Alright, I've had this thing long enough to be through the honeymoon phase so here are a few thoughts. The headline is -- the form factor makes this an awesome product for me; it sounds like a Fractal product (i.e., great); while easier to use than other Fractal stuff, its still a Fractal device.
So far my use of it has been around the house as a headphone playing solution and - where anytime I brought my FM3 into the house to do this with it never got used, this thing I'm using several times a week. Lighter, feels slicker/sleeker/more-polished with a better screen, simpler to operate for a 30 minute schwang, etc. It all adds up.
The sounds are the sounds.
UI -- I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, YES, it's way better than other Fractal stuff. On the other -- it still very much feels like using a Fractal product to me? There feels like there is a bit more "turn this knob to make that row of parameters active, now turn that knob to adjust the bass" than there needs to be. It's all a lot more intuitive, but does just still feel like my hands move a bit more than they should need to? And not always obvious if there is a 3rd/4th row of parameters to scroll down to .
I actually really miss the button-push encoder for one very specific reason: push-to-default value would save SO.MUCH.TIME when just trying out a new amp model or new deep parameter when you want to quickly go "what's this do if I max it out - okay, lemme go back to normal...oh, god, I'm scrolling through all the 0.01 values turn turn turn turn".
Changing channels for performance use is super intuitive...a little clunky and "oh, right, I just pretend I'm using it in performance mode and switch to the other channel to edit it". For editing purposes.
All of this is kind of on the nitpicky side of things for sure, but it all seems to add up. Like I said, the UI is a big step forward and cuts out most of the stuff that makes the Big Boy feel just not intuitive (honestly, stepping away from that for a while and powering it on one would probably take beat to remember what you need to do just to get to the freaking grid to even start editing). Buuuuut...I think it's useful to have a little more full commentary on the UI experience. I'd say this:
(1). If you've used Fractal stuff before and the things that annoyed you were that there seemed like more buttons than there needed to be and you were always a little confused about whether you should press Enter or Edit, and sometimes got lost just getting back to the grid and those were the things that turned you off, this is a MEGA improvement.
(2). If "all those crazy parameters wtf?!?" is what turned you off to Fractal in the past, I THINK this would solve that? You have to actively find those parameters with a secret handshake double-button press (clearly described in the manual) so the parameters visible in standard operating mode certainly aren't any more confusing or complicated than the stuff you see in Helix.
(3). If you hate "menu diving", honestly I don't know what that means. All of these devices involve menu diving. Helix; QC -- they are powerful devices that can do a lot of things but require some user configuration and choices to do those things so they're going to have menus. The "system" menu pages have some stuff that probably looks confusing, but so does Helix. Boss doesn't look confusing necessarily, but feels more confusing to folks that use these things because in "simplifying" stuff it has become clear as mud as to what the thing is actually doing when certain global/output parameters are adjusted. For the most part, this device is limited to "pages of a single menu" which honestly is splitting hairs of semantics in my mind "oh, this unit doesn't have 4 sub menus for the amp block...its much simpler in that it has 4 PAGES of the amp block".
Hope this is helpful to folks.
