M-Audio Oxygen 25

The Oxygen 25 USB MIDI controller has eight assignable knobs, plus dedicated transport and track select buttons that motivated my choice.
Another characteristic that motivated my choice was the DirectLink mode that automatically maps these controls to common DAW functions including transport, mixer, track pan and plug-in parameters.
It has a midi type of connection.


UTILIZATION

The general configuration of the program it's very simple and easy to follow.
The manual has a nice description regarding the knobs, slides, velocity sensitive keys, and also about the unique Select buttons for on-the-fly step-through of presets, program changes and MIDI channels.
The patch selection is easy to follow even for an amateur, it's very straight-forward and well designed.

OVERALL OPINION

What I like most about it, it's the price, it costs around 100$.
Another great thing about this product is that it can be easy to carry on your trips if you're a Dj or a music producer that travels a lot.
However if You're a pianist or just someone that likes to use many octaves in his creations, this product may not be for you, because it has only 25 velocity-sensitive keys, which sometimes is not enough if you're more into classical music, pop, rock or any other genre that requires tonal movement.

I do enjoy how the keys feel, however it's not the greatest velocity sensitive keyboard out there, but it works pretty decent for it's money, quality of sound is on a high level and I like the material of what it's made.

I must mention that this product doesn't have any drum pads which I find very bad, because if you build your own drums patters you must buy an additional MPK controller or something similar.

Knowing what I know I would buy this product only if I wanted something cheap and easy to carry.