Red Panda Tensor

first of all, I love it.
I'll try to give a description of what this thing is: it's a tape maching that follows you everywhere, and you have some control of how it follows you. It can track you, repeating everthing you play, or it can record what you play (overdubbing or not) and play it back. The play back can be adjusted: you can set direction and speed, stretching and compressing (without affecting pitch), and change pitch. Add a little controlable randomness if you want with a dedicated control. Now, where it gets really interesting, is by using the footswitch or the expression pedal. With the first you have 4 different modes available (and use it to store presets, or to control the pedal footswitches if you want to spare them from stomping - don't forget this is a type of loop pedal, so there will be a lot of stomping), and with the expression pedal you can control any of the parameters and combine them if you wish.

The thing is: you have to know what you will use it for, and there is no obvious use to it. Otherwise, it wil create a mess, or an unusable effect. It is a wonderful pedal, opens up your creativity, but you'll have to be open for it.

I hate this standard pedal world-view of providing a couple of knobs and hiding extra functionality for midi controllers, shift buttons, hold three stomps and turn this to the right and that to the left etc — why not make it a little bigger, add a small screen and a couple of data-knobs? It wouldn't add too much to the price.
It has presets, but you can't deal with them without midi, it has at least two extra knobs you can't access other than in a web-based midi-editor. It's stereo, but on stereo-jacks, which are sadly not a standard nowadays, so you need some weird Y-wires.

Okay, I can complain endlessly, but let's stop here and finish it all with this: what it does with sound and its functionality is unexplainably amazing, really.

Or, perhaps I'll finish with the fact that I'm having difficult times convincing myself I don't need a second one for another instrument.

Bottom line: a unique and versatile pedal with rich sonic possibilities.

Usage
I don't use the pedal with guitars but rather with synths, samples, vocals etc. and works perfectly on all types of signals. You can get some very unique sounds on extreme settings. One of the best features in my opinion is the momentary looping switch, which lets you capture source signal into the rest of your effect chain without any unnecessary clicks etc.

The pedal might be a bit difficult to wrap your head around (esp. the NXT mode), but once you understand how it works, all of it is very intuitive.

The price is a bit higher, but it's well worth for the product.

I had been wanting to get one of these for several years but never pulled the trigger because there were always "safer" things to buy.
I finally ordered one not long ago and ended up returning it. It's a very good pedal, build quality and sound were second-to-none and nothing really does what it does. I just wasn't really sure how to use it and so I couldn't justify keeping it.

It's definitely a pedal you have to learn how to use, which I wasn't really willing to do. It can be as subtle or extreme as you want, but it takes experimentation to understand how the controls interact with each other and how the different loop modes work. It's very easy to get weird sounds out of it, it's more difficult to use it musically. It can do a basic reverse that sits very low in the mix, it can do pitch shifting, and even a nice chorus. In my opinion, that's not what the pedal is for because there are others that can get those sounds more easily and arguably better sounding.

To me, this is more of a pedal that you use as part of a composition. When you start using the looper functions, it can become a delay (with other weirdness added to it), or create very cool soundscapes, drones and glitchy blips and bloops. And if you add an expression pedal, that gives you even more options to get creative.

I never tried a Strymon Deco, but it seems to be the same type of pedal that's not really a specific effect on its own, but almost an instrument of its own that you have to actively play. For my playing and setup, that just doesn't really work for me. I like to 'set and forget' so I can focus on playing. If I would do that with this pedal, I would feel like I'm not using it to its full potential. As such, I would rather have separate pedals for chorus, reverse, delay, etc. instead of constantly changing settings on the Tensor to get those different sounds.

I realize these are all problems with me and not with the pedal, which is why I'm still giving it a high rating. It's an amazing pedal, just not right for me. I was a bit sad to return it because I had high hopes for it, but I had to be honest with myself that I probably wouldn't use it as much as I would have to, in order to justify the cost.

As always, Thomann's service was excellent. I almost never return products so I wasn't 100% sure how it worked, but their assistance and fast response to my e-mails was great and made it very easy.

The controls seem a bit weird at first but once you play with it for like 1 hour you will get the grasp of what is going on quite well.

Build quality is amazing and the finish on this is to die for. The buttons are very sturdy and the fact that there's a USB MIDI host built in which you can use to tempo sync or control the unit.

It's capabilities are really extraordinary. You can loop small "phrases", reverse them, create "glitches", different harmonies. The randomiser is one of its biggest strengths. It helps create interesting soundscapes for almost zero effort. As far as I know (haven't tried it yet) you can control most of those functionalities via USB MIDI, which means you can also sequence changes to those.

Pretty powerful unit, highly suggested if you want to create atmospheric / ambient music.