I’ve had the 1010music Bento for a few months now and I have to say that the more I use it the more I wonder what 1010music was thinking releasing this device as it is (I’m on 1.5.3). The workflow just ins’t great at all, unfortunately, at least not to me. There should be enough buttons on this to get a fluid, hardware-based workflow going, yet I find myself having to touch the touchscreen incessently for the most banal things. Copy a seq? Touchscreen. Delete (or rather “cut” a sequence)? Touchscreen. Load a new patch? Touchscreen. And on it goes. The issue is not only that I have to use the touchscreen a lot more than should be necessary with all those hardware buttons & knobs given, but I have to touch a MENU before I gain access to some (for me) vital functions such as eg Clear Sequence.
Then, in Project Settings I have the choice of selecting a root note, a project scale, swing and the bpm. Tap tempo maybe? No. set rec quantisation (“Snap”) on/off globally? No. Define a default loop length for the project when recording a new loop? No. It’s not like there’s no space on the touchscreen for these settings, the settings screen is basically 85% empty.
For short sequences, the piano roll editor works decent enough with the touchscreen, but for longer & busier sequences it gets messy quickly…I’ve inadvertendly added notes trying to select notes more often than I find tolerable.
In terms of workflow, I can’t duplicate a scene quickly in the Launch screen (at least to my knowledge), instead I need to duplicate each sequence for each track that I want to have in a scene via that little menu stack on the bottom right of the screen. Track mutes are only available in the Mixer screen so muting in the Launch screen only works by hitting an empty pad on the track that is to be muted.
I feel 1010music tried to do too much here and absolutely didn’t consider a concept for a unified workflow that would bring all its parts together into a functional whole.
I still have hopes for it as a looper device, as a groovebox I feel there are much better options out there at the current state of development.
It’s a shame, the form factor is great and it being battery powered is awesome too. This is my first 1010music device (I own a lot of other gear) and I’ll hold on to it for now in the hope that it will evolve down the line, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in the current state, I feel a Digitakt or a Digitone or maybe even a polyend play (no experience with that) would give much better value for money than this device in practice as it currently stands.