Announced last year and unveiled at NAMM in January, we’ve been tracking the development of the Panorama P4 - the bespoke Reason controller from new Californian brand Nektar - for some time now.

Given that we’re not shy about our love of Propellerhead’s Reason 6 (which has only been improved by the recent 6.5 update and addition of Rack Extensions), the prospect of a dedicated controller piqued our interest. Now we’ve got our hands on one, and it’s time to see how it fares.

With a DAW-specific controller like the Panorama P4, intuitiveness is key. You’ll probably already have invested time and money in setting up your music making computer, installing and learning your way around Reason, possibly building and saving your own presets. What you want now is a controller that you can plug in and use straight out of the box with minimal hassle - one that allows mouse-free control of as much of the DAW as possible, without you having to spend hours reading another manual or assigning controls.

So, how does it feel? How easy is it to use? What sort of control does it provide over Reason? Over the next few slides you can follow as we take the Panorama P4 back to our home studio and plug it into an existing Reason 6.5 setup to put it to the test.