Akai Professional MPK Mini MK III 25-key Keyboard Controller Reviews

Husband has been working on an indie game for a while and had expressed interest in adding proper sound via the help of a midi controller. This was the first one to come up in a search and my husband couldn't be more pleased. Keys are responsive and the level of sound control you get is amazing. Soft touches yield softer notes while harder key strikes produce louder sound.

Love this purchase

This thing works great. Love the Hybrid synth that came with it, too
Took a little effort to get GGDrums to work/route to the pads but that's because I'm a midi newbie but it all works great.

I got this starting out and what you get sounds and plug ins like grand piano and hybrid and Mac beats witch I don't use but looks super coo when I mess with it. its such a good deal if your starting or even just to have a compact controller that can do a lot. after all the synths and crazy stuff I bought I find myself going back to this a lot.

One of the best midi keyboards you can buy highly recommend.

Very solid construction. Easy to use. No accidental double triggering. I've used it exclusively in live performance situations. It's the perfect combination of midi triggers and keybed. I use it while playing drums to trigger tracks, pads, and loops. It just works.

The product was exactly as expected and the customer service is better than expected. 5/5

My nephew and I love creating music, so I bought one for myself and one for him. How could I not? the price for this is great. haven't had any issues with either one of them and he's 15 so they must be durable. Love this product and would highly recommend.

Buying from Sweetwater.com is also amazing. customer service is literally the best because not only are they helpful, but they check up on you with your order and are even interested to know what your plans are with the purchased product. I love the passion!

the MKIII mini is intuitive to use, works well with multiple DAWs and will help you get your ideas into the ears of an audience. My hands are a bit too big to operate the keys smoothly. If you're like me spend the extra now and get a full sized; However this is a budget friendly midi that does not disappoint.

This is my first venture into the midi keyboard realm. I'm very happy with Akai's product. I couldn't have done better in this price range. Sweetwater Music is the best!

Very fast delivery and easy financing.

I am really happy with my purchase.

Love this tool! I'm using this to lay down drafts, key elements and rhythms in my song writing. Love the plug ins and FXs. Hoping to move my tracks (aka stems)over to one of my local studios...
The additional engineering will start me off at an escalated tier of song production.

I ain't gonna lie. The learning curve shoots straight up on this puppy. I'm a beginner... (old school guitarist) Spent hours and hours review vids and with experimenting with this. I still don't know jack. Maybe Akai consider using a real learning model to parlay this technical mountain. I'm still tryna figure out how to chain a set of sequences to make a song (aka song mode.). The KB out there just doesn't nail it for me. They either assume I have a whole lot of prior knowledge or they just figure I will eventually figure it (maybe by osmosis?) Other than that, its all good.

I guess I didn't realize the keyboard was going to be as small as it is. I have larger fingers so I'm constantly hitting the keys next to the keys that I'm trying to play. It has great functionality and maybe I haven't given myself enough time to work with it. For the price. I'll keep it. It's great for traveling.

First off, great customer service as usual from Sweetwater!

I'm new to beat making, and this was my first MIDI and DAW experience. This has what you need to get started. Pads are really nice feeling, as is the keyboard. But, as others have said the keys are a little small if you have big mitts. But it doesn't make it unplayable.

Downside is after a few months I'm really wanting the features of the full 16 pad models, and I'll probably be adding a MPC studio to my set up. I'll still use the keyboard on the Mini so not a huge deal.

Overall, I really like it and would recommend to anyone just starting out or looking for a portable midi controller.

I am primarily a guitarist, but I know enough music theory to get my way around on the keyboard. Therefore, when I'm recording some MIDI tracks, I don't really need a full sized keyboard with any specific action.

I had been using an Alesis Q49 keyboard for a while, and realized that I was only using a small portion of it, so I started looking for something smaller. The drum pads on this unit caught my attention, so I looked at this in about three or four other units that accomplished the same thing.

This one seem to be the best fit for me, so I went with it. When it arrived, I let my wife try it out just for fun. She has played keyboards for most of her life, and did not like the small size, nor the action.

Still, it works just fine for me with my limited keyboard technique.

I'm a bass player that had been playing for a little over a year now. Moving into the intermediate class. I got this Akai mini because I have no one to play with and I thought I would be able to put down a few tracks so I could play along. I'm using the supplied MPC Beats software. There's a bit of a learning curve but within a few days, I was able to put together a song. Not too shabby. I can't compare this with other midi controllers so sorry about that. I've used it to help with my lessons. I have a particularly difficult rhythm to learn (son clave) and I put the baseline rhythm in MPC Beats to isolate it from the backing track and that helped immensely. I had to create my own click track for it - there's not a metronome built in (that I've found). I purchased the offered sound packs for Air Music and that was a mistake. I can't get them into the software where I can use them. I got no help from Support on it. So that was money wasted. So far it seems the only sound packs you can get are all urban/hip-hop/etc sounds. Not my cup of tea. I'm into reggae, blues, lots of other stuff. There's not a lot of tutorials out there and the ones there are assume you know how to load sounds and stuff already. I'd really like to find someone I can ask questions to. But overall, I'm really liking it and maybe once I've had it a while longer, I'll learn more and it'll be easier to use. Not that it's difficult - I just don't know what I'm doing.

While I really like the footprint and the features in such a small footprint, the keys are small and I don't cleanly press keys without hitting other keys (not that I'm a good keyboardist anyway). It does feel a little toyish as well. I ended up getting a larger 37 key which is working out better for me.

It works as advertised but with my big fat fingers I find the keys just a little small. If you just need to occasionally use a keyboard to get something into the computer, this is a good one for the price.

It is tiny, plastic, uses a USB cable from ten years ago, has no sequencer and the barest arpeggiator, and worst of all, you can't plug it into an iPad and use it without several products from Apple AND a powered hub. I do not understand who loves this thing.

It will go up or down by octaves only. Will not transpose. Fail.

the keyboard is far too small for adult male fingers.

Got this to use in case i needed piano in any of my songs, I've been trying to use it but everytime i do, i practically have to pound on the keys or drum pad for it to work properly, which just wears out my finger and they end up hurting, and the program the keyboard is supposed to be used for doesn't work no matter what i do with it, i used guides and nothing really helped, but that's a matter with akai, not the keyboard, so i wouldn't really reccommend it with how extra stiff everything feels, with how it was advertised by akai and other people i searched up before buying all felt like a lie with how hard to use it is, i woukdn't risk it again used or not, don't waste your time

Akai makes Garbage. These keys are so brittle. Akai doesn't even supply the keys unless you buy it from A 3rd party for $ per key. That's A rip off price. I had no problems replacing keys from Korg or Yamaha at A lesser cost There where times Korg would just send me A key. Akai said they would replace the whole unit but I dont have the original receipt despite me sending them A picture of my receipt when I first registered I believe which they should have it on file. Obviouly this is American Akai and not Japan or Taiwan Akai because they wouldn't be so greedy. What's worse is the item is still under manufactures warranty for parts, and I only had this since November. I feel like this is $ waisted on garbage.

It's a solid instrument, but the amount of frustration I have trying to plug and play this instrument with various DAW's, the stiffness of the keys and their inability to hit notes fully and correctly, coupled with the fact the instrument was shipped to me in the most beat up and poorly taped box I've ever seen leads me to believe the instrument may have been damaged in shipping

First time I've gotten such a poor quality instrument from Sweetwater

For a beginner it's not a great product. Manual doesn't really explain how or what each function button does or how it works. The software that comes with it was hard to install. Asking for codes that were never provided so there is still software I can't access. Wouldn't recommend for a beginner and if you have no keyboard or piano experience don't waste your money. The Sweetwater company itself isn't the problem the product is bad.

I purchased my MPK Mini at the same time I upgraded to Catalina. Akai has yet to update the editor to work with Catalina. I find this very disappointing to the point Iʻll not purchase another Akai product.