1010music Blackbox 2 adds bigger touchscreen and faster sampling workflow

1010music’s Blackbox 2 goes after the biggest complaint drummers and beat-makers have with portable samplers: too much music-making gets buried in tiny screens and clunky navigation. The new model keeps the original Blackbox’s compact, self-contained idea, but replaces it with a high-resolution 4-inch color touchscreen and a redesigned layout meant to make sampling, sequencing and arranging feel faster in daily use.

That matters because Blackbox 2 is not just a pocket-sized recorder with pads bolted on. 1010music lists it at $649 and says it is coming in July 2026, with 2x the power of the original Blackbox, a 3-hour battery and multichannel USB audio streaming. The original Blackbox launched in March 2019 as a portable sampler and groovebox, and 1010music has long described it as a compact sampling studio with intuitive touchscreen control. Blackbox 2 looks like the first major reset of that formula in seven years.

For drummers building loops, hybrid kits or click-ready live sets, the workflow changes are the real story. Blackbox 2 supports one-shot, loop, slicer, multisample and external instrument types, and the dealer portal says it can capture recordings up to 4 hours long, record through USB-C streaming audio and resample the master output internally without patching. It also adds automatic multisampling, which should make it easier to map sampled hits across the keyboard or a controller without building everything by hand.

The launch and arrangement tools point even more directly at beat construction. Blackbox 2 includes a new Step Sequencer, plus launch, scene, song, mixing and effects screens that put composition and performance in the same box. 1010music says users can finger drum one-shots, play multisampled instruments with an onscreen keyboard or MIDI controller, and launch multiple loops through Loop Groups with BPM sync. Long WAV playback from high-capacity microSD cards adds another layer of practicality for drummers running stems, percussion beds or backing textures on stage.

MusicRadar said the announcement came at Superbooth 2026 in Berlin, Germany, and noted that 1010music had reworked the interface around a larger touchscreen and new layout for a more elegant workflow. That is the key comparison with the original Blackbox: the old unit earned its reputation as a compact sampling studio, but Blackbox 2 appears aimed at making the same portable idea quicker, cleaner and more performance-ready for players who want to sketch beats, chop samples and build full sets without fighting the hardware.