Best Samplers, Grooveboxes and Drum Machines of 2025: Our Top 5
4,3 / 5,0 | 
Best Samplers, Grooveboxes and Drum Machines of 2025 · Source: Elektron, Roland, AKAI Professional
With several spectacular new releases, 2025 was a great year for groove machines! We check out the best samplers, grooveboxes, and drum machines of the year.
As the year draws to a close, it’s time to look back: Which new drum machines and groove boxes impressed us the most in 2025? Let’s revisit the best samplers, drum machines, and groove boxes of the year!
Best Samplers, Grooveboxes and Drum Machines of 2024
Roland TR-1000: Roland’s Spectacular 180
After what felt like a rather quiet start to the year in terms of beatmaking gear, autumn saw a real flurry of highlights. When Roland dropped the TR-1000 in early October, many rubbed their eyes in amazement: Yes, it really is analog, at least partially! While some other manufacturers had long returned to incorporating analog circuitry into their machines, Roland was often criticized for insisting on digital ACB technology to emulate the accidental icons of its past. The TR-1000 (read our review here) marked a spectacular U-turn.
With so much at stake, Roland left nothing to chance. Behind closed doors, the manufacturer secretly worked on the TR-1000 over a period of four years, consulting with many renowned artists to make it as perfect as it could possibly be. The result is a seriously impressive hybrid drum machine that not only preserves the legacy of the past, but also offers artists more creative possibilities than almost any other instrument of its kind.
At its core is an analog section that precisely reproduces nearly all sounds of the TR-808 and TR-909. For additional sound shaping options, Roland threw in an analog multimode filter and overdrive. The analog heart gives the TR-1000 an extra helping of punch over the ACB emulations, which are admittedly also really good.
But it goes much further than that. In addition to the analog sounds, the TR-1000 also offers ACB, but in an expanded form with more extensive sound design capabilities. Added to this are FM sounds and a full-blown sampling engine with slicing, resampling, and all the trimmings. The sequencer is no slouch, either, offering pretty much everything you could wish for with sub-steps, probability, microtiming, effect locks, and motion recording.
While the TR-1000 was pretty much universally praised for its sound and capabilities, Roland got a lot of heat for the price. Unfortunately, the TR-1000 is beyond reach for many of us, myself included. But as a true flagship instrument developed over a long time with utmost attention to detail, I think it’s worth every penny. The TR-1000 will remain a benchmark instrument for many years to come, just like its famous predecessors.
The Roland TR-1000 is available at Thomann*.
AKAI MPC Live III: Meet the Next Generation of MPC
Just one day after the TR-1000, the next bombshell followed, this time from AKAI: the long-awaited successor to the MPC Live II is finally here! And anyone who had expected a gentle facelift was proven wrong: the new MPC Live III (read our review here) is on a whole new level in so many ways that it truly represents a generational leap—not just for the MPC Live, but for the MPC series as a whole.
With significantly more memory and an 8-core processor four times more powerful than the previous model, the MPC Live III leaves all other standalone MPCs in the dust. What’s even more important, however, are the many other innovations that not only make it much more expressive, but also open up completely new workflows.
Most importantly, the MPC Live III introduces the new three-dimensional MPCe pads. While they’re still every bit as playable and responsive as you’ve come to expect from an MPC, they offer polyphonic aftertouch and track the precise position of the finger even after playing a note. The possibilities are vast: The new pads not only allow for up to four samples or articulations on a single pad, but also let you expressively shape and control sounds and effects as you hold down a pad, similar to an MPE controller.
In addition, AKAI has added a row of buttons for TR-style step sequencing, seamlessly integrated into the MPC workflow. And because the developers were on such a roll, they also incorporated Force-style clip launching. No matter what style of music you produce or how you prefer to work, the AKAI MPC Live III covers pretty much everything you could expect from a modern performance groovebox. This makes it not only one of the best samplers of the year, but so much more.
The AKAI MPC Live III is available from Thomann*.
Elektron Tonverk: An Octatrack Successor? Yes and No!
No list of the best samplers of the year would be complete without the Elektron Tonverk. For years, fans had been speculating about a possible successor to the aging Octatrack. In September of this year, the wait was finally over. Although the Tonverk was designed as a new instrument altogether, rather than an Octatrack successor, it’s Elektron’s new flagship sampler, so it’s got big steps to fill
And the wait was definitely worth it. As a polyphonic performance sampler, Tonverk offers eight polyphonic stereo audio tracks, all of which can also be used as MIDI tracks. This means that it not only allows for a wide range of sampling workflows, but can also sequence your entire rig if needed. Like the Octatrack, the new Tonverk excels as a hub for DAWless performance setups.
In line with other current Elektron instruments such as the Digitakt II and Digitone II, Tonverk offers a choice of several “machines” for the sample tracks, allowing you to interact with samples in various ways. It can load multisamples with multiple keyboard zones and velocity layers, and even offers an automatic system for creating multisamples of your synths. The subtracks feature effectively turns a single track into eight, each with its own (monophonic) sample and sequencer. In November, Elektron added a granular Grainer machine, making the Tonverk even more versatile.
All in all, the Elektron Tonverk definitely deserves a spot on the list of the best samplers of 2025. You can get it at Thomann*.
Erica Synths Hexdrums: Hybrid Drum Machine with Hexinverter DNA
Erica Synths is also known for always having a drum machine surprise up its sleeve. After the manufacturer brought back the drum modules from Hexinverter Électronique’s acclaimed Mutant series over the course of several years, the logical next step was to turn them into an all-in-one drum machine. According to Erica Synths, Hexdrums combines “the range and flexibility of sounds by Hexinverter with the hands-on, no nonsense layout and aesthetics of Erica Synths”.
The Hexdrums offers ten sounds, eight of which are analog: two bass drums, an optimized Mutant Machine, snare drum, clap, rimshot, and hi-hat. The cymbals are the only sounds based on samples; 10 sets of crash and ride are available. A master compressor and drive effect derived from the Hexinverter Mutant Glue provide additional punch. There’s even a kick-controlled sidechain.
The sounds are paired with a powerful X0X-style sequencer with up to 64 steps per pattern, accent and microtiming per step, ratchets, rolls, and probability per step. Up to 256 patterns can be stored.
The Erica Synths Hexdrums is available from Thomann*.
Boom Chick: An Affordable Analog Drum Machine from Cre8audio and Pittsburgh Modular
Alongside the awesome Assembler mixer, sister companies Cre8audio and Pittsburgh Modular released Boom Chick this year, a fun-sized analog drum machine with an affordable price tag and plenty of creative possibilities.
Boom Chick offers five drum instruments, each with lots of tweaking opportunities: Kick, Snare, Hats, and two versatile drum voices called Drum 1 and Drum 2. With a combination of waveshaping, FM, and noise, the latter can produce a wide range of unique drum and percussion sounds. The sequencer is also surprisingly capable and offers features such as Step Shift, Step Roll, Chance, Humanize, and even a Euclidean pattern generator.
On the one hand, Boom Chick is the perfect companion to the East Beast and West Pest synths. On the other hand, it’s also great in a modular system, offering Eurorack-level individual outputs. You can even take it out of its case and install it directly in your Eurorack.
Boom Chick is available from Thomann*.
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3 responses to “Best Samplers, Grooveboxes and Drum Machines of 2025: Our Top 5”
Polyend Tracker Mini with the new firmware. All the above machines give you plenty of options, but I picked this one out for its ‘make an album with it’ featureset. It has at least the basics of what you need to make and render a tune to a decent standard. Trackers don’t suit everyone, but if you’ve ever been into Protracker or Octamed, these Polyend ones with the new firmware are like everything you’d ever have wanted in one tiny box. So much better than using a tracker on a computer.
Was the Behringer LM Drum to late for this list?
And the winner is.
The Akai MPC live 3!