Teenage Engineering TP-7!
Does this make any sense?
Teenage Engineering has officially announced its new portable field recorder on Superbooth 2023 called TP-7! With the recent addition of the CM-15 microphone and last year’s TX-6 & OP-1 field, the “field series” is complete, and we can have a completely portable & battery-powered music studio.
Design & Features
As expected, the TP-7 looks stunning. A tiny tape-style recorder that fits perfectly in your hand while its controls are intuitively placed so that you can fully operate it with one hand. It has three big Record-Play-Stop buttons on the bottom but the most eye-catching thing is the motorized tape reel that spins as you record or play sounds. The tape reel can also be used for scrubbing through the recordings or even to pause a recording by tapping and holding it for as long you want it not to record. it also provides some haptic feedback whenever you touch it so you know what’s going on. On the side, you’ll notice a big rocker that can be used to fast forward or rewind by pressing, and on the other side, there is the memo button that automatically turns on the device and starts recording so you can immediately record any given sound.
It has a 7-hour rechargeable via USB-C battery, an internal microphone, Bluetooth for wireless connectivity, and 128Gb internal storage which is more than enough for most users.
Who is this for?
As Teenage Engineering claims on its website, they wanted to provide zero friction and remove steps from thought to action. The TP-7 is designed to enable you to be immediate and fast when you want to record something. You just take it out press a button and you’re done. They compare that to the process of taking out your phone, unlocking it, finding the recording app, and then tapping to record. OK, yes, it’s a bit faster with the TP-7, but if we want to be honest, recording on your phone is already extremely easy and the microphones on most high-end smartphones are more than decent and get the job done. Plus, you always carry your phone while you’ll have to be very deliberate to carry a portable recorder of any kind.
TP-7 is marketed for interviews, podcasts, voice memos, and field recordings, and with its 7-hour battery life and high-quality audio recording seems like a great device for all of the above. A very cool feature of the TP-7 is the auto transcription that you can do using the TP-7 app via Bluetooth or USB. You simply open the app and it turns audio into text which is extremely handy for interviews and podcasts. For now, it only supports English but Teenage Engineering claims that more languages will be added over time!
It also has a DJ mode where you can use the TP-7 (or two of them) as a turntable and mix tracks using the TX-6 as a mixer making the tiniest DJ setup even if that’s your thing.
Inputs & Outputs
On the TP-7, there is a main-out port on the bottom and they also include the 6.35mm to 3.5mm jack adapter for it. It also has an internal speaker to hear your recording without the need for headphones & and an internal mic as we already mentioned. Although the cool thing is that it has three stereo two-way mini jack ports on the top. Those can be inputs or outputs for connecting external gear, microphones, headphones, or monitors. Using the USB-C, the TP-7 can be turned into a multi-channel audio interface while the USB-C port can also transfer MIDI, Data, and charge the device. Combining it with the TX-6, you can record up to 6 stereo tracks (12-channel mode).
If you are thinking of getting the TP-7 as a studio recorder, there is some overlapping with the TX-6 and although the TX-6 cannot record internally, you can plug a USB hard disk or flash drive and record in there. But since Teenage Engineering is building an ecosystem of portable devices, TX-6 & TP-7 are a perfect match to multi-track your instruments. Oh, and by the way, just like on the TX-6 the mini-ports on the TP-7 won’t fit your regular mini-jack cables and you’ll have to find some very slim ones or just buy the ones TE is selling (pretty convenient, isn’t it?).
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The Ecosystem
Just like Apple, Teenage Engineering is aiming to build an ecosystem of devices that play well together and each one covers a specific need perfectly. No one can argue that TE is building amazing devices and the fact that they manage to also create such small and portable devices is mindblowing. The OP-1 field alongside the TX-6, CM-15, and TP-7 makes up an amazing mobile music studio that you can fit in a small handbag and take it everywhere with you. The connectivity between those devices is amazing and hustle-free so it helps you make things faster, easier, and just focus on creating. And that’s a vision I fully support.
Now that TE has completed its utility series with a mixer, a microphone, a monitor, and a recorder, I think it’s time they start making more instruments to support their portable future vision. I was really hoping that we would see a new OP-Z field this year but that didn’t happen. And I’m not sure that it will ever happen to be honest. In any case, I would love for Teenage Engineering to focus on making musical instruments like the OP-1 which will be more focused, just like the 3 tiny field devices. Although since the OP-1 does everything (synth, drum machine, sampler, sequencer, effects, DAW), there would also be some overlapping there.
The Price
After the release of the OP-1 field and the TX-6 last year, we all realized that the very high prices of the Teenage Engineering devices are here to stay. The TP-7 costs 1.499€ and the CM-15 1.199€ (with an optional 119€ mini tripod stand). While the TX-6 comes at 1.199€ and the OP-1 field 1.999€. To be honest, the OP-1 field’s price now seems a lot more tempting & reasonable if you consider how much the other three devices cost.
Tobias von Hofsten who is the head of TE, recently stated that he doesn’t want to limit the company’s vision because of the high costs (and then prices) a device requires to be designed, engineered, and produced. So even though, they all acknowledge that their devices cost a lot, they stand by them and don’t really try to explain why. They do what they love to do, exactly like they want to, and they then sell their products at a price that seems fair to them. No one is forced to buy, or needs a TE instrument for his survival, so they can do whatever they want to do.
The only thing that bugs me about the prices is that, because they actually make amazing instruments, I would love for them to be more accessible to more people. But they’re a boutique company that needs to survive by making a profit and that’s completely understandable.
Conclusion
The TP-7 is a beautiful & glorified portable recorder. It’s ergonomically perfect and will surely get the job done. If you do interviews, podcasts, or you love creating field recordings it’s probably going to be a great little device for you. On the other hand, if you are a musician like me and would love the idea of having a portable recorder to record your synth jams and occasionally grab some field recordings, the TP-7 seems like an overkill. Personally, I would much prefer to have the TX-6 & CM-15 in the studio and just use a cheaper recorder if I wanted to record my music without my laptop.
But, as always, if you want the very best, the most sexy-looking devices, and you can afford them, go for it!
