I’m a Terrible Musician but I Love Playing This MIDI Keyboard, and It’s $20 Off for Prime Day

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Credit: Credit: Art by Zain Awais / Product image courtesy of Amazon

Prime Day 2025 is here from Tuesday, July 8 to Friday, July 11, and Lifehacker is sharing the best sales based on product reviews, comparisons, and price-tracking tools. 

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When I'm not writing about all the coolest tech items and awesome gear on sale for Prime Day, I'm a musician—a terrible musician, but a musician nonetheless. And the Akai Professional MPK Mini MK3 MIDI keyboard is my go-to, must-have gear for making bad music.

It's the choice of many bad musician, because it's fairly inexpensive, and because this MIDI keyboard and Garage Band or FL Studios are all you need to fuel some bad music production and terrible beat-making of your own. Throw in a cheap USB microphone and you too can record diss tracks aimed at your then-10-year-old son and drawn from your lengthy Mario Kart rivalry.

Bad musicians used to have to rent whole studios to record terrible music, but no more: The Akai Pro only costs $83.99 ($79.79 for the red one, for some reason) right now. Amazon's users have rated it 4.6 stars out of 5, and there are over 28,000 reviews. That's a lot of bad musicians!*

Seriously though folks, it's a great product that I mess around with just about every day: simple to use, with 25 velocity-sensing keys, drum pads, programmable dials for virtual synthesizer control, and way more. It's everything you need for basic computer music recording.

*Akai Professional MPK Mini MK3 midi keyboards can also be used to make good music. Or so I have been told.

Looking for something else? Retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, and Home Depot have Prime Day competition sales that are especially useful if you don’t have Amazon Prime.

Walmart’s Prime Day competition sale begins at midnight on July 8 and will include deals up to 50% off. It’s an especially good option if you have Walmart+. 

Best Buy’s Prime Day competition sale, “Black Friday in July,” runs through Sunday, July 13 and has some of the best tech sales online. It’s an especially good option if you’re a My Best Buy “Plus” or “Total” member.

Home Depot extended its 4th of July sale through at least July 9, competing with some amazing deals of its own. It’s an especially good option if you’re looking for power tools, appliances, or outdoor equipment.