In the early 2010s I taught myself to solve the Rubik’s Cube. Since then I’ve got heavily into all sorts of twisty puzzles and have a collection of about 50, including various 3x3x3 shape mods, 3x speed cubes, 2x, 4x, 5x, 7x, 9x, 2x2x3, 3x3x2, 3x3x5, the highly intimidating X2 (it’s a sort of 3x3x7 in the shape of a cross rather than a cuboid), plus Rubik’s Clock, Rubik’s Magic, megaminx, pyraminx, master pyraminx, mastermorphix. On top of this there’s a few 3D puzzles, ring puzzles, dexterity puzzles (like the Rubik’s 360), and various wood burr puzzles. You could say, I enjoy puzzles.

Last summer I heard about the GoCube being kickstarted. It seems a really cool idea to have a cube that can tell what position it’s in and help you solve it, or help you learn the algorithms needed to solve it yourself from any state, or race against another cuber somewhere in the world through a matching scramble.

However, I’m always cautious with Kickstarter, especially for anything other than board games from known creators. Let’s be honest, there have been a lot of tech scams on KS, and if any of them is as good as they seem, it’s going to hit the market eventually, right?

Where there is one, there will be many, and so there are currently 3 main players in the smart cube market (some of which have had various iterations already). The GoCube was successfully delivered to backers earlier this year and are now available to purchase directly through their website for about $100 USD. Next up is the mighty GAN, with their 356i which retails for around £80 GBP. Pretty much anyone who has an interest in speed cubing, knows the GAN brand, they’ve even worked with Rubik’s to make better models of Rubik’s brand cubes (despite being the name everyone knows, Rubik’s are known in the community as makers of ok at best cubes). Then there’s the GiiKer Supercube which you can get for as low as £35 GBP.

Some of the copy states that they made the world’s first smart cube, but I’d never heard of them until they started turning up in comparison videos with the other smart cubes. Regardless, no one else sent me a cube to play with so this is the one I’m reviewing.

First off, the presentation is really charming. The charger sits on the center spots on opposite sides of the cube, with little connectors that hold it neatly in place. They look kind of like headphones, and this is further highlighted by the fact that the cube has a stand, which looks like the body a robot sitting down. with the cube and charger in place, it looks genuinely adorable on the shelf, sitting amongst its less intelligent cubey brethren, vibing out to tunes.

The action is great: it turns smoothly, finger tricks are easy, and corner cutting is successful at around a 40 degree angle. These are all things a speed cuber would look for and there it is, so what else? Well, it’s magnetised and while you can’t swap out the magnets for different strengths like you can with the GAN 356i, they’re a nice strength and do the job very well.

If this were just a review of the cube itself, I’d be giving it top marks as it’s possibly the nicest cube I’ve ever personally used. However, smart cubes aren’t just sold on their build quality, there’s plenty of nicely built cubes, and some available at very reasonable costs. What’s important here is the app.

Heading over to the app store or Google Play, and searching for Supercube will find the app. It’s not huge, but does require quite the selection of permissions in order to get started (especially on Android as it requires you to have location on for the Bluetooth connection to work). While the quality of the cube itself is great, the lack of polish on the app does let it down somewhat.

Once you connect to the cube you’re greeted with a menu which looks like you’re about to play one of a billionty Unity asset flips available on Steam for actual money (no, really, people charge for these My First Video Game project files). It’s not pretty, but it sure is functional.

Unlike the other smart cubes, the Supercube doesn’t have any tilt sensors. As such, it can’t tell which way up you’re holding it. This means that during instructions, the app needs you to orient the cube as shown on screen. It must stay rigidly where you’re told to put it (no y turns for you *glares in cube*).

The learning mode for this app certainly will take you through a solve, but it’s unlike anything I’ve encountered before. Most beginner’s methods I’ve seen for a 3x3x3 start with making a cross on one side (usually white) and then going going layer by layer from there.

However, the method here starts with making the ‘daisy’ (shocked pikachu.jpg). This involves moving the four white edge pieces up to the yellow center (edges are the bits with two colours on, centers which have one colour, and corners which have three). What threw me most about this was the fact I had white edges in roughly the right place to start with and the tutorial insisted that I move them to the yellow side to make this daisy (Ok, I’ll be fair, I get that there is a need to create a solve that works in every situation and not just in specific cases, but surely it wouldn’t take much to just tell people to look out for already solved things and use the methods to solve the rest).

My other main issue with the solve which app wants you to learn is that once you’ve done the daisy, you turn the cube over, and are asked to solve the cube from top to bottom, without ever turning it over again. Most methods that do any flips like this will have you solve the white cross and possibly the whole white layer, then hold this as the bottom layer for the rest of the solve. Here you’re expected to make the daisy, use this to make the white cross, and then turn the cube over and solve each layer from the top down. The on screen prompts largely ignore what’s on the yellow face, only what you can see on the side of that layer (thanks, I hate it).

I’m not going into this any deeper because those who came to laugh at my snark are probably getting bored with cube jargon, and speed cubers who wanted an overall review of the cube are probably never going to even look at this mode because they already know a faster method. So I’ll just sum up the learning mode by saying “Sure, it’s fine, I guess.”

Next up, there’s pattern mode. Want to make a checkerboard pattern on the cube for display? Want to swap all the centers while leaving everything else solved? Want to do that cube within a cube pattern you see in the displays of YouTube cubers? Well, this mode will guide you step by step through how to make all sorts of cool patterns. It’s good, but don’t you dare mess up a turn, because it will make you go all the way back to the beginning and start the whole thing again rather than just getting you to undo what you did wrong and keep going from there.

How about games? Sure, why not. One game sees a little virtual person standing on one side of a corner piece. You’re then given a limited number of turns to move them to a particular position, preferably via any coins sitting in other locations. It’s actually pretty fun and makes you think about how you move pieces around the cube, just the thing for getting more intitive about how you do a solve.

Ok, ok. That’s all the fluff, I know why the speed cubers came here. You want to test yourselves and show your skills. Don’t worry, I got you.

The timer mode invites you to scramble the cube however you want, or you can hit an option to be provided a scramble, and then tap the screen to declare your readiness to start. As soon as you make your first turn, it will start the timer and stop the moment you complete your solve. The on-screen cube will show each of your turns as you go, which is a nice addition.

Once completed you’re given your solve time, number of turns and turns per second (all info that serious cubers seem to revel in. Additionally you can click to get a full breakdown of the moves you made, and the chance to see a virtual reconstruction of your solve which you can inspect for ways to improve in future. Additionally it will provide your split times based on the stages of a layer by layer solve method. While some of these steps may not be relevant or even completed for the way you solved, it’s still good information for working out where you need to make improvements. Additionally, you can see what your average solve time is based on past attempts from a menu here.

The timer function was what I most wanted from a smart cube. Despite its limitations (no tilt sensors mean that the cube can’t tell what orientation it was when you did certain things and the playback of the solve was done from a static perspective), accurate timing, and seeing where I needed to be a bit better at looking ahead, to avoid doing and then immediately undoing moves as I move from one algorithm to another has really helped me learn not only how to do things, but how I need to think and look while solving.

Last up is battle mode. So you’ve learned to solve a cube and you now you want to test yourself against people all over the world. Well, here’s your chance. Once you’re ready, you’ll be matched with an opponent (matchmaking has never taken me more than 30-40 seconds). You’re then given a set scramble. The faster you do this, the more inspection time you’ll get (careful not to start before you’re told though or you’ll automatically lose the battle). There’s something rather motivating about challenging another cuber that’s genuinely increased my speeds overall.

The GiiKer Supercube is an excellent budget smart cube that feels really nice and with lots of features a speedcuber will enjoy. For those learning to solve, I’d stick with YouTube tutorials before coming back to the app to time yourself or challenge online players.

Pros:

• Nice quality cube with a good action and cutting
• Timing and battle modes are educational and fun (I genuinely can’t belive I just used that phrase)
• Considerably cheaper than other smart cubes

Cons:

• The app lacks polish
• No tilt sensors so the cube on screen can’t track the orientation
• Needs better or additional tutorials for other solve methods

Final Score: 8/10