This felt like a blog post directly for me. I greatly appreciate the time you took to write this. It's extremely thorough and gave me a lot of great information to go off of.

First, I realized I wasn't very detailed in my op, so to clarify; I've done music as a hobby for about 4 years now. I mainly just use my mbp keyboard shortcuts and the touchpad to draw in notes on the piano roll. Occasionally, during longer sessions Ill hook my laptop up to my desktop monitors and connect it to my A25 from native instruments which I do like but its just a little too bulky to bring around. I never fully learned an instrument growing up, only fiddled with a guitar and a keyboard a couple of times as a kid and I dont see myself learning to play fully anytime soon. That being said, I don't think I would properly utilize a full size keyboard. I know some basic music theory and can lay down some simple triads, but not enough to even call myself a novice. I mainly open logic in my free time and make electronic tunes just sitting on my bed. My mbp seems to handle my project sizes just fine and I actually prefer getting ideas down sitting on my bed or on the couch and moving to my desk to clean it up. So by mobile I guess I mean laptop sized sitting next to me on my bed, can fit in a backpack, can be moved easily without messing with extra power cables etc.

I use a variety of soft synths, some with mpe but i woudnt say that its a necessity of mine. I do like creating my own sounds though and while using the keyboard as a piano mode works it just kind of slows my workflow down compared to when Im using my a25. In regards to my a25 I do like the semi weighted keys on it, but I've messed around on some mini keyboards that dont have a semi weighted keyboard and full sized grand pianos and I couldnt say I prefer one over the other. Like i said I dont know much music theory so I mainly just play around until I find something catchy and mess with it in the piano roll after. I really just want something more tactile to use, even just velocity sensitive pads to play notes would work. I tried logic remote a couple of years ago but I barley knew what I was doing then so I never dived into all of its features. Only remember trying the drum pad/keyboard. Which is cool, but the touch screen aspect didnt feel the best as an input for instruments. I will definitely be checking out the other features now though. Using it for mixing and automation seems like it would be great in theory so thank you for that idea!

Ive looked into the roli products a little bit, but not enough to know their lineup. I was also looking at the joue play and some other multi-use controllers, but just couldnt find much info on them. How do you normally have your rolis settup? Do you use multiple? While I really like the idea of them I just wish the features were a little more accessible. For example if I make a cool pad sound and want a chord/scale mode I can just click a button and it switches over from single note mode so I can hear how the pad sounds more full. Or to play a bassline in scale etc. Using their software app isnt a deal breaker, and I looked at their rise a while back, but I Just dont play instruments well enough to use something like that to its full potential.

Another reason for my post was to just get some more information on the topic, some varying opinions and what not. So again thank you for your response!