AKAI Professional MPK 261

Good pads, faders and continuous controllers

The pads are as expected with the brand, top tier. The controls, including the faders and continuous controllers feel nice with a little resistance. The keys, overall, are good, not the best and two of the keys are more noisy than the others. Very nice feel to them though. The bundles software is very good, including a half of a year subscription to reason plus, which is good. Overall a good product with a decent value, considering the price at the time of purchasing. I would recommend this to anybody looking for a decent controller.

Great controller!

The semi-weighted keys feel great. Snappy and responsive with a great weight behind them. The drum pads is the best I have tried in a midi controller so far. The faders and knobs feeling very smooth and have good friction. Very useful. Overall good compatibility with DAW software

Perfect!

It is very good product. Just a bit heavy, so locate it on a strong and stable desk or stand.

Good controller, but lackluster quality control

Some people warned about keybed quality control (either received broken product or keybed failing far too soon after buying). I still wanted to give it a try, because of the good features/layout, my former good experience with Akai, and especially because I like the feel of the pads on Akai products in general.

Sadly the product I got had a broken keybed on arrival that made proper playing impossible.

I have now read enough horror stories of dead keys and broken velocity detection after very limited time of use, while trying to troubleshoot my unit right out of the box for way too long. Such a trust I had in Akai, that I was confident about user error and not a dysfunctional unit, even when it was already obvious.

Knobs, sliders and pads felt solid. "Feel" of the keybed was good, better than excepted. Springs have quite a lot of resistance, so coming from very light touch keyboard or proper hammer-action piano might be weird for you, obviously. But any way, it felt solid and consistent on the keys that worked on my product.

If you don't mind possible warranty-return hassle and have the luck to get working and long lasting unit, it is still a very nice controller for the price.

Heavy, sturdy and well built!

Excellent Quality keyboard. Have it plugged into my Macbook Pro and the keys and nobs feel great. Satisfying to play with the nobs and buttons as well as the keys.

I have no problem with this keyboard and will get many hours of stage and studio time with it for sure!

A great controller keyboard

I use this in a studio with Logic X, but I can imagine this is well suited (and reliable enough) to live use too. The keys and pads have a nice feel to them and the whole unit feels very sturdy. I found it took a little while to set up in Logic X and I still come across some issues now and then, but that's due to quirks of Logic rather than the Akai.

SO MANY BUTTONS

I bought this already knowing it would be amazing but I didn't realize just how amazing!

every sound known to man with constant updates and ways to manipulate every sound there!

The keys

This would be the perfect controller if it wasn't for the keys. Very springy and very stiff (and not the good kind). It is built like a tank and has all the bells and whistles.

Akai keyboard

Good keyboard with good collection of features. Recommended stand wobbly and returned and awaiting credit of 12 e to buy a better one.

Excellent Controller missing one small feature

I have used many brands controllers over the last 20 odd years and this is my favourite so far. SO easy to configure and plenty of controller types To be able to configured! The keys have a decent "feel"; not ideal for "piano" playing but a good compormise for a smooth synth action. The only feature missing for me is on-screen visibility of the controller value as you're moving it. I do a lot of "live mixing" and tweaking and when sweeping mids, I cannot see where the frequency and/or gain levels are as these are endless rotary encoders. A small issue for me as I have my laptop offstage (don't like the look of seeing computers on stage) so really miss this BUT I would take all the functions and configuration possibilities over that feature (which you see in Axiom type controllers. A solid 9/10 from me