A 61-key USB MIDI keyboard controller that sold for $299.99 and is now discontinued, built around deep software control rather than key count: a 2nd-generation synth-action keybed with channel aftertouch, nine 30 mm faders, eight encoders, eight assignable LED buttons, eight pressure-sensitive pads, a 128×64 mono LCD, and Nektar's two-part software story — DAW Integration plus the Nektarine plug-in host, which maps the T6's controls onto VST/AU instruments with on-hardware feedback. Sources agree on the strengths: an unusually complete hands-on control set, genuine aftertouch and pressure-sensitive pads at a price where both are normally missing, a real 5-pin MIDI Out plus footswitch and expression inputs (so it drives hardware and runs standalone on bus power), Bitwig 8-Track in the box, and strong value. Three things genuinely divide opinion. The keybed plays well by near-universal agreement, but a minority find it mechanically loud enough to rule out acoustic practice or a mic'd room. The integration is class-leading in the DAWs Nektar wrote files for — Bitwig, Cubase, GarageBand, Logic, Nuendo, Reaper, Reason, Studio One — while Ableton Live and FL Studio get plain Mackie Control, and Nektar's own support page states that since Pro Tools 2024.3 the controller works there only as a generic MIDI device, with no mixer, transport or navigation control. And build reports split roughly evenly between owners who call it solid and a persistent thread of faders that misbehave straight out of the box. At 98 cm and 7.6 kg it is also a big, heavy desk presence rather than a portable one.
About this product
The 61-key model in Nektar's Panorama T line — the same instrument as the 49-key T4 with an extra octave, but a considerably bigger board at 98 cm and 7.6 kg (16.75 lb) against the T4's 82 cm and 6.4 kg. A 2nd-generation Panorama synth-action keybed with channel aftertouch, nine 30 mm faders, eight encoders, eight assignable LED buttons, eight pressure-sensitive pads, a 128×64 mono LCD and a 5-pin MIDI Out. Now discontinued — Nektar's current line-up no longer lists the Panorama T-series.
Nektar's Panorama T6 is the 61-key half of the company's flagship Panorama T pair; the 49-key T4 is the same instrument one octave shorter. The pitch was never the key count, though — it was depth. A 2nd-generation synth-action keybed with real aftertouch, a small LCD so the hardware can tell you what it's doing, and Nektarine, a VST/VST3/AU plug-in host that hands the T6 mapped control of almost any software instrument in almost any DAW.
It landed in 2018–2019 at $299.99, and reviewers took it seriously: Sound On Sound and MusicTech both reckoned it could embarrass boards costing a good deal more. Since then two things have happened. Nektar has moved on — the current catalogue is the Impact LX mkIII line and a keyless Panorama CS12 — so the T6 is discontinued at B&H, gone from Thomann, and unavailable on Amazon. And the field has had time to argue: about how loud the keys are, about which DAWs really get the good integration, and about whether the unit you receive works properly out of the box.
