the sensel morph is unlike anything we've ever used some might call it an
overgrown touchpad but others have praised it for its creative applications
in music or programming to be fair it is essentially an
overgrown touchpad but it's also much more than that it's overlays including
one that you can design yourself can make it useful for nearly any kind of
creative work so it's got a lot going for it on paper but a slick spec sheet
and a crafty kickstarter campaign can only take you so far
how does it actually fare in everyday
use and how will i fare transitioning to our sponsor origin pc origin pc laptops
can now be customized with 11th gen Intel core processors and NVIDIA GeForce
rtx 30 series graphics check out origin pc at the link below
sensel raised over 400 000 us dollars on kickstarter back in 2015 eventually
shipping to all their backers in 2017 and since then they've been hard at work
developing their unusual touch technology the morphs special sauce is
that it features 19 425 sensors or stencils under its
surface with each of them capable of detecting up to 5 kilograms of force
with a total of 32 000 levels of sensitivity what that means is that
compared to a normal touch pad which relies on relatively rough
approximations of your fingers pressure and movement the morph is
extraordinarily precise it also has wireless functionality lasting for up to
a day of use at a time and with the sensel app any of the overlays can be
easily remapped and customized based on each user's individual needs just by
plugging into a Windows or mac computer now our unit needed a firmware update
before we got started but the process was shockingly painless compared to some
of the other tablets we've seen and the morphs lights actually act as a progress
bar while it's updating cute now one of sensel's main selling
points on the website is their mpe or midi polyphonic expression support which
is an extension of midi that allows per node expression beyond just velocity
pitch and after touch but
just looking at the morph as an innovative music device sells it a bit
short want a macro pad with 78 tactile
reprogrammable buttons well provided you have some experience with auto hotkey
you're ready to rock want a dedicated drum pad xy pad or midi controller or
even a drawing surface you can do all of that and more with the morph and what's
really unexpected is that you can do it well
well mostly but more on that in a minute
musically speaking using the morph is as plug and play as any other midi
controller plug it in add your overlay
and enable it in your digital audio workstation or daw of choice do be
mindful that not every daw natively supports mpe properly and some like fl
studio don't support it at all but others have already embraced it in their
ecosystem and synths like vital really let you do a lot of crazy morphing with
it
so
ableton is a good example of a dog with native support for mpe even in some of
its included plugins and when you can play around with it it works incredibly
well being able to wiggle your finger even in a slight manner to completely
change how a note reacts is a special kind of feeling when it's first
experienced if i had to criticize the experience i
would say the subtle ridges that guide you between the white notes take some
getting used to and sometimes it feels
unproductive to compose on it but a big part of that is because of how gosh darn
fun it is to use i mean sure it'll never
have the feel of a regular piano with hammer keys striking the strings
or even the feel of a cheap midi controller with semi-weighted keys and
if you want your piano playing to have character and depth you're gonna need to
modify your velocities per note after recording but
those complaints are all kind of like saying hey that riff that you did on the
recorder might need some post work to spice it up because it's horses for
courses and what the morph does well it
does really well
swapping out for the drum overlay if you like finger drumming then this does get
the job done it's not as utility driven as a launch pad and not as large as a
midi fighter but it's still great for quickly drafting up some beat ideas or
for a cool live performance video and moving to the booklet thunder overlay
this one is kind of awesome even if it's a bit confusing at first glance it turns
a traditional keyboard into a full three-dimensional keyboard with space
for your fingers to modify the sound through mapping vertical and horizontal
motion on each key to different midi channels there's also a control surface
overlay that has more traditionally styled midi pads and a bunch of
additional slider surfaces to control midi parameters i'd say though that the
black and white keyboard is still where it manages the best with both character
and expression that being said the keyboard with mpe
can be pretty taxing on CPU power so make sure that you have a good CPU we
actually have an upcoming video on what it takes to build a good music
production pc so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it
now sensil used to offer an art overlay but it hasn't been in production for a
couple of years now and honestly speaking that's probably for
the better because there's no traditional stylus receptive digitizer
the morph only detects input when something is actually
pushing on its surface which makes drawing with it a little bit awkward now
i've read online that some people absolutely love using it as a drawing
surface but personally i would say you're better off going with a dedicated
tablet instead because having to hold your stylus down on the surface both
when you're drawing and when you're moving it around isn't a particularly
intuitive experience and that's when it actually works
guys there are better drawing solutions out there for a fraction of the cost
just buy one of those instead as for the video editing overlay it's
well it's fine it has dedicated buttons for common commands in adobe premiere
but then most of those have easy hotkeys as it is and the composition scrubbing
tools that's a cool idea but they don't feel that precise honestly i'd rather just
remap a regular keyboard and put stickers on the keys especially with the
tactile feedback that the morph provides which brings us perfectly then to the
tactile keyboard overlay which stencil describes as feeling fantastic to type
on and offering mechanical feedback
that's a lot to unpack i would say that i agree with those
statements but only if i had never felt a keyboard
before i have pulled keyboards out of e-waste
bins that offered noticeably better typing experience than the morphs
keyboard overlay it's mushy and unsatisfying at best and at its worst it
misses keystrokes entirely
furthermore due to the silicone overlay the tiny touch pad spot is neither
accurate nor is it comfortable it's really not the kind of thing i would
normally rip on when reviewing a jack-of-all-trades product like this but
they were asking for it misleading claims for manufacturers need to be
called out and those were a couple of doozies with that being said the
keyboard overlay does make a great option as a macro pad since it is fully
remappable you can use non-standard inputs and re-route those throughout a
hotkey to spit out phrases or perform macros and it works pretty well i mean
heck with remapping you can actually even use the morph as a game controller
although the experience of using a flat surface as a full gamepad
would be an acquired taste to say the least
finally hold on a second Linus i mean
this is just a giant touch surface right why not use it as a fancy track pad on
its own well if you want to use the entire
tablet as a touch surface to replace your mouse you actually can do that it's
got respectable accuracy and good gesture support and i would have said
it's awesome you can use the configurable pressure sensitivity to fine-tune your hard press
and it even makes a little click noise and stuff when you press down
but here's the thing sensel also sent over a sample unit of
the haptic touch pad that they're building for laptop partners like lenovo
and even compared to this thing it's a game changer like first Windows
touch pad that is flat out better than a macbook
be excited back to the morph though the conclusion of this video is pretty
simple if watching this sparks the creative part of your brain into saying
omg i could use the innovators overlay
to make my own thing that does whatever it is that i do
you'll love it their configuration and API documentation is great and you're
gonna have a lot of fun with this thing however if you've been glazed over for
the last seven minutes watching the way that my eyebrows move when i talk then
all that you need to know is hey stencil they're cool guys who make
cool tech and you're gonna want it in your next laptop
oh and you'll probably also need to know about our sponsor for today notion
notion is all about getting more done and easily sharing your work with notion
you can take notes manage tasks set goals and so much more and it'll help
save time and increase productivity by making it easier for everyone to find
the info that they need notion is so customizable that you can tailor the
tools to fit your team or your own needs and many of us in the office use notion
both at work and personally just to seamlessly manage and collaborate on
different projects around the office so sign up for notion for free using the
link down below and give it a shot if you guys enjoyed this video you might
enjoy our video of the gemini portable touchscreen monitor that thing was
pretty cool and groundbreaking because it was both touchscreen and affordable
which is for whatever reason really hard to find on standalone products even
though it's integrated into like 200 laptops