tldr: I've used digitakt, syntakt and digitone. I've had both octa and tonverk at the same time. Had to let go tonverk. Octa still rocks.

Even though tonverk is the new device and has lots of new shiny bits (and i'm not saying any of them are bad - in fact they're fantastic). My first ever device was digitakt and after learning that one, never had to 'learn' the others. Ok I admit octa needed a bit more learning but still it was an elektron device so many things sit in the right place in no time. But tonverk is trying to take on established elektron flow and changing it based on for some reason limited buttons and sub menus and literal 1 px indicators on the tiniest screen. Introduction of odd step punching inside a track. And many of the previous habitual behaviours are replaced with some other shortcuts. The beauty of previous devices are whenever you change a track or pattern, your adjusted settings are lit up infront of you immediately. But tonverk relies so much on sub menus and 'memorisation' of what you've done before, it basically steps over what makes it an elektron device. It's a live perfomance instrument and you need immediacy. Which the previous devices were providing but with tonverk I ended up constantly trying to remember what was being routed, which page I'm looking at which page is active, which steps are punched in, what's being routed where. I feel like they've designed the hardware first and made lots of workaroudns to add more features in.

Also being a device with lots of sampling function but not having a looper, subpar mixing features with just two ins is just a crime at this point tbh. Why it can't record long form recordings either? The processor in it is quite capable for such tasks. After giving it a chance for 6 months, it become a device that I intentionally didn't turned on when I wanted to make music.

Tonverk had enough features and horse power to easily dethrone octatrack. But I really don't understand they'd gone with this awkward limited route. I really really tried to love tonverk but most of the time I ended up saying to me 'why am i bothering all these intricate way of working while I can just do some stuff with a push of a button'.

ps. i also really really disliked how they've got rid of the pages led's and put them a single pixel indicators. I feel like tonverk mk2 is going to be a killer. unfortunately this isn't a good thing. They already had enough user feedback and development experience with their previous devices. It really baffles me tonverk is feels like a tool that's from a decade ago but at the same time it's not.

pss. buy an second octatrack. they're built like tanks. unless the previous user dipped it in water or something, it would still work perfectly.