GBS control jog dial:

The Amiga 1000 display then appears:

The image was not so sharp though, with some ghosting evident. It is clear I have some more work to do. I booted the workbench disk from floppy and I got some wavy output, with the straight line a bit wavy in some sections:

This is much more noticeable in Workbench than when playing games or demos:

I ran some more recent Amiga demos from floppy disk on the A1000 - it looks good, but with 1280x720 you do get black bars at the top and bottom of the display:

To be fair to it though, the exact same thing happens with a normal TFT screen, as I show below with the Amiga 500 running an Indivision ECS scan doubler connected to a 19" TFT screen, side by side with the Checkmate display on the A1000 - both running the same demo from floppy disk.

Both screens have top and bottom black borders. By sheer luck, the checkmate on its stand means the display output lines up almost exactly! Would love to say I planned that, but it was just luck.

I did notice the brightness on my old 19" TFT is a bit lower than what is set on the Checkmate, as shown above and below - it is not a problem or anything, just a difference in output settings on my old TFT screen:

Next I fired up the Workbench 1.3 floppy disk in both computers to compare the output:

I opened the windows in the same places so it was a fair comparison:

Here is the close up of the Checkmate - the iPhone I used to photograph adds wavy line artifacts to the screen depending on the angle sorry - oh for a decent screen image camera!

Here is the close up of the TFT screen on the Amiga 500 with the same Workbench windows and apps open:

Personally, I can't see much difference, but your mileage may vary!

I did the same test as before, running the same game on the Amiga 500 with Indivision ECS scan doubler output and put them side by side.

And here is the Checkmate output of the same game on the Amiga 1000:

You may wonder why I care so much about comparing these two. I care because in reality, as long as the output of the checkmate was at least as good as the A500 with Indivision ECS output, then I am very happy with the screen, as this is basically the minimum that I expected it to do.

Since the Amiga 1000 I have does not allow any Indivision ECS to be installed in it due to it having the dual layer boards in it, using the checkmate with it's inbuilt GBS control and Appy's Retro scaler was my preferred option. 

Demos appear well on the Checkmate display, but at the moment I am only using the display at the standard Amiga screen mode output, not any of the fancier interlace or later modes that came with Workbench 2 and above. 

Enjoy a bit of the amazing Batman Rises using the Checkmate display - yes, I think so :-) 

If you haven't checked out the many new games for the Amiga in the last year, you really need to catch up - I covered a lot of them in my blog post here if you want to discover more about them. 

I then connected the various AV component cables for the CD32, CDTV and HDMI in from the Panasonic DVD player.

I tested with the Amiga CD32 AV out first up:

As usual the iPhone I am using to take pictures doesn't do great justice to the display sharpness, but it does look good in person:

If you haven't got this game yet, Reshoot 3 Proxima is a great shoot em up - easily the best of the series so far:

Last, I tried out the 2024 game release called Cecconoid, which I also have as a CD32 disc release:

Next up, I tested the Panasonic DVD/PVR recorder I have with the Checkmate monitor. 

I can of course adjust the output to fill the screen, but of course lose the edges of the left and right to do so - same as for any 4:3 aspect TV of that era:

Inside Commodore feature - sounds good to me:

I wish my desk could have had these systems on it back then!

I tried the Bedroom to Billions - The Amiga Years DVD next, which is native 16:9 so the menu's and video run in letterbox format on 4:3 display:

As we head towards the 40th anniversary of Amiga in 2025, it is appropriate to watch a bit of original Amiga design team member Dave Needle (RIP), talking at the Amiga 30th celebration in 2015.

Next I hooked up the CDTV via AV input on the checkmate display - it looks good despite the iPhone's best efforts to ruin it - as before though it runs at 1280x720 given it is AV input:

Workbench windows appear sharp when using 1280x720 screen resolution - as a reminder the iPhone adds wavy artifacts to the screen image for close up photos, but they are not there in person:

I enjoyed some mod tunes from the CDTV Demo CD, using the internal speakers on the Checkmate display for audio output:

Always enjoy listening to the tunes on this CD, and I occasionally leave it running in the background while doing other things :-)

I also ran the Psygnosis demo CD after that on the CDTV, which looks good also:

The CD player function looks nice on the Checkmate display too:

I decided to switch back to the cream monitor at this point, as I wanted to explore the GBS Control customisation features. I fired up a music disk demo on the Amiga 1000 to use for testing things out - you can see that the screen is not positioned right, and that is because I was playing with it already:

The User manual details that you can connect via WiFi to the GBS control module on the Checkmate monitor using another computer or a iphone/ipad etc. 

I connected to the broadcasted SSID on the GBS control module as per the instructions and browsed to the http://gbscontrol to access the GBS setup software:

You can see the checkmate display screen is set to use 1280x960 with GBS control, which explains the previous output not fitting correctly, since the 1280x720 is the required resolution to use at the moment. 

Exploring the settings in the GBS control software further,  you can adjust a lot of parameters, force low res screen modes to use upscaling, output frame to force PAL 50hz to 60hz, de interlace method and more! 

In the System section of the configuration, you can force a restart of GBS control, reset to default settings if you mucked it up and don't want to have to fix it, and to backup and restore configurations.

In the filters section, you can turn on the scan lines (if that is your thing), and other filters are available too:

The picture control section is probably the most important part (as far as I am concerned), as this allows you to adjust the position of the screen image, adjust scaling and borders.

I played around with this to get the best centered picture I could with the demo I was playing on the Amiga 1000 on the Checkmate display at this time:

I should mention that these profiles are not visible or selectable from the front mounted GBS control jog dial. Not sure why that is - something I should check on Discord I suppose!

It was at this point I realised that moving my A1200 to make space for this setup was not going to be as easy as I hoped as the checkmate case was taller than my Display shelf!

So, after some choice grumbles about that, and then removing the shelf and everything on it, I got the setup happening:

AmiKit XE 12 has been updated to use a different linux setup, but this machine has not been updated yet as I haven't had time to redo the SD card image and transfer all my setup across. 

I then set the resolution of AmiKit XE 12 to use the native 1280x1024 display of the Checkmate display:

When you run Amiga as emulation, you don't have the issues that native Amigas have with the unusual resolutions. Everything is scaled to fit the 1280x1024 screen.

It just looks great as a result:

It looks great on the display as expected:

I tried Worthy also, another great game for the Amiga:

The game fills the display, and looks glorious:

I will never, ever, stop being amazed how beautiful the art in this game is, even in 2025:

The game is also a lot of fun.

I squeezed in one more game, Pinball Fantasies:

Running AGA demos (like this one called Phase One from capsule in 1998 which uses interlace screen modes) also look great:

I also tested my own old demo group's demo from The Experience called "Terminal", which also looks great - by the way the borders were present on normal CRT monitors too. 

Behind the scenes, the raspberry pi runs linux, and you can click Show Pi on the AmiKit XE menu to see it:

From the linux side you can watch full 1080p resolution videos, YouTube, etc, with no constraints.

I switched back to AmiKit XE 12 to to some web browsing to catchup on the latest Amiga releases on Aminet:

Using the Checkmate display with a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 is a perfect match I think. Having the Pi module so it is an all in one system would be awesome. I imagine the MISTER module would be awesome too.