ESI U22 XT

I bought this so I could use my PC as a recording studio. Out of the box, it worked well but when I downloaded the official drivers it became very flakey - every few minutes it would die and I'd have to unplug it and plug it in again to get it back. Deleting the drivers lost the ASIO capability, but at least it works reliably. The drivers referred to 4 inputs (1/2, 3/4) but, in fact, it has two inputs - there is another pair on the back, but they are accessed with a push button. Unfortunately, that's also on the back so it's quite awkward to switch over to using the rear inputs. Sound quality is really good - big step up over the PC's built in sound card.

Despite its excellent ASIO driver (v1.2) that allows for the usage at almost imperceptible ~3ms latency in a relatively complex projects, constant glitches in non-ASIO programs (music and video players, YouTube in browsers) and intermittent loss of connectivity made me return this otherwise great little device. Its footprint is perfect, main outs are loud and clear as is the headphone amp (much better than on my old Line6 UX2) driving my AKG K240, but knowing very well how long it can take for these companies to release driver updates that would fix such glaring issues (if they release them at all), I will have to look elsewhere for an upgrade.