By chance I came across a YouTube video reviewing this Litejam guitar with LEDs embedded in the fretboard. The reviewer seemed quite positive about it as a learning/teaching aid. Seems quite interesting/powerful in what it can do when coupled with the app. I wonder though if it would just have novelty value at first and then end up not being used much. I would quite like to have a play with one but don’t think I will rush out and buy one just yet as the price is 375 pounds.
I can see it being a big pain in the neck. Leaning over to look at the lights.
Look to be a way to separate you from your money.
If you want to learn guitar the quickest way is to use your ears and brain not an app and your eyes.
Seems to me like a gimmick. If you don’t want to put in the work to learn guitar the hard way, find a new hobby. There aren’t any miracle shortcuts available at any price.
seems mostly gimmicky.
The one place I see it serving a real learning function is for a guitar instructor. as the guy in the video described, it can help people who need more visual aid in their learning. And with a guitar instructor handing this to a student in class, the instructor can deal with the app and the student(s) can just work on learning. And then when the introduction phase of the lesson is done, the instructor can turn the lights off and student(s) can practice. then your student(s) go home and work to transfer their learning onto their own guitars.
seems to me to be a bit of a reach for someone to go out and buy this specifically to help their own learning. Might be helpful at some really early stages of learning but I see a lot of the more complex chords and scales being superfluous. by the time you get to learning a lot of that stuff, will you really benefit from having them light up for you?
I don’t see this as being terribly useful with live playback of tabs. because by the time you’re there, you do really need to be moving away from visuals. One area this might help is to teach early students how to read tabs and translate them to the fretboard. I do see here in the forums the occasional post from people having trouble with that. But again, I don’t see that phase lasting very long before you outgrow the need for that assistance.
the responsive performance mode is something I don’t see as terribly useful but it can add an element of flash to a performance if you’re looking for something like that. Especially if, like he suspects, it can sync up with stage lighting. But to be in a band that uses anything other than basic house stage lighting? That seems to be a function with a HUGE gap between the early learning functions this guitar seems built to accommodate. If you’re in a band playing at that kind of level in those kinds of venues, are you going to be performing with this guitar? I don’t think that’s very likely at all.
So yeah, classroom tool, sure. Past that? Meh.
Heaven forbid anyone does something innovative with guitar! It obviously can’t be any good because Leo Fender didn’t invent it. 
The guy in the video is a teacher, he used it with kids, and he said it worked well. That’s good enough for me.
It seems obvious that it gets over that initially awkward process of mapping from chord diagrams to fretboard, or from a teacher’s verbal instructions about where each finger has to go.
Eventually, good guitarists can play blindfolded, but that doesn’t make fret markers a gimmick, does it? There’s nothing wrong with having aids.
It seems to have a bit of potential for stage-work too.
The software is smart enough to handle alternative tunings.
Besides all of the above, something similar has been available on even quite high-end electronic keyboards for years. I don’t recall keyboard players objecting to it.
Agreed. I remember struggling with that in the early days, and I have seen other people struggle with that as well.
Although it’s possible that it might make the beginner habit of looking at your fingers even harder to break. Almost everybody does that at first., but maybe this would make it more likely to become a crutch for some people?
the migration from the visual to muscle memory is where I see this being more useful in the hands of an instructor who can then control the display.
someone using this on their own being left to their own devices…maybe they’ll make the effort to move away from looking at the fretboard on their own, but the pretty lights make for just another temptation not to do that.
I can see how it might help some people learn - and we don’t all learn the same way.
There’s definitely truth that you want to get away from looking at the fretboard as soon as possible but a beginner will look at the fretboard anyway so at least this ensures they are learning chords correctly
I’m not sure how long you’d use the features for before you outgrow what it offers but maybe anything that helps through the difficult early stages is worthwhile.
It’s easy to have an initial reaction of I learned without the use of tech therefore it’s a gimmick but I don’t agree with that. It’s good to see innovation and no one is being forced to buy one - it’s not like every guitar will now have LEDs in the fretboard whether you want them or not