Nektar has introduced the Impact LX Mini, a new mobile USB MIDI Controller Keyboard that offers 2 independent Arpeggiator/Repeat engines, LED drum pads, a joystick, foot-switch socket and a 25-note mini-keyboard with velocity.
Features:
- 25 velocity-sensitive mini keys
- 4 velocity curves (soft, default, hard 1, hard 2) + 3 fixed values
- Joystick for pitch bend, 2 modulation controls (MIDI assignable)
- Footswitch jack 1/8? (adapter to 1/4? included)
- Octave up/down buttons with LED indicators
- Transpose via Shift + Part 2 buttons
- Part 2 LED buttons (assignable to momentary keyboard shift, transpose, layering MIDI notes and switching MIDI channels (includes Latch option)
- 7 transport buttons for DAW integration or MIDI assignable
- Shift button activates secondary level for a total of 14 accessible MIDI button functions (plus 3rd level for another 7 functions with Nektar DAW Integration)
- 8 velocity-sensitive LED Pads (4 pad maps)
- 8 pots (x2 via Page button, functionality changes according to mode)
- Volume pot with LED settings indication (MIDI-assignable)
- Nektar DAW integration support
Pricing and Availability:
The Nektar Impact LX Mini is expected to be available in Nov 2021, priced at $119.99 USD / €119.99 EUR.
Lovely thing, well-priced – but I don’t see what it offers compared to all its existing competitors. If they had just added a simple sequencer + 4 CV Ins/Outs + made all joystick functions freely assignable – as per Novation’s website, only Up/Down and the push button can be assigned to other MIDI CC # – they still could have priced it around $149, and these features would have made it virtually the only controller with a built-in joystick that was equally suitable to both DAWs and Eurorack. (And if they had even added an 8s recordable memory to that joystick… this would be the only one in its class – at perhaps still less than half the price of Erica Synths’ Black Joystick 2).