Arturia MiniLab MkII

A great controller. I already had Akai, I already had Native Instruments Kontrol. But Arturia surprised me. Even this small keybed is perfect, the keys have a great feel. Robust material. worth every penny. Before I should have had the Komplete Kontrol, I had to give it back. With arturia I was satisfied.

Good quality product, software download not as straightforward as it could be as the software related to this particular synthesiser is mixed in with many others which are in no way relevant or useable.

The Arturia MiniLab MKII its perfect if you are in need of a midi keyboard, but don't want to settle down with just the keys and want something a bit extra to fiddle with and experiment while producing. It's affordable and well built, gives you a good amount of pads as well as knobs which are fully mapped already for most DAWs. A plus are the software included, which I still have to fully explore, but they do look promising.

Although I'm retired and just dabble in electronic computer based music, purely as a hobby I found the Arturia Minilab, easy to setup, very well made, with lots of flexibility as a keyboard/controller . My new Minilab replaced an old Evolution Audio 25 mini keyboard which is much bulkier and showing it's age.

The Minilab II is a sturdy small machine. The keys are robust not flexible unlike many other mini controllers and are a reasonable size for small to medium male finger sizes. The keys are and pads are responsive and the knobs feel good too. The knobs are endless rotation encoders which is great as they are immediately effective from the controls' current setting, to be increased for decreased in value (no buffer zone till the knob position meets the value of the control before becoming effective). I am just starting the discover the MiniLab so I cannot give in-depth pro's and cons but so far it has not disappointed. It is barely larger than a Mac Book Pro 15", so where ever my notebook goes it can go too. The Sound library from Arturia is pretty damn good and it is easy to improve sounds and save them to your user bank. The MiniLab is a serious competitor in the Mini Controller and is well worth considering if you are in the market for a small controller.