After using Pacemaker (“world’s first pocket DJ system”) for a while here’s first review. For those who don’t know the product it’s basically a Nokia communicator sized portable DJ device with 120GB hardrive, colour display and touchpad for controls, two MP3 “decks”, mixer and effect section with two mini-plug outputs. Nice one.

First of all you can notice that swedish Tonium company’s 50 million crowns has been spent well. Packaging is Apple quality (think of iPod but black) and by first touch the device feels pure quality. Installing the Pacemaker software is easy with just plugging the device to your USB and with few clicks you’re ready to upload first tracks to the device. It takes a while to get used to the controls but I think they’ve succeeded well in putting all those functions to such a small device. I was in half an hour happily beatmatching and mixing tracks with it. Basically all functionality of basic Pioneer CDJ and DJM setup is there. Hardrive seems to work pretty quickly, EQs are nice, filters work well, loops are smooth, display clear and device is loud enough from outputs. You can check out a basic functionality demo at YouTube.

Main critisism comes from effects which are a bit poor to me. I was also hoping there to be some kind of waveform display for quickly getting to point of que. Price (around 550€?) will make the target audience age closer to 30 than 15. Biggest downside is that you can only control one thing at the time which makes fro example smoothly changing bass from one track to another a bit challenging. I see this device as a perfect party gadget rather than any real gig device because a DJ twiddling a phone looking device in front of a crowd is far from exciting;) I will anyway be carrying this around for trying mixing new music while travelling or for those casual after or pre-parties. This will also be ideal DJ setup for our portable Unity PA system for some extempore summer parties…