I’ve seen it on this website as well.
Haters gonna hate.
MPC is simply unmatched for producing music in one box at that price.
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The verselab is a lot of fun - really light too which means you can spend hours with it on your lap. It’s basically a 101 with most of the gripes sorted - increased track count and decent song mode. It also has 12 minutes of audio recording that can be spread across 16 tracks (they call them takes). Decent multitrack usb out to a laptop and can be powered over usb with a small battery pack. The later sound packs from zencore are fantastic - really impressive. For a holiday machine that will still be useful in a studio, it should be on your list. The MPC’s are much heavier but have all the advantages mentioned elsewhere in this thread. To me the fun factor of the verselab is key in a holiday/just jamming scenario
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No haters in this thread.
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I did think about it especially as they can be had secondhand for very little, but I’m worried they feel a bit like abandonware.
The other thing (that also pushed me away from the 101) is sound design. It’s something I’m learning so having hands on control of the full zen core is important.
I don’t know why they didn’t make the verselab targeted at guitarists as well it would have sold like hotcakes.
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I have the 707 and mpc live.
I find my way easily in the mpc live. I have my drum kit from the old day of the mpc1000 and I use quite often the electric piano plugin on it and odyssey plugin.
It is easy to plugin an external synth on it and record it.
I rarely finish song on it, really doable I have done it 3, 4 time, but not on the mood in the last 2 year to make song. it’s a sketch pad today for me, and a jamming box that I can use really easily because of the battery.
Sound wise it is quite good.
You are not as fast as on Elektron doing thing but it does really a lots of things.
The 707 is a different beast.
I will use it more with a midi keyboard because the synth preset are really good.
I don’t like the quality of the drum pad, and on the kit preset for the drum. They are not really good. Not a problem because you can replace those sound from wav you have on the sd card. But drum pad + not so good preset for drum kit. It’s quite annoying.
Don’t know if I will keep the 707 in the next year, but there is thing I really like on it. The TR sequencer with 128 step and different lenght, the number of hardware knob directly useable, and the way you can build up song easily using different scene.
Lots of the sound are thin, which is perfect for adding lots of layer in the mix. Yes sometime it’s a good thing 
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I don’t think it’s hate, I just think it’s a bit of a lazy one line summary that’s stuck a bit in general consciousness. 
I mean, the MPC is a DAW by definition, so is the MC707 and most Elektron devices.
None of them feel like using a DAW on a laptop in any way, they’re all tactile, playable devices/instruments… I get that the MPC gets it labelled towards it more because of the piano roll and touchscreen though.
Anyway… all good.
Back to the OP… if you know what you’re doing, either can be used to make great music. 
For me personally, I teeter on the edge of always thinking I should sell my MC707 because it’s just a convenience and entertainment to me… EVERYTHING it does I have something that does it better.
I never think this about my MPC or think about selling it, and I actually (stupidly) own 3 of them now.
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It can hardly be called hate if someone is still using it, I mean like the 707 has had fair criticism in this thread too, not hate either.
I think it is people who choose one particular box over another don’t like to read negative comments about their chosen box and misconstrue it as hate.
I have 707, MPC, Deluge, Octatrack and others, I can equally find fault in all of them just as easily as finding joy in each of them. No box is perfect, but thats ok, I think of it like this, if one box did everything it would probably have a very steep learning curve and be a UI nightmare. Not to mention some features may not be of use to all the users, so why should they pay for them? Better to choose a bunch of tools that do what you want isn’t it? 
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Where the 707 really falls down is in chopping samples. It’s really geared to chopping chains of drum sounds, where the auto slice feature breaks up a WAV based on zero crossings. There’s no way to say “Give me 16 evenly spaced chops at zero crossings and then map them to the pads.” You have to do it manually, which feels unnecessarily tedious.
That said, I do think the overall sound quality on the 707 is better. The FX especially shine compared to the MPC. I love the speed and fluidity of the 707 workflow and not having to screw around with a touch screen. As a sampler, it requires you to work around some limitations and quirks. As a sound module, it’s hard to beat.
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I’d agree with this generally, but it’s worth pointing out to anyone weighing up the two devices that the MPC is a lot more flexible in terms of routing and layering FX - four separate slots per pad in kit mode, and then kit, bus, performance and master FX on top of that. So you can work around some of its weaknesses compared to the 707, and create some effect chains that the 707 can’t match (without sacrificing several tracks, and even then it’s only scratching the surface).
But if you mainly need a nice delay and FX send, I do think the 707 does a great job there - the usual Roland quality (though as I never get tired of bemoaning, all the delays have very polite feedback that can’t be talked into misbehaving).
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Yeah 707 sampling is whack overall really, it still really pisses me off how Roland fucked up so badly on looper memory, had they allocated enough memory to it then it could have been a good looper, as it stands it is very limited. 60 seconds total looper time FFS
But sample playback in kit or tone is pretty good with 12 minutes max time, and the editing and layering options are decent enough.
Sample in the MPC, load them into 707 is what I do, they both use the same rate/format, and both use SD cards which is convenient.
That’s my main issue!
People saying its so much like a DAW, you see them then recommending Elektron or Roland gear LOL.
And the best are those that recommend Ipads over MPC because “MPC is too much like a DAW or uses way too much touchscreen”. 
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I think I can deal with 60 second looper time as long as it’s easy to bounce it into a sample.
Is that relatively easy?
this is a good place to learn about these groove boxes, I myself also owned an mc-707 this is a great place for chopping it up with people who’ve had multiple first hand experiences
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Thanks for all of the brilliant advice and opinions.
On reflection I realised I wanted essentially a Super Circuit Tracks with:
- More synth tracks
- Deeper and better synth engine
- Chromatic sample play back
- More and better FX
The MC-707 seems to do that in spades so I bought one and it arrived today.
Only had a quick go for an hour, but already I’m super impressed with it. I got more done and had more fun in that hour than the days I spend beating my head against the Syntakt.
I’ve just bought a birdcord and a case for taking on holiday and I’m super excited to spend some time with it.
I’ll keep you posted with how I get on.
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nice congrats.
Thinking again about replacing the 101 with a 707.
Listened through my 101 recordings. Haven’t used it for a while. Almost forgot how easy they fell into place and how much I liked the sound. A bigger version might just give me more of everything
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Great news! Hope it works out and you have a good holiday mate. Not looked into these before, they look great!
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I’ll probably get MPC Studio in the near future.
I need a new computer more than I need an MPC Live II. But I do like those MPC drum pads. MPC Studio has those drum pads, hardware MIDI out, autosampler, etc. - features that I think would be useful to me, without as much commitment to platform that’s completely different compared to the MC-707’s.
Really enjoying it so far and the ability to have PCM sounds means you can include some cheesy house pianos!
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Plus the price is the lowest you"ll get for an MPC.
I thought about getting the MPD-226, but I figured, why not spend just a little more.