The release of the minimalistic AKAI MPC Element took place in 2013. It is a controller featuring 16 pads with a USB connection to the computer. It comes with a serial number for MPC Essentials, a stripped down version of the MPC software that you could find earlier in MPC Studio and Renaissance.

MPC Essentials works as a standalone application supporting AU/VST plug-ins, which offers the most necessary functions for creating a track. You can upload and edit your samples in it.

MPC Essentials is a very practical program, but there’s a notable drawback - there is no real-time playback mode, and instead, you can add some shuffle to the rhythm by applying quantization/swing as an autonomous process.

As for the pads, AKAI, as always, made this section just perfect. They are not only nice to play, they still have a refined look, and the backlight on the edges shines from orange to red, depending on the velocity level. Under each of the pads there’s a filter, pitch, LFO, panning, sample cut and edit functions hidden.

At the bottom there are standard play/pause, record buttons and to the left of the pads there are performance buttons. "Full Level" increases all the pressed pads to the highest velocity value, while "16 Level" allows you to play with one sample that can be transposed down or up, or change the Velocity, Attack, Release, Layer, or Cutoff Frequency.

There are also "Note Repeat" buttons for the "stuttering" effect, and Undo/Erase.