At $99, it’s one of the best bang-for-your-buck portable MIDI controllers out there. Still, one of the biggest selling points of the MPK Mini remains its price. They have a little more travel, which improves feedback while playing, and the texture feels a little more upscale as well. Interestingly, the already stellar pads have gotten even better. And the joystick has a bit more resistance, which makes it easier to get subtle movement out of your notes. The cheap-feeling pots of the last model have been replaced with endless encoders that are larger and feel a lot less toy-like. The joystick and knobs, on the other hand, are huge improvements. It still feels a bit hollow, but the return action on the keys is less aggressive and springy. And the keybed is improved, if only slightly. The mk3 doesn’t suddenly feel like a $500 keyboard, but it does bring a little more heft and polish. The keybed, knobs and general build felt cheap and flimsy. As much as I love the MPK Mini mkII, it was never going to be mistaken for a premium piece of music making gear. The thing is, all these components feel much more reliable on the mk3.
But right now, at least, the screen is of limited utility and doesn’t really reflect anything happening on screen in a meaningful way. The most obvious difference here is the addition of a small screen that provides some feedback for parameters as you change them. There are 25 velocity sensitive keys, eight velocity sensitive pads, eight knobs, an X/Y joystick (instead of pitch and mod wheels), an arpeggiator and a note repeat function. The main features are virtually unchanged from the previous model.
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