Worth a buy
As a longtime VOCALOID user, Pocket Miku is a breath of fresh air when it comes to flexibility and usability. It's a very straightforward and self explanatory device, making it easy to master, and to understand — even if not, it's quick guide and manual (both having official English translations that can be found online) provides you enough info to enjoy the device without any complications.
When compared to standard VOCALOID voicebanks, Pocket Miku actually stands on a solid ground when it comes to sample quality, so mixing her voice in a DAW is not much of a problem. Thanks to it's USB interface the device also counts with a fair share of apps (for both PCs/Macs and smartphones) developed by both it's user base and company, the addition of a "NSX-1 mode" to the device also makes Pocket Miku compatible with Yamaha's VY1 Board's apps, which just widens the possibilities of use it has. It's MIDI capabilities are really good (but not perfect, more on that later) and vast.
PC interactivity aside, Pocket Miku is also a very good instrument on it's own, the keyboard it uses as an input has a really tight response, and you also have enough freedom to play notes within it's ribbon interface making realtime voice tuning effective and simple — it also has a nifty vibrato button added to it. It's also got a very decent built, so it doesn't really feel like it breaks easily. The built-in speaker it features has also got a good quality, you can hear anything clear and loud with no problems at all.
However, Pocket Miku has some smaller issues that can be a bother to some. As noted before, it's MIDI capabilities are not perfect, and for people who aren't really interested on learning how to play the instrument this can be quite troublesome, as (apps aside) Pocket Miku basically requires you to use Cubase as it's main DAW if you want to enjoy the most of it (FL Studio users are in for a long ride, Pocket Miku does not fully support it), but not only any Cubase, if you want to add lyrics to your MIDI, you'll be required to use the "list editor" in which the AI (lite) versions of the DAW does not have, making it quite difficult to add lyrics on if you just want to use this device for MIDI porpuses — This all is due to how Pocket Miku deals with MIDI reading/signal recieving. Another issue I have with Pocket Miku is that the wire that connects the stylus to it's circuit board is too short, although it does cover enough to play the entire keyboard with no problems, the wire can (and will) feel uncomfortable and clumsy at points.
If you're interested in this product for whatever reason coming from wanting more VOCALOID to sheer curiosity, it really is worth a buy. It's simple, practical, flexible and counts with a good deal of features that are worth checking out!
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