Alesis SR16

This machine was pretty good about 20 years ago when it was designed. The sound quality was great at that time. But this does not applies as of today, unfortunately.

Why you should buy this item?
1. If you want to practice with the drums.
2. If the quality sound is not the primary problem for you.
3. You do a small gigs and/or jams.
4. You are OK with metronome-like clicker without anything more in its mind.

When you should consider other products instead?
1. You are looking for more-less modern naturalistic sounds.
2. You are looking for more advanced pattern handling, like own tempo per pattern etc.
3. It is dark in the room you're giggin' and you want LCD backlit. :)

Good part is that this machine is pretty easily operated. It does remembers the patterns in place and you cannot ran out of memory as you can always dump the MIDI data out of the device. It is very easy to handle and all the interface is very intuitive. You can set the tempo with the pattern switch pedal just by tapping it. You can predict when your fills ends up between the pattern switching.

However, do not consider this item if you want realistic sounds. None of the sounds are realistic on this item. They are not bad, but simply not realistic and everyone will feel the drum machine robotics.

When I bought this product I had never used a drum machine before (except some simple online programs). Out of the box I found this product to be easy to use and very easy to program. A quick read of the manual and I was ready to go! The quality of sound is very good through decent speakers and the selection of drums I find to be very broad and realistic. I use this product as an acompaniment instrument for my two piece band and it works really well. With a little knowledge of drums you can create very realistic sounding drum patterns. I use a dual foot switch to operate it while performing.
This product lacks a few features I would've liked such as a larger memory or the ability to be able to delete and re-record the presets. And perhaps the option of a third pattern and fill would've been good but for the price, this is a fantastic bit of gear!