Touch Me… - Sensel Morph Review

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe sensel morph is unlike anything we've ever used some might call it an overgrown touchpad but others have praised it for its creative applications in music or programming to be fair it is essentially an overgrown touchpad but it's also much more than that it's overlays including one that you can design yourself can make it useful for nearly any kind of creative work so it's got a lot going for it on paper but a slick spec sheet and a crafty kickstarter campaign can only take you so far how does it actually fare in everyday use and how will i fare transitioning to our sponsor origin pc origin pc laptops can now be customized with 11th gen intel core processors and nvidia geforce rtx 30 series graphics check out origin pc at the link below sensel raised over 400 000 us dollars on kickstarter back in 2015 eventually shipping to all their backers in 2017 and since then they've been hard at work developing their unusual touch technology the morphs special sauce is that it features 19 425 sensors or stencils under its surface with each of them capable of detecting up to 5 kilograms of force with a total of 32 000 levels of sensitivity what that means is that compared to a normal touch pad which relies on relatively rough approximations of your fingers pressure and movement the morph is extraordinarily precise it also has wireless functionality lasting for up to a day of use at a time and with the sensel app any of the overlays can be easily remapped and customized based on each user's individual needs just by plugging into a windows or mac computer now our unit needed a firmware update before we got started but the process was shockingly painless compared to some of the other tablets we've seen and the morphs lights actually act as a progress bar while it's updating cute now one of sensel's main selling points on the website is their mpe or midi polyphonic expression support which is an extension of midi that allows per node expression beyond just velocity pitch and after touch but just looking at the morph as an innovative music device sells it a bit short want a macro pad with 78 tactile reprogrammable buttons well provided you have some experience with auto hotkey you're ready to rock want a dedicated drum pad xy pad or midi controller or even a drawing surface you can do all of that and more with the morph and what's really unexpected is that you can do it well well mostly but more on that in a minute musically speaking using the morph is as plug and play as any other midi controller plug it in add your overlay and enable it in your digital audio workstation or daw of choice do be mindful that not every daw natively supports mpe properly and some like fl studio don't support it at all but others have already embraced it in their ecosystem and synths like vital really let you do a lot of crazy morphing with it so ableton is a good example of a dog with native support for mpe even in some of its included plugins and when you can play around with it it works incredibly well being able to wiggle your finger even in a slight manner to completely change how a note reacts is a special kind of feeling when it's first experienced if i had to criticize the experience i would say the subtle ridges that guide you between the white notes take some getting used to and sometimes it feels unproductive to compose on it but a big part of that is because of how gosh darn fun it is to use i mean sure it'll never have the feel of a regular piano with hammer keys striking the strings or even the feel of a cheap midi controller with semi-weighted keys and if you want your piano playing to have character and depth you're gonna need to modify your velocities per note after recording but those complaints are all kind of like saying hey that riff that you did on the recorder might need some post work to spice it up because it's horses for courses and what the morph does well it does really well swapping out for the drum overlay if you like finger drumming then this does get the job done it's not as utility driven as a launch pad and not as large as a midi fighter but it's still great for quickly drafting up some beat ideas or for a cool live performance video and moving to the booklet thunder overlay this one is kind of awesome even if it's a bit confusing at first glance it turns a traditional keyboard into a full three-dimensional keyboard with space for your fingers to modify the sound through mapping vertical and horizontal motion on each key to different midi channels there's also a control surface overlay that has more traditionally styled midi pads and a bunch of additional slider surfaces to control midi parameters i'd say though that the black and white keyboard is still where it manages the best with both character and expression that being said the keyboard with mpe can be pretty taxing on cpu power so make sure that you have a good cpu we actually have an upcoming video on what it takes to build a good music production pc so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it now sensil used to offer an art overlay but it hasn't been in production for a couple of years now and honestly speaking that's probably for the better because there's no traditional stylus receptive digitizer the morph only detects input when something is actually pushing on its surface which makes drawing with it a little bit awkward now i've read online that some people absolutely love using it as a drawing surface but personally i would say you're better off going with a dedicated tablet instead because having to hold your stylus down on the surface both when you're drawing and when you're moving it around isn't a particularly intuitive experience and that's when it actually works guys there are better drawing solutions out there for a fraction of the cost just buy one of those instead as for the video editing overlay it's well it's fine it has dedicated buttons for common commands in adobe premiere but then most of those have easy hotkeys as it is and the composition scrubbing tools that's a cool idea but they don't feel that precise honestly i'd rather just remap a regular keyboard and put stickers on the keys especially with the tactile feedback that the morph provides which brings us perfectly then to the tactile keyboard overlay which stencil describes as feeling fantastic to type on and offering mechanical feedback that's a lot to unpack i would say that i agree with those statements but only if i had never felt a keyboard before i have pulled keyboards out of e-waste bins that offered noticeably better typing experience than the morphs keyboard overlay it's mushy and unsatisfying at best and at its worst it misses keystrokes entirely furthermore due to the silicone overlay the tiny touch pad spot is neither accurate nor is it comfortable it's really not the kind of thing i would normally rip on when reviewing a jack-of-all-trades product like this but they were asking for it misleading claims for manufacturers need to be called out and those were a couple of doozies with that being said the keyboard overlay does make a great option as a macro pad since it is fully remappable you can use non-standard inputs and re-route those throughout a hotkey to spit out phrases or perform macros and it works pretty well i mean heck with remapping you can actually even use the morph as a game controller although the experience of using a flat surface as a full gamepad would be an acquired taste to say the least finally hold on a second linus i mean this is just a giant touch surface right why not use it as a fancy track pad on its own well if you want to use the entire tablet as a touch surface to replace your mouse you actually can do that it's got respectable accuracy and good gesture support and i would have said it's awesome you can use the configurable pressure sensitivity to fine-tune your hard press and it even makes a little click noise and stuff when you press down but here's the thing sensel also sent over a sample unit of the haptic touch pad that they're building for laptop partners like lenovo and even compared to this thing it's a game changer like first windows touch pad that is flat out better than a macbook be excited back to the morph though the conclusion of this video is pretty simple if watching this sparks the creative part of your brain into saying omg i could use the innovators overlay to make my own thing that does whatever it is that i do you'll love it their configuration and api documentation is great and you're gonna have a lot of fun with this thing however if you've been glazed over for the last seven minutes watching the way that my eyebrows move when i talk then all that you need to know is hey stencil they're cool guys who make cool tech and you're gonna want it in your next laptop oh and you'll probably also need to know about our sponsor for today notion notion is all about getting more done and easily sharing your work with notion you can take notes manage tasks set goals and so much more and it'll help save time and increase productivity by making it easier for everyone to find the info that they need notion is so customizable that you can tailor the tools to fit your team or your own needs and many of us in the office use notion both at work and personally just to seamlessly manage and collaborate on different projects around the office so sign up for notion for free using the link down below and give it a shot if you guys enjoyed this video you might enjoy our video of the gemini portable touchscreen monitor that thing was pretty cool and groundbreaking because it was both touchscreen and affordable which is for whatever reason really hard to find on standalone products even though it's integrated into like 200 laptopsthe sensel morph is unlike anything we've ever used some might call it an overgrown touchpad but others have praised it for its creative applications in music or programming to be fair it is essentially an overgrown touchpad but it's also much more than that it's overlays including one that you can design yourself can make it useful for nearly any kind of creative work so it's got a lot going for it on paper but a slick spec sheet and a crafty kickstarter campaign can only take you so far how does it actually fare in everyday use and how will i fare transitioning to our sponsor origin pc origin pc laptops can now be customized with 11th gen intel core processors and nvidia geforce rtx 30 series graphics check out origin pc at the link below sensel raised over 400 000 us dollars on kickstarter back in 2015 eventually shipping to all their backers in 2017 and since then they've been hard at work developing their unusual touch technology the morphs special sauce is that it features 19 425 sensors or stencils under its surface with each of them capable of detecting up to 5 kilograms of force with a total of 32 000 levels of sensitivity what that means is that compared to a normal touch pad which relies on relatively rough approximations of your fingers pressure and movement the morph is extraordinarily precise it also has wireless functionality lasting for up to a day of use at a time and with the sensel app any of the overlays can be easily remapped and customized based on each user's individual needs just by plugging into a windows or mac computer now our unit needed a firmware update before we got started but the process was shockingly painless compared to some of the other tablets we've seen and the morphs lights actually act as a progress bar while it's updating cute now one of sensel's main selling points on the website is their mpe or midi polyphonic expression support which is an extension of midi that allows per node expression beyond just velocity pitch and after touch but just looking at the morph as an innovative music device sells it a bit short want a macro pad with 78 tactile reprogrammable buttons well provided you have some experience with auto hotkey you're ready to rock want a dedicated drum pad xy pad or midi controller or even a drawing surface you can do all of that and more with the morph and what's really unexpected is that you can do it well well mostly but more on that in a minute musically speaking using the morph is as plug and play as any other midi controller plug it in add your overlay and enable it in your digital audio workstation or daw of choice do be mindful that not every daw natively supports mpe properly and some like fl studio don't support it at all but others have already embraced it in their ecosystem and synths like vital really let you do a lot of crazy morphing with it so ableton is a good example of a dog with native support for mpe even in some of its included plugins and when you can play around with it it works incredibly well being able to wiggle your finger even in a slight manner to completely change how a note reacts is a special kind of feeling when it's first experienced if i had to criticize the experience i would say the subtle ridges that guide you between the white notes take some getting used to and sometimes it feels unproductive to compose on it but a big part of that is because of how gosh darn fun it is to use i mean sure it'll never have the feel of a regular piano with hammer keys striking the strings or even the feel of a cheap midi controller with semi-weighted keys and if you want your piano playing to have character and depth you're gonna need to modify your velocities per note after recording but those complaints are all kind of like saying hey that riff that you did on the recorder might need some post work to spice it up because it's horses for courses and what the morph does well it does really well swapping out for the drum overlay if you like finger drumming then this does get the job done it's not as utility driven as a launch pad and not as large as a midi fighter but it's still great for quickly drafting up some beat ideas or for a cool live performance video and moving to the booklet thunder overlay this one is kind of awesome even if it's a bit confusing at first glance it turns a traditional keyboard into a full three-dimensional keyboard with space for your fingers to modify the sound through mapping vertical and horizontal motion on each key to different midi channels there's also a control surface overlay that has more traditionally styled midi pads and a bunch of additional slider surfaces to control midi parameters i'd say though that the black and white keyboard is still where it manages the best with both character and expression that being said the keyboard with mpe can be pretty taxing on cpu power so make sure that you have a good cpu we actually have an upcoming video on what it takes to build a good music production pc so make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it now sensil used to offer an art overlay but it hasn't been in production for a couple of years now and honestly speaking that's probably for the better because there's no traditional stylus receptive digitizer the morph only detects input when something is actually pushing on its surface which makes drawing with it a little bit awkward now i've read online that some people absolutely love using it as a drawing surface but personally i would say you're better off going with a dedicated tablet instead because having to hold your stylus down on the surface both when you're drawing and when you're moving it around isn't a particularly intuitive experience and that's when it actually works guys there are better drawing solutions out there for a fraction of the cost just buy one of those instead as for the video editing overlay it's well it's fine it has dedicated buttons for common commands in adobe premiere but then most of those have easy hotkeys as it is and the composition scrubbing tools that's a cool idea but they don't feel that precise honestly i'd rather just remap a regular keyboard and put stickers on the keys especially with the tactile feedback that the morph provides which brings us perfectly then to the tactile keyboard overlay which stencil describes as feeling fantastic to type on and offering mechanical feedback that's a lot to unpack i would say that i agree with those statements but only if i had never felt a keyboard before i have pulled keyboards out of e-waste bins that offered noticeably better typing experience than the morphs keyboard overlay it's mushy and unsatisfying at best and at its worst it misses keystrokes entirely furthermore due to the silicone overlay the tiny touch pad spot is neither accurate nor is it comfortable it's really not the kind of thing i would normally rip on when reviewing a jack-of-all-trades product like this but they were asking for it misleading claims for manufacturers need to be called out and those were a couple of doozies with that being said the keyboard overlay does make a great option as a macro pad since it is fully remappable you can use non-standard inputs and re-route those throughout a hotkey to spit out phrases or perform macros and it works pretty well i mean heck with remapping you can actually even use the morph as a game controller although the experience of using a flat surface as a full gamepad would be an acquired taste to say the least finally hold on a second linus i mean this is just a giant touch surface right why not use it as a fancy track pad on its own well if you want to use the entire tablet as a touch surface to replace your mouse you actually can do that it's got respectable accuracy and good gesture support and i would have said it's awesome you can use the configurable pressure sensitivity to fine-tune your hard press and it even makes a little click noise and stuff when you press down but here's the thing sensel also sent over a sample unit of the haptic touch pad that they're building for laptop partners like lenovo and even compared to this thing it's a game changer like first windows touch pad that is flat out better than a macbook be excited back to the morph though the conclusion of this video is pretty simple if watching this sparks the creative part of your brain into saying omg i could use the innovators overlay to make my own thing that does whatever it is that i do you'll love it their configuration and api documentation is great and you're gonna have a lot of fun with this thing however if you've been glazed over for the last seven minutes watching the way that my eyebrows move when i talk then all that you need to know is hey stencil they're cool guys who make cool tech and you're gonna want it in your next laptop oh and you'll probably also need to know about our sponsor for today notion notion is all about getting more done and easily sharing your work with notion you can take notes manage tasks set goals and so much more and it'll help save time and increase productivity by making it easier for everyone to find the info that they need notion is so customizable that you can tailor the tools to fit your team or your own needs and many of us in the office use notion both at work and personally just to seamlessly manage and collaborate on different projects around the office so sign up for notion for free using the link down below and give it a shot if you guys enjoyed this video you might enjoy our video of the gemini portable touchscreen monitor that thing was pretty cool and groundbreaking because it was both touchscreen and affordable which is for whatever reason really hard to find on standalone products even though it's integrated into like 200 laptops\n"