Native Instruments and Ableton have had incredible success with their custom MIDI controllers that integrate with their DAWs (digital audio workstations), Maschine and Live, respectively. Native Instruments’ Maschine (yes, it’s the name of the hardware and the software) and Ableton’s Push are pretty much the gold standard for integration between music-making software and hardware. Serato is hoping it can capture even a sliver of that magic with its pairing of Slab and Serato Studio.
Plenty of others have tried their hand at building (or having others build for them) custom controllers for their DAWs — FL Studio, Studio One, and the MPC desktop suite have all gotten dedicated hardware at some point. Success, however, has been mixed. What Serato has going for it is that Studio is a relatively young and streamlined DAW with minimal bells and whistles. That means where Push and Maschine can be intimidating (and expensive) with their sprawl of buttons, pads, knobs, and sizable screens, Slab is much more approachable and affordable at $329.
Design-wise, Slab bears more than a passing resemblance to Maschine. It’s not just that both are built around a grid of 16 pads; it’s also the layout, label placement, and font choices. If you told me Slab was built by Native Instruments instead of AlphaTheta (Serato’s partner), I wouldn’t second-guess it.
It’s a handsome enough piece of hardware, though. The gray-on-gray color palette may not be exciting, and a little hard to read under certain lighting, but the matte texture and clean lines avoid feeling purely utilitarian. Slab is all plastic, but it doesn’t feel cheap. Encoders have a good amount of resistance, the buttons aren’t mushy, and the big dial has firm detents. The screen is quite small, and while it gives you some visual feedback, you’ll never be able to compose a beat on Slab without looking at your computer. That’s to be expected of a controller in this price range, though, like the Atom SQ or MPC Studio controller.
The velocity-sensitive pads are decent, if nothing spectacular. They’re good enough for some finger drumming, but Akai’s MPC still reigns supreme in this field. I’ve found the response to be a touch inconsistent and, while AlphaTheta lists “adjustable aftertouch” as one of the features of Slab, Serato Studio does not currently support aftertouch, which is a bit shocking in 2025. The RGB lighting, though, makes it a breeze to quickly color-code your chops and drum hits so you can identify your kicks, for instance, by making them all red.
The dial feels great, even if it isn’t always practical for navigating large sample libraries. Image: Terrence O’Brien / The Verge
In keeping with its budget price, connectivity is barebones here — just a USB-C port for connecting to your computer. There’s no integrated audio interface or MIDI outputs, like you’d find on Maschine and Push.
What matters most is how Slab integrates with Serato Studio. The good news is that most of the DAW’s essential features are at your fingertips. I’m new to Serato Studio, and I’ve only had Slab for about two weeks, but I had little trouble quickly getting the basics down pat. It’s easy and intuitive to sequence a drum pattern or play a bassline by hand. You even have quick access to the stem separation tech that has made Serato Sample so successful.
Slab allows you to browse your library of samples or fire up plugins without reaching for your mouse or keyboard. That being said, depending on the size of your collection, it might be faster and easier to go for the mouse anyway.
It was simple and quite fun to pull in a drum break, chop it up, and start crafting a beat without leaving Slab. By the end of my first day, I’d already put together a couple of (admittedly pretty terrible) beats. While the quality of my output was questionable, I had a blast making them. Part of the reason I hadn’t really delved too deeply into Serato Studio before is that it wasn’t a particularly tactile experience.
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