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the sensel morph is unlike anything we've ever used some might call it an

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overgrown touchpad but others have praised it for its creative applications

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in music or programming to be fair it is essentially an

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overgrown touchpad but it's also much more than that it's overlays including

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one that you can design yourself can make it useful for nearly any kind of

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creative work so it's got a lot going for it on paper but a slick spec sheet

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and a crafty kickstarter campaign can only take you so far

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how does it actually fare in everyday

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use and how will i fare transitioning to our sponsor origin pc origin pc laptops

10
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can now be customized with 11th gen Intel core processors and NVIDIA GeForce

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rtx 30 series graphics check out origin pc at the link below

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sensel raised over 400 000 us dollars on kickstarter back in 2015 eventually

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shipping to all their backers in 2017 and since then they've been hard at work

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developing their unusual touch technology the morphs special sauce is

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that it features 19 425 sensors or stencils under its

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surface with each of them capable of detecting up to 5 kilograms of force

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with a total of 32 000 levels of sensitivity what that means is that

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compared to a normal touch pad which relies on relatively rough

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approximations of your fingers pressure and movement the morph is

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extraordinarily precise it also has wireless functionality lasting for up to

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a day of use at a time and with the sensel app any of the overlays can be

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easily remapped and customized based on each user's individual needs just by

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plugging into a Windows or mac computer now our unit needed a firmware update

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before we got started but the process was shockingly painless compared to some

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of the other tablets we've seen and the morphs lights actually act as a progress

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bar while it's updating cute now one of sensel's main selling

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points on the website is their mpe or midi polyphonic expression support which

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is an extension of midi that allows per node expression beyond just velocity

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pitch and after touch but

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just looking at the morph as an innovative music device sells it a bit

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short want a macro pad with 78 tactile

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reprogrammable buttons well provided you have some experience with auto hotkey

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you're ready to rock want a dedicated drum pad xy pad or midi controller or

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even a drawing surface you can do all of that and more with the morph and what's

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really unexpected is that you can do it well

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well mostly but more on that in a minute

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musically speaking using the morph is as plug and play as any other midi

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controller plug it in add your overlay

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and enable it in your digital audio workstation or daw of choice do be

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mindful that not every daw natively supports mpe properly and some like fl

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studio don't support it at all but others have already embraced it in their

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ecosystem and synths like vital really let you do a lot of crazy morphing with

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it

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so

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ableton is a good example of a dog with native support for mpe even in some of

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its included plugins and when you can play around with it it works incredibly

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well being able to wiggle your finger even in a slight manner to completely

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change how a note reacts is a special kind of feeling when it's first

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experienced if i had to criticize the experience i

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would say the subtle ridges that guide you between the white notes take some

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getting used to and sometimes it feels

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unproductive to compose on it but a big part of that is because of how gosh darn

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fun it is to use i mean sure it'll never

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have the feel of a regular piano with hammer keys striking the strings

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or even the feel of a cheap midi controller with semi-weighted keys and

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if you want your piano playing to have character and depth you're gonna need to

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modify your velocities per note after recording but

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those complaints are all kind of like saying hey that riff that you did on the

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recorder might need some post work to spice it up because it's horses for

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courses and what the morph does well it

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does really well

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swapping out for the drum overlay if you like finger drumming then this does get

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the job done it's not as utility driven as a launch pad and not as large as a

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midi fighter but it's still great for quickly drafting up some beat ideas or

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for a cool live performance video and moving to the booklet thunder overlay

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this one is kind of awesome even if it's a bit confusing at first glance it turns

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a traditional keyboard into a full three-dimensional keyboard with space

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for your fingers to modify the sound through mapping vertical and horizontal

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motion on each key to different midi channels there's also a control surface

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overlay that has more traditionally styled midi pads and a bunch of

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additional slider surfaces to control midi parameters i'd say though that the

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black and white keyboard is still where it manages the best with both character

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and expression that being said the keyboard with mpe

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can be pretty taxing on CPU power so make sure that you have a good CPU we

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actually have an upcoming video on what it takes to build a good music

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production pc so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it

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now sensil used to offer an art overlay but it hasn't been in production for a

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couple of years now and honestly speaking that's probably for

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the better because there's no traditional stylus receptive digitizer

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the morph only detects input when something is actually

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pushing on its surface which makes drawing with it a little bit awkward now

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i've read online that some people absolutely love using it as a drawing

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surface but personally i would say you're better off going with a dedicated

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tablet instead because having to hold your stylus down on the surface both

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when you're drawing and when you're moving it around isn't a particularly

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intuitive experience and that's when it actually works

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guys there are better drawing solutions out there for a fraction of the cost

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just buy one of those instead as for the video editing overlay it's

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well it's fine it has dedicated buttons for common commands in adobe premiere

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but then most of those have easy hotkeys as it is and the composition scrubbing

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tools that's a cool idea but they don't feel that precise honestly i'd rather just

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remap a regular keyboard and put stickers on the keys especially with the

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tactile feedback that the morph provides which brings us perfectly then to the

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tactile keyboard overlay which stencil describes as feeling fantastic to type

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on and offering mechanical feedback

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that's a lot to unpack i would say that i agree with those

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statements but only if i had never felt a keyboard

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before i have pulled keyboards out of e-waste

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bins that offered noticeably better typing experience than the morphs

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keyboard overlay it's mushy and unsatisfying at best and at its worst it

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misses keystrokes entirely

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furthermore due to the silicone overlay the tiny touch pad spot is neither

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accurate nor is it comfortable it's really not the kind of thing i would

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normally rip on when reviewing a jack-of-all-trades product like this but

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they were asking for it misleading claims for manufacturers need to be

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called out and those were a couple of doozies with that being said the

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keyboard overlay does make a great option as a macro pad since it is fully

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remappable you can use non-standard inputs and re-route those throughout a

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hotkey to spit out phrases or perform macros and it works pretty well i mean

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heck with remapping you can actually even use the morph as a game controller

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although the experience of using a flat surface as a full gamepad

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would be an acquired taste to say the least

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finally hold on a second Linus i mean

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this is just a giant touch surface right why not use it as a fancy track pad on

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its own well if you want to use the entire

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tablet as a touch surface to replace your mouse you actually can do that it's

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got respectable accuracy and good gesture support and i would have said

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it's awesome you can use the configurable pressure sensitivity to fine-tune your hard press

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and it even makes a little click noise and stuff when you press down

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but here's the thing sensel also sent over a sample unit of

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the haptic touch pad that they're building for laptop partners like lenovo

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and even compared to this thing it's a game changer like first Windows

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touch pad that is flat out better than a macbook

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be excited back to the morph though the conclusion of this video is pretty

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simple if watching this sparks the creative part of your brain into saying

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omg i could use the innovators overlay

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to make my own thing that does whatever it is that i do

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you'll love it their configuration and API documentation is great and you're

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gonna have a lot of fun with this thing however if you've been glazed over for

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the last seven minutes watching the way that my eyebrows move when i talk then

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all that you need to know is hey stencil they're cool guys who make

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cool tech and you're gonna want it in your next laptop

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oh and you'll probably also need to know about our sponsor for today notion

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enjoy our video of the gemini portable touchscreen monitor that thing was

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pretty cool and groundbreaking because it was both touchscreen and affordable

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which is for whatever reason really hard to find on standalone products even

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though it's integrated into like 200 laptops