An 88-key USB MIDI controller built around quantity of control plus automatic DAW mapping: 88 full-size, velocity-sensitive semi-weighted keys, nine 30mm faders, eight knobs, eight backlit pads, six transport buttons, a 5-pin MIDI output and Nektar's DAW Integration for a long list of hosts. Sources agree on the strengths — an unusually generous control set for the price, pads that punch above the money, a slim 18-pound chassis you can bus-power from a laptop or an iPad, and outstanding value; every editorial source and both owner aggregates land in the same place there. Two things genuinely split opinion. The keybed: most reviewers and one classically trained pianist call the semi-weighted action even and properly playable, while a real minority of owners find it springy and plastic-feeling and a few saw key velocities drift after months of use. And the DAW integration, which is near-automatic in a supported host and close to absent in Ableton Live or Pro Tools — Nektar's own Ableton guide offers a remote script that covers little more than transport. Scope limits worth knowing: no aftertouch, no expression-pedal input, a thin Bitwig 8-Track bundle, and a bus-powered design that Nektar's own troubleshooting page ties to intermittent dropouts on underpowered USB ports. It is also now end of life: the 2026 Impact LX88 mk3 replaces it with a redesigned keybed, USB-C, NKS and the Ableton support this generation never had — while dropping the MIDI out.
About this product
The '+' generation of Nektar's 88-key Impact LX — 88 full-size semi-weighted keys, nine faders, eight knobs, eight pads and a 5-pin MIDI out, bus-powered over USB. Not the original 2015 Impact LX88, and not the 2026 Impact LX88 mk3 that has replaced it (redesigned keybed, USB-C, NKS and Ableton Live support — but no MIDI out). The 49- and 61-key siblings, the LX49+ and LX61+, use a lighter synth action.
Nektar's Impact LX88+ answered a question that barely anyone else was answering: what if you want all 88 keys, but you are buying a controller rather than a piano? Most 88-note boards at the time were either bare keybeds with a sustain jack or fully weighted flagships at two or three times the money. The LX88+ put a semi-weighted 88 under nine faders, eight knobs, eight pads and full transport, kept the whole thing light enough to carry and bus-powered off a laptop, and sold it for a little over $300.
Its real calling card is Nektar's DAW Integration — installers that auto-map the controls to Logic, Cubase, Reason, Bitwig, Studio One, Reaper, FL Studio and more, so the faders land on the mixer and the knobs land on the synth without you mapping anything. Reviewers and owners agree that is a lot of controller for the money. Where they part company is on how good the keybed actually feels, and on what happens when your DAW is one of the two big names Nektar never covered.
