Great Keyboard- Roland quality

I wanted a small portable keyboard to use with Sonar and my laptop AND my home system. This keyboard works perfectly for me. I can play my Triton 88 as a slave with the MIDI merge input, use all the knobs, buttons and sliders to control Sonar apps then unplug it, grab my laptop and head out the door. The keyboard has a springy solid feel to it, very responsive and the knobs and sliders have a nice rubbery grip. It's lightweight (8lbs 7oz) and compact, a little smaller than the Axiom 49. Set up was not ideal-none of the controls worked when I plugged it in after installing the drivers. But the Cakewalk support is really top notch and they walked me through a few fixes until we hit the right one, "factory reset" in the functions menu. They e mailed me a report of my call. I also had to reverse the polarity on my M-Audio foot pedal for sustain. Once it was all set up it worked great, the A pro editor comes up in Sonar, all the knobs and sliders move, and are easy to program. I tried the Axiom but the MIDI in did not work with my Triton 88 and the keys feel chunky and velocity response wasn't consistent. It's also bigger and heavier- 13 lbs. The sliders feel a little cheaper and the click knobs are annoying. But, the drum pads are much better , the large bright blue display is easy to read and they have Windows 7 64 bit drivers on their website. This is the keyboard to get for Sonar users, I'm not sure how it works with other DAW'S but you can at least call cakewalk for help if you have problems- Their customer service is excellent.

Great controller with one huge problem

This is a solid-built controller. Keys feel good, even though they are a little springy and they are a little small, but not too bad. With Macintosh's utility "Audio MIDI Settings" it's easy to map out and the driver installed without a hitch. Construction is solid and this thing is very lightweight. Display is easy to read and the controls are well designed, although just a bit complex. For me, here's the huge problem. I use Logic and often Camel Audio's Alchemy soft-synth, and the mod wheel is very important because for many of the patches it drastically alters the parms to the point of getting a new sound. The A500Pro has a mod stick that is spring loaded. Therefore, if you find a setting that you really like, you have to hold the mod stick because when released it springs back to "zero" position. This is a critical, deal-killing design flaw, in my opinion. You can never play a mod setting with two hands. I'm returning the A500 that I just bought and sticking with my M-Audio Axiom Pro for my laptop controller.