CME XKEY AIR 25 Electronic Keyboard

Product Information

When a note is pressed, the whole key depresses rather than angling downwards like a traditional keybed. Aside from the latency and connectivity issues, it's a horrible little unit, certainly to play with minimal travel and no dampening. This requires a high level of accuracy to avoid mis-hitting notes, but this can only be a positive since it trains you to be more precise in your playing. i don't really get on with the micro's capacitive keyboard, but would like to take advantage of the micro's poly aftertouch capabilities, and also have more than two octaves to play with. I've read there's some slight latency with it being bluetooth and I think I might be able to detect it indeed but it is so tiny it's negligible.

Ultimately I am extremely happy with the keyboard and find it a great new music keyboard on itself, maybe not in the strict classical piano way but still very expressive. Optional CME Xcable extends the CME XKey 37 LE with a MIDI Out jack and two jack clutches for sustain and expression pedals: Art. Touch feels a little bit like a keyboard and takes a little time to get used to its touch and mini keys. And remember…on Chrome OS, the best apps require a subscription to get all of the features that you want to use (Noteflight requires a subscription to even use MIDI recording).Let's acknowledge how inspiring it is to have this keyboard sit on the desk just like a second computer keyboard, while it's ready to enter notes, play library sounds through Kontakt, etc. As someone who’s been in the business for 30 years you occasionally see an exciting new product that you know straight away is a gamechanger. Compatible with Mac, PC, iOS and Android, class-compliant (so no drivers required) and USB bus-powered, the Xkey manages to be very low-profile (a mere 16mm deep) yet still retaining a decent amount of key travel, making it surprisingly playable. In the past, M-Audio had a few wireless MIDI controllers as well but I experienced lots of drop out, latency and issues when using them. It feels premium and in fact the body of the Xkey is made from the same material (brushed aluminium) used to make Macbooks.

Its power cunsumption is super low but that's the old Keystep, the Keystep 37 might need more power.I think this used to be his go-to keyboard for composing when travelling, and he features it in a number of videos. The new model shares the same elegant ‘Apple keyboard-like’ quality of the original, the larger dimensions seeming only to enhance the clean simplicity of it, despite emphasising the almost implausible thinness of the design!

I followed the instructions and paired the keyboard with my iPad Pro and received a warning from garage band that there may be some latency.I had issues with other previous portable USB keyboards that I have used over the years (One example was an M-Audio 25 key unit that did not stand up to portable use). I’ve been sent the Xkey 37 to review – this one comes with a micro-USB cable although the Xkey AIR is also available (where you can also trigger iPad and iPhone via bluetooth). I should also note that Xkey not only works with macOS and iOS apps, but Windows and Android are also supported. I wanted to make a more mobile setup, so I connected a power bank and a bluetooth midi adapter to my keystep 32.