Hey I could use some help choosing between the newer MPC Studio and the older MPC Studio Black.

I started with the Live II and I’m very competent with that, but it’s just not as portable as I’d like. It’s heavy, too long to fit in my small backpack, and very expensive if it were to get damaged. This makes it not ideal to take on a bike ride to find a nice hammock spot to make beats at.

I already have a laptop with a touch screen, so I think one of the studio models would work nicely as a more portable solution over the Live II that wouldn’t set me back over $1000 if it got broken.

The trade offs as I understand it are q links vs touch strip, button layout, screen size, and overall unit size.

I’m not psyched about losing qlinks with the new model, and the touch strip isn’t that exciting.I do think the button layout would be more intuitive on the Studio Black as well.

I’ve seen people talk about using the old Studio Black as basically stand alone with its bigger screen and not looking at the computer the whole time, but I’m only familiar with the newer touch screen workflow so I think that will be lost on me. I might be more comfortable treating my touchscreen laptop as the screen anyway.

In that case the new studio would get an extra point for being slightly more portable as it’s a little smaller.

So that’s my situation. Should I go with Studio Black for a possibly more intuitive layout and familiar q links? Or new Studio model for max portability ditching a bigger screen that I may not use? Anything else I should consider? Thanks in advance and I’ll respond to any thoughts.