First thing to say about the x touch is that physically it's a solid product for the most part. It's heavy and the chassis is well constructed. It stays put on your desk. This is a big deal for me. I don't like gear floating around...The former BCR and BCF series were a good deal lighter and the the feet were not so good.
Faders are smooth enough and are accurate. LCD strips are adequate, but as many people have mentioned, not ideal to read at a comfortable working angle. Pan/multi-function encoders are OK but have that wobbly quality the same as the old ones from the BCF/BCR. That's just a 'feel' thing, they work fine and they seemed to last on the only BCF unit. I also don't find the readout of the position of the encoders that easy to read. Function buttons for the channel strips like mute, solo etc are rubberized, but firm and affirmative in operation and have clear lighting to show if they are engage or not. No complaints there.
Transport controls are adequate, but the jog wheel is not very usable. It's stiff and the indent for your finger is too shallow to work properly.
Where I really start to have problems is in the general function buttons, which in mackie mode are supposed to do everything correctly (with the right layout, which I have for cubase). They don't. As far as I can tell the whole bunch of buttons in the global view don't work at all. Even for something like the click toggle I had to set up a custom function. Which works easily admittedly, but then I have to modify my template with a sticker. I'm not precious about that sort of thing, but I expect the basics to work properly and not have to set up custom functions. I'm not even thinking about controlling plugins or deeper standard DAW features.
To sum up, if you just want something to operate the faders, pan, basic channels switches, like solo mute and transport. This works fine, but beyond that it is not working how it should, at least with cubase. And if you only want those functions, you might be better off with something like the Icon platform M which is a smaller footprint and cheaper.
I sent mine back, because it's not proving to be a genuine ergonomic improvement in my studio and not all the basic functionality works. So I'm disappointing in the product overall.
Just to say though. Thomman's service is excellent as usual.
