The Good News Is, The Teenage Engineering OP-Z Is Ready To Ship After 3 Years

The Teenage Engineering OP-Z synthesizer

Teenage Engineering today announced that its OP-Z – a unique mobile device that combines a 16-track multitimbral synth, sequencer and video synthesizer – is now ready for pre-order.

We’ve embedded a demo by lead software engineer Jonas Åberg above.

Here’s what TE said in their announcement:

let us start by apologizing for the long delay. to develop new products can at times be quite hard and when you work on things that have never been done before, it’s even harder.

over the last year we have re-worked and re-thought in absurdum, but now when three long years of development have finally come to an end, we feel quite confident that you will actually thank us for that extra long wait.

why? you might ask…– because the result is just pretty, pretty great.

Pricing and Availability

The Teenage Engineering OP-Z is priced at US $599. The bad news is, the first batch is also already sold out. You can sign up to be on the waiting list at the TE site.

24 thoughts on “The Good News Is, The Teenage Engineering OP-Z Is Ready To Ship After 3 Years

      1. Some very nice sounds there. Quick question, he loses the beat quite often, I mean, the 4-4 sometimes gets an extra beat or so when he goes for an effect. I don’t if that’s his intentional style or just to do with the stiff keys that he talked about on this beta model.

  1. Typical of TE in terms of availability. Like the OP-1, has”always” been almost impossible to come by. So I don’t see this thing being any different.. Prove me wrong by actually having this thing not internally back ordered

  2. We’ve seen a few demos and while they do hint at some of the potential locked inside, they have been incredibly boring house music demos. I’d like to see some more original sounding stuff making good use of the sequencer

  3. I’m not convinced that in 10 years, when the iPhone has moved on 6 or 7 generations from its hardware specs right now and Apple have introduced and dismissed 4 new types of adapter cables, this just won’t be a brick – with us, the user, potentially locked out of most functionality.

    This will of course be more Apples fault than TE’s, but it is still a design flaw to me ..

    I kind of love the fact that you can still buy working DX-7s and Korg M1s and even Minimoogs, and they are mostly self-contained – plug in, record, use in song.

    In contrast, I suspect we will see so many great apps die because they’ll run on legacy disposable hardware – like phones, built to last a year, or iPads, built to last two years. So I’m not at all convinced of buying an expensive hardware interface tethered to an app ..

    By the way I think the OP-1 is insanely fun and so are the Pocket Operators, I just can’t connect with this product.

    1. An iOS device is in no way required to use the OP-Z. It’s purely there for enhancement of the feature set. You can compose a whole track without ever connecting it to an iPhone or iPad.

    2. Maybe iOS apps will die, maybe not, look how long something like Reason survived. We don’t know, someone might port iOS apps to whatever the next popular platform is. Or not. Anyway, from what I understand users of this this TE device will not need a screen once they learn the machine.

  4. For some reason, I just don’t feel any urge to even try this device. After Op-1 this feels like a downgrade. Keys don’t look like they could or should be played. Feels gimmicky. I would have preferred an Op-2 of sorts more – more processing power, more editing possibilities (not always recording to the “tape”) and pressure sensitive keys…

  5. So does this have pocket operator fx punch in style? I feel like a beefed up version of that effects system would be great. Does this have that ?

  6. by that time any teen ager would have become an adult. And BTW, Teenage engineering have a very patient bank manager ! Many business would have gone bust by then.

  7. sounds good, but the design is really tiny and bad. Just like the Roland Boutiques. The excuse that it fits in the bag and is portable or it fits in the studio, is a bad excuse. Or am I missing something ? I mean, 30% bigger would not have been the end of the world and would have given space for clear readability, especially in live situations. Pass.

    1. For me the tiny size is the primary draw. There are no other hardware workstation keyboards, except the OP-1, this small and this capable. If there are some let me know cause I want them.

  8. They kept me busy by releasing the Pocket Operator metal series while I waited for the OP-Z. The anticipation is hard, but I don’t think the wait was too long after seeing how great the OP-1 is.

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