So Numark kicked it all off with the Numark NV and those who went to BPM no doubt saw it and may have even had a dabble on it.

Native Instruments have been working on something similar for a while in what was the worst kept secret in the industry and have recently announced the Traktor Kontrol S8 (which wasn't at BPM...disappointingly!).

It's hard to not think that all high-end controllers over the next couple of years will have these screens. Having played on the Numark at BPM, there was one thing that really bummed me. The first thing I did was touch the screen...and it wasn't touch screen. In this day and age, everything is touch screen and to see a screen that is about the same size as my Samsung S4 smartphone...it was odd to not have that feature. No doubt that others will have touchscreen in the future, but it seems to have been a missed step at this point.

Besides the non-touchscreen, there are two things that are putting me off jumping on the bandwagon (for now, at least). Firstly, is looking at your laptop that much of a problem? I know that some DJ's don't like the laptop being there as it is seen as another barrier between you and your crowd, but I see it as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

The other thing - and this is a big thing - you still need the laptop! It's where your music will play from and on top of that, if you have many folders with many songs, you will eventually need a search function (which the controllers themselves don't offer). Granted, the Club DJ will only have three or four folders (and this will be the primary market for these controllers), so navigation is easy enough but for mobile folk who like using this sort of kit (I have the Kontrol S4 Mk II, for example), it's not there yet.

This is a very good starting off point and I can see a lot of people buying them, but for me, it's not quite there yet. There needs to be a touchscreen function, an internal hard drive to store music and a way to perform a search within the controller so that the laptop can stay in the bag.

The new generation is here, folks. What are your thoughts, and what would you like to see?