Arturia KeyLab Essential 61 Reviews

An absolutely amazing product

I love this keyboard. The build quality is really nice, and it's extremely light and portable. It connects seamlessly to Analog Lab and to other synths too with little effort. I'm still trying to figure out the other functions like how I can control my DAW with this, but so far it's amazing. It also comes bundled with some amazing softwares.

It has semi weighted keys for those who don't know. I was personally expecting non weighted ones, but this would take me a while to get used to.

Just OK for the price but.

Comes with very good library "Analog Lab V". Keys are so loud. It's very noisy. Pads are just pads. They are not much useful. Setting up with the DAW takes a long time. If I were to use pads, just setting up pads take too much time. By the time you are done, that your creativity is gone. This is good if you are just looking for a midi keyboard just to get midi inputs.

Decent MIDI Keyboard

Overall, I really like this keyboard. For the price, you really can't go wrong with what's included. The included software packages are really handy and I've found myself using them very often. Can recommend

Awesome keyboard

Not much to say about this it's really good

Nice controller

a great in budget controller. actually really good quality and the keys are way better than what i was expecting based on other reviews!

Arturia KeyLab Essential 61

I am new to piano, and I must say, this keyboard is great. The software it comes with, is what makes it such an incredible option for beginners. You can explore a lot, and make the BEST most atmospheric, dramatic, dark, or happy sounds with Analog Lab V, and of course Ableton Live Lite is great if you want to begin recording.. The reason I gave the product 4 stars and not 5, is because one of the higher note keys (A) for some unknown reason stopped working after 6 hours of using the keyboard. The keybed itself feels much nicer than I thought, but you don't have 100% control of the action like you would with a properly hammered piano/keyboard. Overall its great for beginners

Great keyboard

Beautiful design. Good functionality. At first, the keys seemed too light, but you get used to it quickly. Connects seamlessly to any DAW. Nice purchase, extremely satisfied!

does what I would expect

the manual could be better, in that novices won't understand the terms, but apart from that, no major problems

A la hauteur de mes attentes. Excepté un petit bémol concernant les softwares qui vont avec le produit (analog lab...) pas très intéressants à mon goût.

Great, sturdy, feature rich

It's good. Analog lab is amazing. The keyboard has high quality and durability. It plays nicely, albeit a bit light (but IMO that's a taste thing). Making MIDI maps for it is super easy. Can't complain!

Nice keyboard

Nice cheap midi, nice feeling to the keys, knobs, and faders, Arturia lab 4 is also a very good accompanying software with great sounds

you get what you pay for

this midi keyboard is probably all you need and more! price is great

Excellent value midi keyboard

I got this for my home studio set up. In addition to the relatively low price, the bundled software made it a very good value purchase. There are some limitations (eg the absence of zones / splits) but for less than £200 I can't really complain.

Pros

1. Relatively easy to set up and install, provided you follow the instructions and do everything in the right order

2. The midi control centre, where you can save configurations to the User pads for easy recall is great.

3. With the optional adaptor (Item 192043) I have also been able to use this in a live setting as a controller keyboard (in my case for a Nord Electro 6 HP), so it could operate as a top (B3 organ) board, including the assignment of the sliders to the Nord drawbar settings. It took me a little while (and a youtube video) to figure this out, but it was really worth it to have the versatility of a second keyboard on the Nord sound engine and the ability to control the organ sounds from the midi controller.

4. The variety of sounds / synths in the bundled software is just fantastic. I've had hours of fun with the vintage synths.

Cons

1. It's not the sturdiest keyboard in the world, and the keys are very light to the touch. Not really suitable for piano sounds, but is grand for synths and light organ work.

2. Would prefer to be able to assign channels to zones, but I guess that's why Arturia sell more expensive / feature rich versions.

Overall, if you're looking for a cheap controller with a bundle of software, which can also be used live, and which will integrate easily into your DAW, this is a good option.

Good features for the price

Very practical when used with arturia software. Very good software offer, analog lab is very good (got the v4 with the keyboard, and freely upgraded to v5).

Worth the price and nice look :)

Piece of Art!

It's my first keyboard/ Me and all my family playing on this keyboard. It's a legendary! I love touching keys, all materials good! Im creating my own songs and learning to play others on this keyboard. AnalogLab is awesome too! Im glad of all! Thx, Artur!

All you need for creativity!

Very light, good looking and well-madeA keyboard.

Nice hummers response, not best, compering M-Audio.

Good plastic quality.

A lot of options for your creativity using Garage band and other software.

For learning piano process it is also applicable and interactive.

Nice keyboard

It's nice keyboard with nice pads and sliders, but knobs sometimes buggy. I am using Ableton Live and knobs and the values ​​of the knobs twitch. May be it depends on drivers or something else. I've compared knobs with akai lpd8 knobs and they don't have the problem. Anyway it costs all money.

Best "Budget" Keyboard

This is probably the best keyboard around 200£ that you can find

The quality is top notch, and so is the build

Despite being plastic it looks and feels refined

The utility is also the best, especially because of the combination of knobs and sliders

Deffenitely recommend to anyone starting out in musical production

All hype on cheap Chinese quality keyboard system that doesn't work

The marketing shows this keyboard as something no other midi key can do, and touts of simple connectivity, to DAW and control, studio or live.

But it's all just a fake illusion.

For years this was a dream, and when I received it, it was a nightmare.

Nothing works, except the sound library but that doesn't work in DAW *Cubase Pro and Elements very slow no matter what pc, and it won't control any DAW doesn't even show up in the free Ableton.

It looks beautiful, but thats it, doesn't come with power cable or usb cable, but checking further supposed to have usb cable but it is only 1m long cannot get to your pc easily.

Usb does not control midi in daw you need a separate midi cable and midi interface to get it to work,

Create a new instrument track Massive 2 seconds vst opens, arturia takes over 1 minute to open, on top of line fastest pc.

Also needed an asio interface or it gets latency issues really fast.

I could of got maudio and controlled myself for much less hassle and price, now I look at nektar T6 has after touch, and easy integration with DAWs.

I spent 8 hours first day and another 8 second day trying to get this to work right, it even deleted my cubase license , had to reinstall and then reinstall their vsts.

I can only say I was fooled by slick marketing, only after did i start noticing other negative reviews and problems.

Fantastic Trigger board

Great board. Lovely in use with Arturia plugins too.