Native Instruments Komplete Kontrol A61 Controller Keyboard

Keys feel good (synth style, definitely not weighted). Only complaint is lack of transpose buttons, but this is a limitation I'm glad of as it is improving the versatility of my playing

Always wanted a newer keyboard and this was the one.

Excellent keyboard, good make. The only thing I would say is that the pressing and release of the keys can be a little noisy when playing, quite clunky sounding. Apart from that it's a great product.

Superb, does exactly what it's meant to do. Solidly built.

If you're on a budget, this is your only option. The key bed is beautiful, a pleasure to play. I've had the Nektar P6, Akai, the Korg Trinity, and nothing compares. An absolute delight!

This keyboard is exactly what I need right now, as a temporary fix while I don't have my studio for a while. It's recognised in Ableton immediately and all the keys and controls work.However, despite what you may hear in some descriptions or videos, this is in no way a semi-weighted action, or even vaguely comparable to one. It's a set of very plastic keys with a sharp, spring-like response. I showed it to my wife, saying "Check out the keys!" and her response was "ew."In playing, some subtlety can be lost to the pressure required to get over the sharp spring return, and I suspect that there is only a sensor at the end of the key travel, so right now I'm dropping notes.That said, if you don't care about a realistic feel, the response is at least crisp, and manages not to feel cheap and spongy. The fast return will surely come in useful for production (a semi-weighted keyboard can slow you down). Also, I'm not a pianist by any stretch of the imagination, so YMMV.The buttons, digital knobs (with infinite travel), encoder and mod/pitch wheel also feel good, although the knobs and wheels have a kind of smooth inertia to them. It feels luxurious and expensive, but I question whether it will limit quick and fine adjustments.For me, the software integration side of things was a bonus, but I was actually excited at the idea of selecting from a palette of sounds from multiple synths and libraries. Unfortunately, it fell down here as well. The installation took a long time (I have a lot of plugins) and needed constant attention to get past some plugin dialogs. It also regularly completely hangs on one of my Arturia plugins.For anything that isn't Native Instruments or Kontakt-based, I get an error when I select a sound. The installer seems to have attempted to install the plugin metadata to a drive that doesn't exist, so I foresee a lot of time on forums and with support to get it fixed.So: unrealistic keys, flaky software, sluggish controllers. But, for this price I can actually forgive a lot of that. Just being able to have a keyboard around for the next couple of months is good enough for me.And being NI, I'm pretty sure that it would survive a nuclear apocalypse.

This keyboard looks nice and it comes with nice selection of software. Unfortunately it doesn't allow you to adjust velocity curve, which means that it becomes useless if you try to play using acoustic instruments samples or if you intend to play with any expressiveness at all. If you want that then you need to go for S versions, but for the price of S I would rather go for a proper synthesizer, which can also act as a Daw controller. Also the buttons are very noisy when pressed.I'm very unhappy and I'm going for a synth/workstation.