It’s beautifully laid out, and buttons are tactile and clicky, helping make the keyboard in general feel premium, despite the low price tag. Then, there’s a shift button - which unlocks a whole range of other controls - all at your fingertips. On the top right, you’ll also get controls for things like quantization, arpeggiation, and transport controls to play and record your ideas. There are also eight capacitive knobs and an encoder on across the top, which make it easy to browse and manipulate plugins in Komplete Kontrol, which is the software you’ll primarily use with the Komplete M32. That’s one of the biggest differences between the M32 and its A-series counterpart - but it’s not a change we think many will be frustrated with. The device has 32 keys, as the name suggests, and it has replaced pitch and mod wheels with sleek and easy-to-use touch strips. Of course, the top of the device is where most of the action happens - and there’s a ton of functionality on offer. We would have liked to see USB-C instead of the USB-B port that’s included, but that’s not a huge deal. On the back, you’ll get a USB port, along with a port for a foot pedal, which is a nice addition.

Let’s start with the overall layout of the device. It’s built from quality materials, is laid out in an easy to understand way, and while not as small as some other “portable” controllers out there, the trade-off is better functionality and larger keys - which is always nice.

The first thing you’ll notice about the Komplete Kontrol M32 is that compared to other controllers in its price range, it looks awesome.

Komplete kontrol a25 review