Akai Professional APC Mini MK2 - USB MIDI Pad Controller for Clip Launching with Ableton Live Lite, 64 RGB Pads, Drum and Note Mode and MIDI Mixer

AKAI have done well with this. It is cheap and yet feels a fraction more robust than the previous model. The sliders are a touch more "smooth" The RGB pads are also great so you do not get "Lost" in the 64 pad matrix. I was thinking of knocking off a star or two for two reasons (but then I remembered that most people will buy this for working with Ableton). I did try it quickly with Ableton and it is a great budget midi controller with super portability. However, we use MIDI controllers for many purposes and so the documentation is important. We have 8 of the old APC pro mini and they have served well, mainly as midi controllers for our lighting suite for small to medium events. We have had three failures on the old controllers (all USB connector problems). We have resoldered in one which is holding up. It is now pretty difficult to find NEW Mk1s and so we looked at many midi controllers from £50 to £1000. For our purpose there was really only this one that ticked the boxes we needed. We needed to paginate the controller, to have at least 8 rotaries or sliders and be able to map main pages that are 6 by 5 with extra pad control available. For around £100 with a case, these are great value. When I unboxed this one, it feels and looks a tad better than its predecessor. Sadly it is also a little bigger and so we have to get more cases but that is small beer. I "assumed" which was very silly of me that this would be a simple plug and play with the same basic coding to the previous model and that we could get the RGB colours sorted afterwards. Sadly this is not the case. The documentation is not complete and so you have to guess at some of the coding and we will be making a quick youtube and making a spreadsheet of eh coding available shortly. The main 64 pad centre has the same note keys and the sliders are 100% compatible to the Mk1. The bottom and right side small pads have different notes and so we had to remap those before starting. The default brightness is the dimmest and very much TOO dim for a normally lit workplace. The colours are a prescribed list of 127 and there is documentation on the RGB codes for each value but no help on teh actual colours. Unless you are well versed in reading RGB hex codes then you might need a side list to indicate roughly what each code represents as a colour. We do read HEX and RGB but even then the documentation was painful to go back and forth. We are fortunate in that we can fully control our midi control stream and feedback to the mid controller and so almost 24 hours later we can see how to get this controller to light up on bighter settings, but for those using it as plug and play they might have a bit more difficulty or they might simply not know that actually the pads are much brighter. One other worry is the USB connector. They are of course a weak point for portable equipment but they have been more problematic on the old controllers. It looks like the actual connector on the new boards is the same. An old school USB 4 connector that does not quite go in all the way. We will wait and see if my fears are out of place and of course we will be taking extra care of that bit. Overall, this a a great piece of kit and we will buy another 8 to upgrade all our MK1s. If you are considering it as an entry into using a midi controller with Ableton or some of the DJ software then it is stunning and you should be using it within seconds of unboxing. If you need to customize the MIDI then look for our documentation supplement as AKAIs is woeful. If you are upgrading from MK1 to MK2 note that you WILL have to remap the outer pads and do something about the velocity and value settings. Have fun and make music, lighting or whatever.

This has been a really useful Controller for me using Ableton. I liked the easy of use and especially the touch controls when performing. They are easy to assign in Ableton. Would definitely recommend but with alternatives out there, it’s worth reviewing what your actual needs are. I prefer this over some of the other Akai controllers but that’s down to how I like to use Ableton.

Works as well as the Mk1, but with 100's of added assignable colours, which makes button identification so much easier

Does what i need. Those mini faders really are perfect for me. One thing annoys me. The faders when pushed up are +6db in Ableton live so i need to add utility on every channel with -6db as default. Other than that it’s worth buying. I also like how I can switch the pads to drum rack or note very easily

Would of been 5 stars but was really hard to set up and get sound coming out,also listed as a sequencer but not really a sequencer ,although it is fun to use

Superbly engineered and integrated into Ableton. Already pushing my creativity. For such a simple product its really rather incredible. Pretty sturdy for a plastic controller, well designed and suprisingly deep with access to an enormous amount of features without touching the keyboard. Highly recommended.

First things first... There seem to be a lot of glowing reviews here. But a quick look will show that many of them are not actually for the APC64, but for the APC25 or the APC Mini, which are very different devices (I have the APC Key 25 and yes, that's good for the price that it is). But The APC64 is a very different thing, and costs roughly double what those do. . Next up, be warned, once you have registered this and are about to claim what looks like tons of free software, DON'T!! There's a reason that AIR software comes free with everything ever, it's garbage bloatware! Even the included plug-in manager here is just bloatware. It's ridiculously sluggish, and 95% of what it's there for is to fill your computer with adware and trials. Just register your APC64, check your firmware is up to date, claim your free copy of Ableton Lite, and just forget the rest. The only other worthy software here is the MPC DAW, but the included plug-in manager can't even manage to download that. You are better off claiming your free copy the normal way (MPC Beats is always free) while you are on the Akai website. . Also, the build quality of the APC64 feels a little creaky to me, especially for the cost compared to the other APC's i mentioned earlier. The APC Key 25 is cheaper, but this FEELS cheaper to me, and not just a little. . But my most negative comments have to be for actually using this thing. Whoever says that the APC64 is intuitive is (IMO) subscribing to the moto of ''Make the lie so big that people will think that it can't possibly be a lie.'' Because intuitive is the very opposite of what the APC64 is. . It is supposed to be plug and play with Ableton, but just trying to use it's drum pads setting and the basics don't even line up. Even devices from the same company that are a tiny fraction the cost of this (the LPD8) are way better at that. I can't even fix the issue with MIDI mapping as that seems to be just a fantasy here. Plus the touch sensitive strips are far to sensitive and rather than solving any problems, they ARE the problem. And it certainly doesn't help that, even brand new, their design team thought it would be a good idea to have the writing on the buttons look like it's already worn away by years of use, so you don't know what the hell you are doing until it's done. . Whoever designed this has obviously never played live. .

The item was as new - can't be faulted. Sadly some of the software had been redeemed. Many thanks to Akai Pro the re- registered the device and resolved it. Only 3 stars to Amazon because of this potential disaster🫥