
Beyond those things they're pretty much just keyboards: My initial impressions are that the only difference between dedicated editing controllers and normal keyboards is that 1) dedicated controllers have a jog wheel for accurately scrubbing forwards and backwards, and 2) dedicated controllers often have a specific layout and colour-coding or labelling of the keys.

My little keypad thingy arrived but I haven't had a chance to look at it.

I'm still looking into this, and started a thread some time ago:
