microTERA

First of all, for the $10 that the magazine (Keys, or Music Tech) costs it's hard to complain about anything.

This is a limited synth: I believe the developer described it as something like "the left pinkie of Tera". It has only one sound generation mode, which is wave shaping. This makes it a bit of a one trick pony, but it's a cool trick (and it's a cheap trick :-) so that's fine.

The sounds are interesting. I've been able to make some bass sounds that were quite usable.

The problem is that wave shaping is rather un-intuitive. You have 3 sine wave oscillators, and some "spectrum" knobs, and other stuff you don't see on your daily VA. There is no good documentation, so I felt like groping around in the dark: I couldn't give much direction to my experimentation. I have no idea what wave shaping does, and how twisting one know or another will influence the sound. I can make different sounds, but it's hard to realize a sound you're looking for. Everything's more or less an accident.

But hey, you get a rather unique instrument (unless you already own Tera) that makes some cool noises for almost nothing. Who can really complain?