Alesis V61 - 61 Key USB MIDI Keyboard Controller with 8 Backlit Pads, 4 Assignable Knobs and Buttons, Plus a Professional Software Suite Included

This is a fantastic keyboard! At the time of this review I have used this keyboard for about a month. Ill just give you an idea of who this review is coming from: I'd dabbled with piano for a long while before and I had a really old casio keyboard that I was using for a long while and I was ready to take both my skill and my keyboard to the next level (I'm a junior in high school hoping to be a music teacher and I know piano is a phenomenal instrument to have under your belt for teaching).Pros:I read a lot of reviews saying that the keys were too stiff and in my experience I've found that to be fairly untrue. In fact I really like the weight and while they are different than keys on an acoustic they are piano phenomenal for and electronic keyboard. I've had no problem learning to play on this and going between this and playing on a real piano has been perfectly fine.I've also read reviews saying the drum pads arent the highest quality and while they're not perfect they're certainly not bad. I can easily lay down a drum track using them and as a beginner who's never used an electronic drum pad like this I've found the experience to be very fun and a good learning opportunity. However it is true that they will double trigger on occasion, though not nearly as often as some reviews might lead you to thinkCons:The velocity problems almost everyone are mentioning are certainly true. Adjusting them using the V61 editor does help a great deal but itll still give you a stray high velocity note sometimes in the most annoying moments. Luckily I've been using this keyboard with garageband which has a feature which allows you to adjust the velocity settings to be even lower and after doing that I've really enjoyed the experience. However not all DAWs have that feature and without it the velocity can be very annoying. I would go as far as to say that use of this keyboard would be half as enjoyable if I want able to optimize the velocity the way garageband let me. One other con is that I cant for the life of me find how to assign the knobs and buttons to any sort of parameter. Ive searched the manual, I've searched youtube videos and reviews and theres nothing. I'm guessing they might've just not made it compatible with garageband but even so garageband is such a popular beginner DAW and that's kinda who this keyboard is aimed towards. All in all I've had a great experience with it but well have to see where things go once I upgrade to a better workspace

My son is 13 and has been teaching himself piano for a few years now. He has a keyboard but was wanting something he could use with his Bandlab program on the computer to help compose whole songs. He specifically asked for a midi but wanted one with as many keys as possible. This was the happy medium. Not a full piano, but enough keys he can play all the parts of the things he likes to play easily without spending a small fortune.We had this plugged in and software downloaded within 20 minutes of opening it and about 15 minutes later he composed about the first minute or so of Enter Sandman (all the parts including drums/cymbals) and it sounded AWESOME. I have no idea how he does it. He definitely gets his talent from his dad. I just love listening to him play and I am so glad he found a passion for something so awesome.

Using keyboard with Win10 laptop, USB and PreSonus Studio One Artist DAW.Initial plugin and setup in DAW went pretty easily and got sound quickly. Software took a little longer. Firmware is up to date so I didn't need to do anything there. Pretty much just the Editor software was used. It's not that hard to use the software but it is certainly cheesy the way it's organized. But once I figured it out I really only used it so far to mess with the velocity of the keys. I settled with it on 2 for now.There are 8 choices of velocity, which really means it's an envelope reaction to the note connecting to the key switch. The keyboard springs are a set tension and safe to say, it's more than a standard piano tension with a bit more travel when depressed than a piano key. So that is a bit of a slowdown in ability to play it quickly I think. As one man mentioned, he may take it apart and put a stop under the keys to limit how far down they can go. I think that's a good idea. Maybe a piece of wood or metal with a felt strip on it to stop. I would want it to stop right after the note makes contact. I don't think there's an afterbreath feature with the keyboard, but I have to dig deeper with that.The mod and pitch wheels seem to work well enough, although they have a really narrow range compared to the ones on my Novation synth. And are physically smaller. But generally I got the hang of them and they seem to respond smoothly enough.Lastly for now, the things that will require more time are the knobs and the pads. By default, the pads are playing bass notes to a VST. And the knobs are doing nothing. So I probably need to go into the Midi Learn feature in the DAW to assign all of those to make them functional. I will update this later when I spend more time with it. But for now, I would say it will be suitable for a fairly cheap price and I like the full sized keys compared to one that had smaller keys that I had to return.Update: Found out how to assign the knobs and buttons in PreSonus DAW using Midi Learn function. Worked well. Alesis email said the mini grand and other plugin come with the ProTools software if you install it. Since I'm not using that, that's why I don't see those as downloads. Not a big deal as I have similar in my DAW already.I played with keyboard for an hour yesterday and I'm getting used to the feel of it and it's a really good keyboard for someone like me who is not a professional player. I'm sure if I was, I might be more picky and shell out for a high dollar one. Guitar is my primary instrument.