Autodarts X is £449. Here is the £299.98 way in.

What Autodarts X is, and what it costs

Autodarts X is Winmau's own first-party autoscoring system: four HD cameras and an integrated 360° diffused lighting ring in a single powder-coated aluminium unit that clamps to a standard bristle board. No drilling, no tools, and the retailers listing it quote fitting in under three minutes (Winmau's own FAQ does not put a number on it). It carries a two-year warranty on the electronics, has dual-band Wi-Fi built in, and needs no separate computer. Winmau's price is £449 (winmau.com, checked 5 October 2026).

Pre-orders opened on 17 September 2026 and are live now, so the question is no longer whether you can buy one — it is when it turns up. UK retailers quote dispatch from 20 October 2026, and some already show the first run as backordered. If you want to be throwing at an auto-scored board this month, a pre-order does not get you there at any price.

The scoring is the platform's, not the hardware's

This is the part most comparisons get wrong, so it is worth stating plainly. Autodarts X and a kit from us run the same Autodarts software, on the same account, against the same opponents, producing the same statistics. The detection is Autodarts’ own software, and we cannot change a line of it. What hardware does is hold cameras at a known geometry in consistent light and hand frames to that software. That is the whole job — and it does matter how well it is done, which is why we are not going to tell you the two rigs detect identically. We have not held an Autodarts X and nobody outside Winmau has published a measured comparison.

So you are not choosing between two scoring systems. You are choosing between two ways of holding cameras in front of one scoring system. Once you see it that way, the question stops being "which one scores better" and becomes "what am I paying the extra £149 for". That is a much easier question, and we are happy to answer it honestly below.

What is actually different, and what is not

Three real differences. Autodarts X uses four cameras where our kit uses three. Three is the standard documented Autodarts setup, and in the pubs running our kits, under lighting nobody would choose for a dartboard, it achieves 99.5% accuracy. Nobody outside Winmau has published a measured figure for the four-camera X, so we can't tell you whether a fourth angle adds anything. What we can tell you is that three cameras is not what's holding anyone back.

Second, where the computing happens. X puts it inside the ring. Ours is a mini PC that sits by the board, and "mini" is not a euphemism: it is about the size of a paperback and it can sit under a TV, on a shelf or velcroed out of sight behind the board. It draws very little power and you turn it on and forget it. Same job, a different place to put it.

Third, how it looks. Theirs is one machined unit. Ours is a light ring with printed mounts and camera arms on it, and it looks like equipment rather than furniture. If your board lives in a living room, that is a genuine consideration and it is the best argument for paying more.

And here is the list of things that are not different: the software, the account, the online matchmaking, the tournaments, the statistics, the AI referee, whether you need a subscription for normal play, and the length of the warranty. Both are two years. Ours is backed by us and theirs by Winmau, and you are entitled to weigh that, but the term is the same.

What a kit from us costs

A complete kit — a mini PC we flash, configure and bench-test against a real board before it is boxed, three cameras, 3D-printed mounts and a light ring — is £299.98 delivered. That is £149 less than Autodarts X. Every kit is built to order and posted tracked within 3–5 working days, with a free 30-minute remote setup call to get you throwing.

If you already own a Mission Torus 270, Target Corona or Winmau light ring, you do not need our lighting or, if you have a spare computer, our computer. The mount kit on its own is £139.99 — £309 less than X — and reuses the ring already on your wall.

Autodarts Plus, which adds a couple of game modes, the AI referee, advanced stats and the ability to create your own tournaments, is £5.99 a month or £59.99 a year on either system. Autodarts X includes 3 months of it and ours does not, which is a real if modest advantage to them on a £449 purchase. Entering online tournaments is free on both.

Why are we cheaper?

Because we are doing a different job, not a worse one. Autodarts X is a designed product: custom electronics, a tooled aluminium enclosure, its own processing hardware, lighting engineered into the ring, and safety and EMC certification for the whole assembly. That work is real and it costs real money. £449 is not a silly price for it.

We assemble proven off-the-shelf parts into a kit that runs the same platform, and we do the fiddly bits for you: choosing the hardware, flashing and configuring the computer, printing mounts that fit your specific ring, and bench-testing the whole thing against a real board before it ships. You are paying us for the researching, printing, flashing and testing, not for a tooled enclosure. That is the entire difference in the number.

A cheaper price with no explanation is a reason to be suspicious. That is the explanation.

Will Autodarts drop support for self-built setups?

It is the question we get asked most since the announcement, and the short answer is no. Autodarts' own app lists "Custom DIY setups" as a supported hardware path today, alongside Autodarts X and the Vantage (checked 5 October 2026). Nothing announced at IFA removed it.

The longer answer is that it would be against their own interest, and that is a sturdier guarantee than any promise. Autodarts is an open platform that exists because people built their own camera rigs and shared what worked. Those self-built setups are the install base: they are the accounts, the subscribers, and above all they are the opponents. The thing that makes any autoscoring board worth owning is that there is someone online at ten o'clock on a Tuesday to play. Cutting off the self-built installs would shrink that pool on precisely the day Winmau needs it at its largest, and would strand the community that did the platform's early testing and documentation for free. You do not saw off the branch you are selling seats on.

It is also worth being clear about what Autodarts X is. It is a hardware partner's product on an open platform, in the same way the Vantage is. A first-party unit existing does not make a platform closed, any more than a first-party controller closes a console. X plays our kits online right now, and the matchmaking pool it joins is one that self-built setups largely populate.

Put plainly: self-building is not something Autodarts tolerates, it is what Autodarts is. It is how the platform started, it is why it grew, and it is the reason hardware makers now build for it rather than against it. The people on self-built rigs wrote the documentation, found the bugs and filled the lobbies, and they are still the bulk of who you will be playing. A platform does not turn on the people who made it, and nothing about a new hardware partner says otherwise. Buy a kit from us and you are buying into the setup Autodarts was built around, not a side door into it.

Buy Autodarts X if…

You want the tidiest possible installation and you are happy to pay for it. Four cameras and the lighting in one clamped-on unit, no computer anywhere in the room, no cables to route, no mounts to fit to your particular ring, and a first-party warranty from a company that has been making dartboards since 1945. If your board is in a living room where a mini PC and camera arms would not be welcome, that neatness is worth £149 on its own and you should buy it.

You should also buy X if you specifically want a first-party Winmau product with first-party support, or if a late-October delivery is fine and you would rather wait for it. Nothing on this page is an argument that Autodarts X is a bad buy. It is an argument that it is not the only buy, and that the gap between them is smaller than the gap between the prices.

Buy from us if…

You already have a board and you want the same autoscoring, the same online play and the same stats without spending £449. You are happy for the kit to look like kit. And you would rather be throwing this month than in late October, because ours goes in the post in 3–5 working days and an X ordered today is quoted to dispatch from 20 October 2026.

There is a second argument for buying now that has nothing to do with us. First production runs of new hardware are exactly when independent reviews, firmware maturity and real-world reports are least available. Letting other people be the first thousand is a perfectly rational thing to do, and a kit from us costs £149 less while you wait and see. That argument cuts both ways and we know it: it is also the argument for keeping your money in your pocket until somebody has reviewed an X.

And if you would rather source the parts yourself, you genuinely can — the platform is open and the community documents it well. We exist for the person who has read that thread, priced it up, and decided they would rather someone else did the researching, printing, flashing and testing.