If you want to know more about the granular on the Bento I was watching some Lemondrop videos. It’s a pretty awesome granular synth! Fantastic it’s included in the Bento!
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Just discovered they released firmware 1.1 which brings:
Song Mode (this feature is still in beta)
Scenes
WAVE previewing
External Tracks
Cut/Copy/Paste
Undo of sequence recording and editing
8 Sequences per track
New launch screen with pad control
Better pad performance
Battery charging indicator
Swing control
Improved polyphony
Lots of bug fixes
There’s now also a review, for those of you who speak German and are interested in Bento. The reviewer did quite like it, but is critical that they launched it in this state:
There’s also a comment by Stimming which might be interesting to some (translation):
“I’m part of the beta tester team and already have a version that can basically do everything – song, scene, etc. But the fact that 1010 decided to release the device in its current state really shocked me.
The vision is clear: this thing is going to be the most powerful performance sampler you can buy – and they’ll get there.
Even now, it’s sonically and groove-wise really great, like a scalpel.
But my advice: wait to buy it until it’s truly ready.”
There’s also speculation that 1010 might soon be broke, as the Bento is mostly getting 1 star reviews on Thomann so far.
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I hope 1010 don’t go under - some people might be mad the little music making gizmo they bought isn’t 100% perfect and do everything they want - but it’s not worth putting a company out of business over
Hmm, statistically speaking the sample size is a little on the small side…
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I do as well, cause I still have a semi-broken device they need to fix 
.
I think the state of Bento and the complaints are in another league compared to people complaining about, say, features they miss on an Elektron, which were never promised. They shipped it before it even had features that were listed on the product page, like MIDI and audio tracks. It’s also quite buggy and not useable in a live set right now. Everyone who spent 1.000 bucks on it is totally within their right to give it a bad rating so that other people know what they’re buying into right now. It’s solely on 1010 that they decided to ship it before the features of the beta update were implemented and the most extreme bugs ironed out. I think it’s actually important that customers teach a company a lesson by speaking out about facts.
I‘m still okay with what it does right now, but if it was my only device and I had to sell reliable gear to fund it only to find myself with a buggy mess, I‘d probably also give it one star.
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I found a really cheap open box one on eBay and am taking the plunge. They dropped the 1.1 FW and look to be updating other products with improvements learned during the bento dev process. I think it might be a few months before it does all the things most people want but its loop performance capabilities and the scenes-based sequencing are already super useful things that I don’t have and even if I can’t live granulate yet they’ve said explicitly that it will receive all functionalities that every existing 1010 sampler has. I haven’t seen a single complaint about the HW itself and all the details I do hear about indicate that it’s very thoughtfully designed (selectable MIDI A or B should be standard…). I don’t play live, I just want to make weird ambient stuff and it seems like it’ll do that in spades with stereo multisampling and some amount of HW sequencing to boot. The audio/midi combo track is a really interesting concept also, since some of my better sounding synths are a bit of a pain to sequence on-device.
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The lemondrop is great fun. The blackbox less so imv. Overall I think I’m more forgiving of oddities and omissions in an instrument than in a groovebox.
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You know what, fuck this thing. There’s no session where I could just have fun and not deal with new bugs each time. If I was still within return window, I‘d send it back.
I also don’t think it’s a good sign that they didn’t even send out an Email letting me know that there’s finally a 1.1 firmware (which has probably already been replaced by 1.1.2, but who knows if there ever was a 1.1). I‘v subscribed to their newsletter, I‘d assume they‘d desperately want everybody who still has their Bento to know that they improved it.
What makes me so mad right now is that I‘ve encountered a new bug where a sample slot of a one shot machine has a sample assigned to it that I just can’t get rid of. I never loaded that sample there and it was a new project. I can map another sample into it and it will play when I hit the pad. But as soon as I record a sequence or reload the project, the other sample is playing back, even though it’s not showing. I can see which sample is loaded if I use „unload“ of the sample I‘d like to hear, then the „real“ (meaning stuck) sample is shown. But I can’t get rid of it. No restart, reload or update will fix it. And btw before that, it was showing samples that don’t exist on several pads around 30% of the time I loaded a sample into a slot. This is just unbearable, seriously.
I‘m sure I‘ll have other moments where I have time with it again, but I just don’t trust anything on this machine anymore and expect it to break at any point. The bugs are so bad that I‘d really hesitate to make a lot of music with it right now, who knows what will break or get lost irreversibly within projects.
Edit: I wanted to give it another chance and opened a new project and rebuild the sample banks. It’s so fast with the touchscreen compared to the clunky sample assignment of DT that I was warmer on it again. Then I struck a nice idea and recorded it into the sequencer. And the sequencer stopped working after I recorded two tracks. Now I can’t use the sequencer anymore on any project, even after several restarts, it just won’t start. Meaning the device now is literally unusable. Fuck this machine and 1010, they just don’t respect my time at all. I‘ve managed to solve this by visiting the forum, but this thing just constantly stops your workflow and forces you to deal with bugs.
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Definitely bad form from 1010 to release this prematurely, and they should be held to account.
It does seem an odd business decision to launch it in the state it was in. Clearly they were overconfident in how long it would take to roll out the missing features and squash the known bugs.
However - individual users need to take some measure of responsibility when it was clear from all but the most optimistic early promos and reviews that it was, at-best, somewhat ‘underdone’. I looked at it on day 1, as I’m a mostly-happy Blackbox user, and 10 minutes later from my own scattergun due diligence it was clear that for my needs I would have been buying a device still functionally incomplete. At close to $2k AUD that’s just not a worthwhile risk imho.
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I am sorry to hear all that. There was a 1.1.1 (not a typo), documented here: https://1010music.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/bento-1.1.1-Release-Notes-2025-06-30.pdf … hope this helps a bit.
high five, or shall I say high 4.5.1 
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I can understand the hard decision 1010 had to make. Release when it’s not fully ready to get the revenue stream going so they can fully finish the product, or wait until it can do generally what people already demand of a sampler groovebox seeing how competitive that landscape is, but no revenue.
The mistake they made is not being open about this. And I’ll add they should have sold the Bento at a v0.9 lower price at launch and then a completed device with a definitive release date for v1.0 with a slightly higher price. I think people will be more forgiving and not give them 1-star for all the perceived shortcomings.
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Fully agree!
Or maybe crowdfunding/kickstarter was a better idea for this product. Putting a device at retail stores does create expectations from customers. Futhermore, people are getting burned with unfinished products these days. It happens too common. Not only with music gear.
I do hope 1010music gets it all together and have before end of the year a worthwhile product which many can enjoy.
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ouch, this story again?
I haven’t really been following but I’m very curious:
How was the role of the synthfluencers on this one? Were they again misleading the community?
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Synthfluencers were not misleading, everyone was pretty clear it was unfinished. 1010 not so much. Wish they saw the shit going down with Torso and the S4 and could see that this is not the way to go! Nothing is worse than that. I’m done with Torso because they blatantly lied to their customers and took no accountability for it.
1010 are active at responding on their forum and they have actually taken accountability and been transparent there that it’s not finished. I believe it was Steve that openly said to not buy it now if it didn’t already do what you want because it’s not there yet.
The problem with this is, not everyone is active on these forums and a blackbox user might see the Bento pop up on a store and think “oh cool, this is the blackbox and more!!” Without realising that it’s undercooked and they spend a LOT of money not realising this. This is where the influx of negative reviews will come from and destroy a device before it’s even matured to become what they hoped. It’s bad practice. I really hope 1010 survive this and learn a huge lesson.
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I’m always advocating for this in every Elektronauts thread that eventually turns into complaining about pie in the sky wishes that a company never promised. Always buy for what is there and think about whether that is enough for you or not.
The problem with Bento is a different one. The only thing that was promised by them that isn’t actually there is the MIDI/audio track. And they released that one rather quickly and in a really clever form, so I won’t complain about this one. The problem is that the whole device is just so full of unbearable bugs that you can’t use it reliably to make music. And there’s rarely a session where you don’t have to see how you can deal with the latest bug you’ve never encountered before.
Yes, I knew it didn’t have all the features and it was a bit buggy before I bought it. But I looked at what was there (to the extent that you even could, without any manual or more detailed info) and decided that it’s already a great combination of many things I wished for in one single box. And it came out at the perfect time for me when I had the time and circumstances to try exactly this device.
But I didn’t expect it to be in a state where I feel like I’m an unpaid bug tester. You can’t expect people to do weeks long research of a new product that nobody has to determine whether it is useable or not. There should be a bare minimum of stability that just has to be there before you sell something, especially for that price. I even paid more money when it launched than it is currently being sold for in the EU. I agree with @uthernet that it would have been a good move to be transparent that you’ll be doing bug testing for them and should thus get it for a bit of a lower price. That would have turned the whole story around.
When I manage to get it running and actually make music with it or prepare templates, it’s still a fantastic device that is “ticking all the boxes”. But the amount of bugs and the severity of these bugs is just too much.
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That sucks, you’re right to be upset, but very important is to not let it spoil your music! Enjoy your Digitakt instead!
If it’s not working for you and you can’t return it (or sell it 2nd hand), then box it for a while. Come back to it in a few months.
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What I would maybe suggest regarding your unit (because you got in really early I believe?) is have a look at the issues people have been having on the 1010 forum. Charging issues, overheating, audio drop outs, crashes, double triggering pads, deafening audio artefacts etc I believe with some early adopters there are actually hardware defects going on in a batch that can’t be fixed with firmware. You may find that you are still eligible for your money back even if it’s out of the specific shops return date. At the very least an exchange. You are still covered by warranty if it’s not user damage.
I’ve seen a number of people message on the forum expressing issues they are having, they get a response from someone at 1010 asking them to contact them because it’s an actual hardware defect. Just a thought!
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Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve been thinking the same and will contact my retailer first and see what they’re willing to do. I think it’s also impotant letting retailers know about the issues, so maybe they can put some pressure on 1010 to not release unfinished products.
You’re totally right. The frustrating thing is that I still really like this device and would love to make it my centerpiece. But you’re right that I should probably focus on more trustable devices like my DT for the time being.
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@Azzarole Just go to 1010 directly. They shipped a new unit out to me the same day.
You might as well get a new unit in case you decide to sell it down the road.
We knew what we were getting into when we got on this ship. They are active and righting the ship as quickly as they can.
I still have high hopes that we’ll arrive at the destination 1010 imagines the Bento will deliver upon.
FWIW, the DT2 was unusable to me for more than 6 months. There was noticeable audio clipping/popping on Melodic Samples that i couldn’t use it. And the fact that it took nearly a year to get Slice Start time adjustment just made the unit sit on the shelf for a year.
And don’t get me started on the OPxy journey.
But as they say time heals all wounds and fixes most bugs.
It is what it is these days with gear. Everybody wants to be first but not the best.
I don’t think pitch forks are required though, just better discernment on the part of the consumer.
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I see where you’re coming from, but I’m pretty sure DT2 was nowhere near the level of Bento after release. I can see how the issues you mention made it hard to work with DT2 in your case. But I’ve rarely had the clicks issues you mention with grid machine, and can’t think of anything else that was buggy on DT2. It was and is a reliable, professional machine that never once froze on me or had any severe issue. I think it’s important to make clear the different levels of “unfinishedness” we encounter today. Can’t speak about XY or S4.
I’ve already contacted my retailer. Let’s see what they say, I might contact 1010 if they don’t help me. Did swapping the unit fix the amount of bugs on your Bento?
Such a shame to read about a disappointing product. It seems like such a sweet spot and surely it will be the best in class for portable sampler, once they fix it.
I’m baffled why a reputable company like 1010 with good product launches behind them (blackbox, bluebox, nanoboxes, all highly rated for hardware and sound quality) would launch something so unfinished.
People have mentioned they’ve been responsive on their forum. Did they explain why they launched it when incomplete?
I’m wondering how much paranoia plays into launches—did they think they needed to get ahead of an MPC mini, new polyend box, circuit pro, tonverk?
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