Teenage Engineering’s new synthesizer is powerful, portable, and gorgeous
The Swedish tech and design company Teenage Engineering is known for lots of things — helping create the look and feel of devices like the Playdate and the Nothing Phone, creating outrageously expensive voice recorders coveted by every reporter you know, building knobs and buttons better than anyone else — but above all it’s a music company. And it’s now launching its latest music device: the EP-133 KO II synthesizer. (The name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, so we’re going to call it the KO II.)
The KO II is something like a higher-end version of the Pocket Operator, the extremely cool and customizable $59 synthesizers Teenage Engineering launched in 2015. The Pocket Operator line has been a huge hit for Teenage Engineering, and...