But that's 3x the price and doesn't have a pad, but a touch-screen that might be OK for changing config but not the best for playing. Nothing again the Blackbox, AFAIK it's great, but I think it's a completely different beast than the EP-133.

It could be a great upgrade for the (awful and buggy [0] that never got a firmware upgrade even when it's still being sold after 10 years...) AKAI MPX 8.

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  [0]: It's so bad that a guy did a "hardware patch" for fixing some of it's MIDI handling problems: https://www.freshnelly.com/mpx8.htm

Haha, those two devices are so different it's not really a useful comparison. One is a sampling groovebox, the other is a sampler module. Use Cases are also totally different. If you want a cheap sampling groovebox with a thoughtful workflow, portable, mic, speaker, battery operated, fun to play with there aren't all that many choices other than maybe the Korg Volca Samples. It's around 3x the price, but it easily has 3x the functionality.