Native Instruments Kontrol S61 MK3

The keyboard is well built and feels premium. I personally really like the single screen - I like the simplicity of it. The user flow of searching for what I need is intuitive and encourages me explore and experiment. The light guides are very useful, especially if you're learning, and when paired with some of the tools they make it a really great experience. The polyphonic after touch is implemented in some of the instruments I tried, and does feel like it adds some depth. The keyboard does not include a lot of other features you might see in other keyboards (like pads), but what it does offer is very solid and premium

The keyboard itself would be great, if it worked as advertised.
The problems I'm facing are:
- sometimes, after turning it on, it turns off in a few seconds. It might happen several times after each other. But once it's gone, it's gone, it has never turned off during use (not cable nor connection issue, probably a software problem)
-The knobs are too close to each other, it's close to impossible to turn one knob without touching and turning the neighbor knobs if you have bulkier hands
- Native Instrument software is terrible. More than half of my instruments do not work with the keyboard: if I install any of those instruments, the keyboard doesn't connect to Kontakt anymore at all, unless I uninstall the instruments causing the problem.
- the velocity is too hard. Even if I change it to the softest setting on the keyboard, I still have to press VERY hard to get maximum velocity. Right now I have Fixed Velocity turned off because I'm afraid of physically damaging my keyboard having to press with such force if I want to take advantage of the velocity option. I'm hoping a future firmware update resolves this.
- Native Instrument downloads are VERY slow, a 120 Gb game on Steam downloads much faster than a 20 Gb instrument from Native Access.
- The Kontakt software anyway feels like straight from the 90s: unintuitive and looks/feels terrible on a 4K display. They are decades behind with UX/UI.
- The support is close to non-existent. I contacted them with 4 different issues so far, it's impossible to talk to an agent. Only 1 ticket was created for one of the issues I contacted them about, the others were ignored. Even the support chat robot is not responding for 2 days...

Otherwise, the build quality feels solid, it feels great to play and the extra buttons and knobs are quite useful. It also has very nice DAW integration, so I would be more than happy to use it on a daily basis if I could...
I wish I did not get rid of the original packaging so quickly so I could send it back... I would probably wait at least 6 more months before purchasing this because NI definitely needs time to fix all these issues, and there is a lot.

Viel positives und negatives gehört! Erst das dritte S61 kam dann mal intakt an, was nicht an Thomann liegt sondern Native Instruments Produktkontrolle! Erst die Tasten, dann Modulationsrad und das Firmware UPDATE war auch stressig!

Schade, dass die Maschine Buttons weggefallen sind, keine Pads etc, aber Nutzung MEGA in Logic!

Ok manchmal gibt es unerklärliche Abstürze, aber wird ja alles gesaved von Logic! Die Verarbeitung ist super, wenn alles intakt ankommt! Die Kontakt Integration geil! Funktioniert alles etwas besser und schneller, alle Neuheiten super, Gamechanger! Hab alles durch, Arturia auch ok aber nicht so perfekt abgestimmt durch NKS. Panorama, etc nicht halb so stressfrei und easy zu nutzen. Ok NKS lassen sie sich bezahlen aber ist definitiv ein viel schnellerer Workflow möglich! Ich war sehr skeptisch, aber bin vollends zufrieden und bereue nicht, es gekauft zu haben!, sofern es hält.