Korg M50

Yeah it's very easy to use. Users familiar with the Triton series will find it very easy as will new users.
The presets are great. As with all Korg products they sound terrific
Editing is much the same as the old triton series with a few enhancements.
Manual is fine.

80 notes polyphony which is ample.
The keyboard action is to be blunt very toy like, remember those
cheap casio keyboards? well thats what it feels like.
I took it back and got a refund because of the crappy action.
I came from a Korg 01/w pro which to this day has the best keyboard action along with the Triton series.
No midi thru or aftertouch. effects are awesome.
never used the sequencer.

Sounds are FANTASTIC.
Again the keyboard action is crap. unless you know better you probably wont mind and would get used to it.
No aftertouch and velocity action is not very good.

Dunno took it back coz of the crappy keyboard action.
It weighs bugger all and wasn't very sturdy on my keyboard stand.
Compared to my 01/w pro which weighs 35kg this thing is about 5 kg.
Hard hitting players will no doubt make this thing bounce and possible fall off the keyboard stand. If you threw it at someone it would bounce off them and break. It actually feels like a toy to be honest.
If it didnt say "Korg" and have awesome sounds you could mistake it for a casio keyboard from Dick Smith.

never needed them

Im still using my Korg 01/w pro which is 20 years old now.
I had a play with the M3 with all it gimmicks and while the keyboard action of the M3 is better than the M50 it's still a long shot from the 01/w and Triton series boards. I really do think Korg are skimping this area and would hesitate to buy a Korg product in the future.
Now if only the M50 was available as a module we would all be happier.

The M50 is easy to use meaning that if you have a touch screen you can avoid lookin' around the board for the proper button, but menus are just as layered as any other board of that category on the market, you need to klnow where you are going. Panel-wise, the M50 is not, in my opinion, designed for live use: an all-black oufit makes really hard to discern main preration buttos (sequencer, for example), and in a dark stage situation you'd want to have a small lighting fixture nearby so you see what buttons you're pressing.
Also, having a touchscreen isn'tr always the best solution, some screens and commands are best input via classic dial or data entry buttons.

Poliphony is very good. Effects are more than adequate. It cannot accept expansions of any kind. Midi is extensive. The sequencer is complete and very good, but... I think Roland or Yamaha sequencers are tighter, easier to configure, sturdier in operativity. Also, the song editing features (sequencer edit pages) are astonishingly poor. You probably can get you way around with this as any other good keyboard, but still... it's an impression, mind you, but i do believe that Korg sequencers are weak both in features and in capacity.

As I'll explain in a while, sounds are the weakest part of this board.

The sounds are, simply put, not adequate.
The quality of the waveforms is not in discussion, anyboday can sample at 96 khz nowadays, but it's the choice of sounds that is dismayal. In 3 words: few, uninspiring, wrongly mapped.

Too few sounds in each category. 640 in the whole keyboard.
Open up a category, say, lead synths, subcategory Hard lead synths. 9 sounds. all similar to each other, all of them truly smallish and flabby.
Same applies every other category. For a comparison, Roland's Juno D (an economy keyboard from the competition) has about 40 sound in hard lead synth only, about 1600 across the whole categories.
I haven't really gone to Pianbo, Guitar, Brass and other ****, who uses those anyway? 90% of keyboard synths users make electronic stuff one way or the other, why waste 60% of the preset sounds on useless farty shakuhachi, acoustic guitar or similar nonsense stuff? People who need such sounds usually buy Kurzweil or sampling libraries.
In short, I really gave this board away for the sounds, which are too few and too badly sorted for me to use it.

A generic-sounding and even more generic-spec'd keyboard that has its biggest value in the touchscreen and little else. I would not recommend it to no one, beginner or pro. Sorry.

The Korg M50 joins my Triton LE on the rack and replaces my elderly N364, so if you're no stranger to Korgs, this one comes as no surprise. Went for a couple of days without opening the manual (and in true Korg style wasn't much the wiser when I did).

See comments below on the presets. Touch screen takes about a day to get the hang of.

Not sure what the quoted polyphony is, but it seems to run out of notes quicker than my old Korgs. Built in effects are of usual high standard - the leslie effect on the hammond organ is good fun. Limited expansion opportunities, NO AFTERTOUCH. I guess if you want these you need to save twice as much money and buy the M3.

Sequencer easy to use - if you're serious about sequencing, you'll use some proper software, but its good for playing around.

Bought this largely on the strength of the acoustic piano tones - really nice. The Rhodes are very usable too (although the Wurlis are better on the Triton LE). Usual Korg fayre of nice pad sounds. Seems to be better at impersonating real instruments (check out the sax program C008 and acoustic guitars) than big synth patches. In this respect, I'll mourn the gigging retirement of my N364 and probably look for an 05R/W module or X5.

The combinations are highly playable, as are the underlying programs - more so than the previous Korg incarnations where I rarely ventured out of combi mode. Putting the drum machine on/off on the face of the board and separating it from the rest of the arpeggiator was a masterstroke and the touchscreen invites you to tweak on the fly much more than toggle and clicking. I've used mine in church, theatre work and the odd rock/pop gigs so far.

Keyboard ok and the joystick is nice. Velocity works ok but I do miss the lack of aftertouch - apparently it will respond via midi but I haven't done too much editing to find out yet.

2 months in and so far so good. Never had a problem with my Korgs in the last 13 years - hope this will keep the family tradition running. Its gloriously light but devoid of metal so I don't think it would survive falling off the stand or being dropped. The power supply connecter is really weedy too - I've seen more substantial plugs on mobile phones and guess this will give up the ghost in a few years. Its a pity that Korg are cutting corners like this - it compares very badly to my Korg N364 which is now 13 years old, built like a tank, came with an IEE (kettle) plug and with aftertouch.

n/a

Lets be honest, its a poor man's M3. The sounds inside are great but they cut some corners to get it in on budget. On the plus side, its very playable - usual nice selection of combinations to get you going Its as robust as a home keyboard and chopping out aftertouch and midi thru was an error. Getting the 88 key version would fix the sturdiness and probably make the pianos even more playable but then it wouldn't fit in the boot of my car.

I looked at the Yamaha motif and Roland Junos (notably the Juno stage). You can't beat the depth of sound that a korg in combi mode offers.