Meffert's Checkerboard 4x4

I'm giving this 2 stars simply because I'm hoping my cube was a fluke, but definitely be wary of this purchase. If I had not been satisfied with Meffert's puzzles in the past, I would not have spent the money, but I figured hey why not. In any case, it immediately locked when I tried to turn two layers -- absolutely frozen. Since this was OOTB, I thought maybe it needed broken in, lubed, etc. No dice. Essentially, my cube has a 50% chance of locking when you randomly select a two layer turn.

Discouraged but not despondent, I popped out an edge and disassembled the top layer of the cube, hoping to find some anomalous piece of plastic which might be cut off and removed... anything that would explain the superglue-kind-of-stuck I was experiencing. Nope. Instead, I found that Meffert's has filled this puzzle with (what I'll call) "spacers," or small pieces that ostensibly hold the main parts of the puzzle in the right places. I considered removing them, but it doesn't seem like it will function correctly in their absence, so I'm kind of at a loss.

Honestly, just buy a cheap stickered 4x4x4 and change the colors yourself. I have 50+ twisty puzzles, and this is the first time I've been compelled to write a review like this, but I regret my purchase 100%.

TL:DR: Twisty puzzle that doesn't twist.

Turning is okay. Definitely not the worst I've had. Also, as of this writing, I've not scrambled my cube, yet.

What I will say is the picture on this page is VERY misleading. What you see pictured is a black corner and all edge pieces have the same color on each side. This is nothing like the cube I got. My cube has no solid corners, they are all 2 white/1 black, or 1 white/2 black (4 of each). The edge pieces are a mix, 8 white/black, 8 black/white, 4 black, 4 white (specifically, the 2-color pieces have parity options).

All of this makes the cube that much more evil to scramble and solve. It'll take some time. I've done some studying before-hand and that should give me a good chance to solve should I ever get around to scrambling. I'd rather not take it apart and reassemble it to solve.

If the cube were actually constructed as pictured, I'm confident it would be easier to solve, even though there would be parity options with the edges.

The cube was chunky out of the box, but I loosened each screw 1/4 turn and added lube, and now it turns fine without any pops. I love that there are multiple solved states.

This puzzle puzzle s great! It feels a little big, but that may be because the only other 4x4 I have is the meilong.

I love this cube it's fun to change the design of it.

The cube is heavy, and works well. It is loud, but has nice tiles. Any sort of corner cutting is non existent. It does feel like the outermost pieces are more sunk into the cube than the center pieces. It also looks nice on a shelf.

As for the solve, it's not a very complex puzzle, and as long as you know how to do center rotations, or creative movements, it's not any more interesting than a 4x4. You would probably have you money better spent on a more interesting mod (or multiple given the price).