Nektar Impact iX49 49-key MIDI Controller Keyboard

Everything I need, nothing I don't. Easy to set up and integrate with a DAW. I use GarageBand and SONAR. I bought this because it fits between my Monitor and Keyboard and has transport controls. I am a guitar player so the keyboard action is not critical. If anything, the keys are a little "heavy".

I wanted to love this keyboard. It has a great shallow form factor that can sit right on a desk between a (computer) monitor and keyboard with room for other control surfaces/iPad to spare, and it's nice being able to play right there without turning to my larger keyboard (Arturia KeyLab) on a separate stand. The pitch and mod wheels are fine, though the pitch wheel feels slightly slow to bounce back to zero when let go. The single fader is serviceable if (understandably) short at 30mm. The few buttons feel good and it's great that they can all be remapped and serve dual functions.Ultimately though a keyboard is an instrument and that's where the issues are. While I grew up playing classical piano on a concert grand, these days I'm mostly making electronic music and am perfectly happy with good synth or semi-weighted action. Nektar is shooting for more of a semi-weighted feel here, which is ambitious for this price point, and they are largely successful - with the white keys. Sadly the black keys are a different story, requiring roughly twice the amount of effort to depress and (likely not unrelated) making about twice the noise (a very noticeable thunk) when played. Effectively it becomes difficult to play across the black and white keys while maintaining consistent note velocities. For simple note entry it works fine, but not so much for accurately capturing a performance.If the black keys played like and were as quiet as the others, this would be a fantastic keyboard. Unfortunately the inconsistent feel and noise are two strikes too many for me when viewed as a musical instrument. It's still impressive what Nektar has done at this price point and I'm sure many will be happy with it, depending on their playing style and whether they've played on a lot of other keyboards. I'd just love to see a higher end keybed in the same form factor.

The keys were not mapping correctly in Logic. I went through all of the troubleshooting steps in the manual, but It didn't work for me. Another thing is that I didn't like the action of the keys. I returned the keyboard because I couldn't get it working correctly with Logic.I have since bought an Alesis V49, and all is right again with the world.

Completely stop working and I couldn't return it! That's not good. At first I thought it was the computer but when I plugged up another midi everything worked I realized it was this midi. They wouldn't except the return. They could at least checked the product. It's still in amazing condition but the damn thing just stop working. Don't waste your money on this price of crap! I never had a midi stop working so fast. Just a few months this thing died. Ridiculous! Not happy. It hindered my money!

Great keyboard, looks good and performs as expected, comes bundled with Presonus Studio One recording software.

It's very good

The keys seem to have a snap mechanism for volume it isn't like other keyboards , For soft sound you cant go to deep and its stops you from going further unless you push more , expected more quality

Very nice product

Ottimo prodotto considerando la fascia di prezzo, ha tutte le caratteristiche che possono soddisfare un uso sia home che live.La tastiera ha dimensioni standard, anche se non di grande pregio ma è l'unico neo che mi sento di notare.È fra l'altro dotata di ottimo software in bundle che può essere utile a molti utenti.Da sottolineare c'è anche la consegna davvero rapidissima (2gg).Sono molto soddisfatto del mio acquisto.

Ottimo materiale, lo utilizzo su IPad e funziona alla meraviglia.Non ci sono pecche di alcun tipo considerando che tastiere così funzionali vanno anche ai 300€