Featuring a set of 25 velocity-sensitive Natural Touch mini-keys, the microKEY Air-25 from Korg is a slim MIDI controller with tap tempo, arpeggiator, and sustain functions. If you wish, you can bus-power this unit via the USB port, but the microKEY Air also features Bluetooth capabilities, allowing you to connect wirelessly to Mac and iOS devices. Hooked up in such a fashion, the keyboard can last up to 30 hours on two AA batteries (alkaline are recommended).

This microKEY Air is armed with an expressive joystick that allows you to transmit pitch-bend, modulation, and control-change commands to enhance your MIDI performances. When the arpeggiator is on, the function of the joystick changes, enabling you to switch between the three different arpeggio types (up, trigger, and down), to control the duration of the arpeggiated notes, and to engage the latch function--thereby allowing you to sound an arpeggio even after you take your hand off the keyboard. A Sustain/Tap button allows you to apply sustain to your performances as a pedal would. However, when the arpeggiator is on, this control transmogrifies into a tap button that allows you to set the tempo of the arpeggio. The Key Transpose feature enables you to pitch the notes up or down in intervals of semitone steps, while octave-shift selectors let you extend the note range of the keyboard by 4 octaves in either direction.

The controller also includes five virtual instruments (Korg Legacy Collection, UVI Digital Synsations, AAS Ultra Analog Session, AAS Strum Session, and AAS Lounge Lizard Session) and two apps (Korg Module Le for iPhone and Korg Module Le for iPad). Finally, purchasing the Korg microKEY Air will allow you to download a limited version of Propellerhead's Reason, or to apply a $50 discount towards Ableton Live.