Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsUnit broke after 24 hours - No mechanical buttons or knobs to troubleshoot.
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2020
It is worse to get a taste of pure excellence only to have it ripped away, as opposed to it not working from the beginning, and this was my disappointing experience with the unit.
Before you buy this unit, It's worth noting that I could not find any 3rd party forum, knowledgebase, or troubleshooting tips of other people with my experience on the internet, so I had 0 ability to compare and self diagnose/fix my issue. Usually, you can google a unit and find all sorts of online discussion in regards to issues or fixes, but not with the element 46. You will be left with only their basic website FAQ or having to contact customer support (....and wait).
It worked as advertised the day I opened it, and I was amazed by the quality after testing and felt very happy about my purchase,( despite going against my instinct to buy something without mechanical knobs or buttons.)
I made sure to power down phantom, power, and the computer before unplugging the cords. The unit remained stationary, nothing was dropped, bent, shorted, or damaged.
Despite perfectly normal circumstances, the next day I discovered the unit simply no longer turned on when I plugged it back in.
I tried every possible combination of unplugging the power, the thunderbolt cord, shutting down and restarting both our 2019 imac and 2020 16'' mbp to no avail, the unit simply no longer powers on with the supplied adapter. I'm perplexed as there are absolutely no buttons on the unit, so overall it makes me wonder how on earth you could "Incorrectly" power down or turn off the unit, when all you can physically do is unplug it.
On apogees website, there is only one troubleshooting tip for "My unit won't turn on" and guess what they recommend?
- "Please make sure you are not plugging into a "Mini Display Port" and are plugged into a true thunderbolt port."
That is it. As if I don't already know the difference between a thunderbolt port and a display port in the back of a monitor... There are no "resets" or diagnosing features in the event the unit just decides it won't power on.
Unlike others who might use a credit card, we saved up with a strict budget and did a lot of research before buying the unit, as we intended to use it for a live stream event.
Well, despite it working the day prior, we could not use it for our event and were left with -$900 down the drain, a broken unit, and a "still-pending" support ticket.
Unfortunately, we had to switch to our 4 yr old crappy $90 2 channel USB interface for our live stream event with sub-par audio quality, so It's only fair that I share my experience.
