Feature comparison of top products
It feels like we are living in a golden age of hardware samplers. Which one is the best? That depends on which features are most important to you. Today we're going to take a look at the sampling capabilities of some of the best machines available from Elektron, Torso, Polyend and Akai.
Device Overviews
Digitakt II is the successor to Elektron's popular Digitakt, a drum-forward sampler and sequencer. The mark II has been thoroughly souped up with new effects, an upgraded sequencer and new stereo playback engines.
Torso's S-4 is a sculpting sampler with a sleek UI and powerful and expressive features. It is capable of advanced live processing and looping.
The Tonverk is Elektron's polyphonic multi-sampler, with dizzyingly powerful routing potential. It is capable of capturing the sound of hardware synthesizers better than most, by taking multiple samples across a range of pitch and velocity values to generate polyphonically playable virtual instruments.
Polyend's Tracker+ is the upgrade to their Tracker instrument. A tracker is a vertical-scrolling sampling interface, made popular in the 90s by the classic Amiga Protracker software. Trackers allow for quick programming of complex sample playback, and this machine brings some modern luxuries to this retro interface. The Tracker+ and Tracker Mini are the desktop and portable form-factors of the same system, and share most of the same features.
The Akai MPC Live III is the newest entry to this list. It is a full recording studio in a box, complete with on-board speakers, microphone preamps, an array of virtual instruments and plugins, and battery power.
Elektron's Octatrack is a modern classic, beloved by many as a performance mixer and creative sampler. Though the oldest design on this list, it still packs a suite of features that more recent machines struggle to match.
While more of a drum machine than a sampler, Elektron's Analog Rytm MKII still boasts a useful sampling engine and is worth considering if you love analog sounds but still want to be able to create and play back samples
Conclusion
So, who comes out on top?
If you're looking for the machine with the most fleshed-out sampling engine, the MPC Live III and the S-4 tick almost all the boxes by the numbers. But the analysis of these machines for their sampling capabilities alone doesn't tell the whole story. For example, the S-4 doesn't have a sequencer at all, which explains why it doesn't allow for slicing. The synthesis engines included on the MPC Live III and Tracker+ give them the edge if you want to use them as totally standalone production centers; and there's really something to be said about the satisfying form factor and feel of the Digitakt II. If you think about what's really important for you, a comparison like this can help narrow down your choices.
Note: this piece was written in October 2025. Some of these machines may receive firmware updates in the future that add features not included at the time of writing. Make sure to check the websites of the respective manufacturers for the full feature lists of these products.
