Alesis Strike MultiPad vs Roland SPD-SX Pro

The Strike MultiPad leans on quantity and it pays off. There are more than 8,000 preloaded samples and a lot of them are genuinely good. The synths are a highlight, especially the Pluck This! preset, and the acoustic drum samples are good enough to put on a record without anyone knowing they came off a sampling pad. Kits like Good Ol' Rock and the 808-flavored Cash Money cover most of what I reach for, with orchestral and world patches if you want them, plus the A and B sample function to layer or alternate two sounds on a pad.

The SPD-SX Pro takes the opposite approach. Its stock kits are the weakest part of the unit, clean but uninspired, and Roland clearly expects you to load your own. Where it shines is what you do with them: 53 much-improved effects with great distortion, saturation, lofi, and bitcrusher, real-time sampling onto any pad, per-layer EQ, and front-knob control over pitch, volume, fades, and transient. Sample volumes now read in decibels, which makes talking to a sound engineer far easier. Want a huge ready-to-play library, the Strike wins comfortably; bring your own sounds to sculpt, and the gap narrows.

Both feel great under the sticks. The Strike's nine velocity-sensitive pads are responsive and consistent with natural rebound, ghost notes and rolls trigger reliably, and latency is effectively zero even while layering or looping. Crosstalk is generally strong, with only the rare false hit when I play aggressively across adjacent pads at high tempo. The RGB lighting is genuinely functional: pads light on a hit and track loop progress, which is a lifesaver in a bad in-ear mix, and the looper (up to sixteen measures, external audio included) is genuinely good.

The SPD-SX Pro's triggering is fantastic, as Roland's pads usually are. Velocity-switched two-sample playback helps a lot with ghost notes, the top shoulder pads are far more sensitive than on the original, and latency tested at effectively zero even with a fuller external setup. The standout is real-time trigger monitoring: dialing in pad sensitivity takes seconds instead of guesswork. I give a slight nod to the Roland for dynamic smoothness and to the Strike for the looper, which is why this round is a wash.

The Strike MultiPad's build quality is excellent. The whole top panel is a silicone rubber surface that feels good under the sticks, the unit feels solid and premium, and mine has held up traveling in and out of clubs and theaters without complaint, which is the only durability test that actually matters for a gigging pad.

The SPD-SX Pro feels robust and road-built, with a rugged chassis, a big bright high-resolution screen, and a smarter control layout: a global FX knob, two pad-edit knobs, and six context buttons. The most important change is the fix Roland made to the front power button that was prone to failing on my original SPD-SX, now a switch on the back. Both are gig-worthy, but Roland's proven longevity and that reliability fix are why the SPD-SX Pro takes the round.

The Strike MultiPad is where Alesis pulls ahead of everything else at the price. It has 32GB of internal storage, the same as the much pricier SPD-SX Pro, plus an SD slot, and the most complete back panel I have seen on a pad: five trigger inputs, a dedicated hi-hat input, two foot control inputs, MIDI in and out, USB, a stereo record input, and a built-in 2 in 2 out audio interface. The aux output for routing a click or backing tracks separately is what I lean on live. The one real miss is no 3.5mm aux input.

The SPD-SX Pro goes deeper if you run a big rig: eight external pad inputs, six independent routable outputs versus the original's two, and a huge 12 in 8 out over USB, with much stronger MIDI and Roland's drag-and-drop desktop app. Its single 1/4 inch stereo input still needs a breakout cable. The Strike packs flagship I/O plus an audio interface at half the price, which is why it edges the round; the SPD-SX Pro is the better pick specifically for large hybrid setups that need eight trigger inputs.

At around $700 the Strike MultiPad gives you flagship functionality and, by my own testing, better I/O than the SPD-SX Pro, which costs $300 to $400 more. Unless your only use is as a bare MIDI controller, where a cheaper SamplePad Pro does that one job, it is the best value multipad you can buy.

The SPD-SX Pro is the most expensive sampling pad on the market, roughly double the Alesis. It earns that only for specific buyers: drummers who need the jump to 32GB of storage and the extra trigger inputs for folding electronic percussion into an acoustic kit. For my own big setup with extra pads to the side it makes sense; for most people the price gap is the deciding factor. On pure value it is not close, and both of my reviews land in the same place: the Strike is the far better deal.