So Akai has released the Akai MPC X SE and the MPC One+. The SE gives the current MPC X a retro skin makeover, and adds 2GB of RAM for a total of 4GB. For what most music makers are doing, the additional 2GB of RAM was not needed. People are still buying it, but only because they have the money and nothing else to do with it. It’s not a necessary upgrade if you already have a MPC X. I’ve seen producers who only make basic boom bap hip hop beats buying the SE when they already have a vanilla X. The main users that would benefit from the SE version would be people doing live sets with theirs and who need to load a lot of the instrument plugins into memory to be able to use them without much slowdown or load time. It’s a great device. If I had the money, I’d buy one, however, I think if you already own a MPC X there’s no reason to drop $2.5k on the “upgrade” when you’re not getting much different from what you already own. To each their own and far be it from me to tell someone how to spend their money. If it makes them happy, by all means, go for it!
For the MPC One+, they have it priced at the same price as the MPC One vanilla. It has a red colorway and adds wifi and bluetooth and removes the ethernet port from the back. It’s cool that they added wifi and bluetooth, but I don’t understand why they removed the ethernet port. Some people, like myself, prefer to have all their devices connected with a hard wire. My Playstation is hooked up that way, my PC, as well as my MPC One. I guess it was a way to keep production costs down when modifying the current MPC template with wifi and bluetooth cards. I wish they had also given the One+ 4GB of RAM. For a current MPC One user, it’s not worth it to me to spend another $699 when all I’m getting is a red skin which I could technically get myself from a company like styleflip or the like. The wifi and bluetooth are great additions, but I don’t think they justify another purchase. The One+ still doesn’t have a lithium battery, so it’s not really meant to be portable. You need a power outlet or a power-bank to plug it into. It’s not tailor-made for portability like the Live 2 is per say. For new MPC users, the One+ is a great upgrade, but I’d say if you already own a MPC One, keep your money and spend it on records to sample, expansions, or upcoming instrument plugins!
A lot of people like to complain about Akai, but I like their products and how they are constantly innovating with new plugins and expansion packs for the MPC universe. These most recent “upgrades” seem to be fool-hearted though. I’d like to see them improve the software for the current MPCs that are already out. Serato Studio has had stems features for a bit. I’d like to see that added to the current MPC software with an upgrade of some type. Even if it was a paid upgrade, I’m sure a lot of music makers would love to be able to access stems separation tools natively on their MPCs. There’s other features like disk streaming that MPC users have been wanting for a while now. Akai needs to stop trying to hock hardware to people and update the software side of things to compete with the growing competition. Serato, Ableton, Reason, and a ton of other standalone or DAW makers have added features that are leaving the MPC 2.0 software system in the dust. Hopefully Akai’s R&D team realizes this and they are cooking up something that we’ll all find amazing and much needed very soon!