First off, let me say that I think that its really cheesey that Novation used the alternating lowercase-caps thing to name this device. Are all your users 12 year old hax0rz or something? Anyway, on to the review of the actual product….

Over all the quality if pretty good. Its solidly built, but its made entirely of plastic so Im not sure how long it would last if you actually were kind of rough with it. The buttons and faders are of decent quality, the large trigger buttons at the bottom of the left side are kind of stiff and dont respond well to being pushed unless you really press hard. Also the end-less rotary nobs are also hard to get working correctly with Traktor. The Zero SL doesnt sit flat on your desk either, it sits up on some legs and at a slight angle. Im not sure I like this, I prefer flat and out of the way.

Using it with Traktor is not as easy at they make it sound. The “Automap” feature that Novation jocks so hard in their advertising and descriptions only works with 4 programs. Yes, thats right, it only works with 4 programs. If you want it to work with anything else, your going to have to manually edit the midi settings for each and every nob and slider via Novations editor program (which is also kind of difficult to use). Then you have to program everything a second time inside traktor to match the settings you just saved in the device. Its a huge pain in the ass. And dont go looking for any help in the various dj and audio forums, nobodys going to share their template with you since they had to spend hours and hours after being lied to by Novation about its “automapping” abilities and they are all very bitter about it.

The device is loaded with “templates” but none of them are for anything thats actually useful to the average person. Unless you own 40 keyboards or a shit load of virtual keyboard software, your not going to get much use from this device from its default settings.

Another thing is that it kind of lags. When you side a fader up, sometimes the software doesnt react right away, it might delay a second or two before it moves on the screen. So say you move the volume up, it will move on the slider but the actual volume wont change for a few seconds after, very annoying. Im not sure if this is because the device sucks or I dont have a fast enough computer or enough ram.

The screen above the nobs and faders is nice. Its bright and displays some basic information about whats going on with the nob or fader that your using. Thats about the best part of the whole thing.

The documentation is also pretty bad. It doesnt really explain anything, you only get about 2 or 3 sentences about each feature and about how to program it and those two sentences arent very informative either.

Overall, I would give it a 3 out of 5. Its a nice toy, but until Novation steps up and makes the Automap work with ALL major software and not just a select few, its really not worth the money that you pay. I would buy this device again for $199 but I wouldnt pay $299 for it again, its not worth that much the way it is now.

UPDATE #1 (1/28/09):

The lag is caused by bad settings. Be careful when you set it up that you assign the right type of nob or button type to each nob or button or youll have funny problems. Once you get it all set up, it works pretty good. I also learned that the trigger pads on the bottom left side are pressure sensitive and that you can adjust the sensitivity in the onboard settings. Once I figured out how to adjust that, its made using them a lot easier.