If you were to ask a hundred audio, A/V, or photography professionals for the one key ‘thing’ you can do to get better they will all invariably give the same piece of advice: optimize your efficiency and editing setup. The faster you are, the more accurate you are… the better you are. This is why all actual professionals in ‘the industry’ use customized hardware to do just that. Unless you have 20K (or more) burning a hole in your pocket the average pro-sumer can’t go that route to get better. This is why over the years less expensive devices have cropped up to offer 70’ish percent of what the big boys use for less than 1% of the cost. The latest entry into this growing marketplace is TourBox and their latest variant is the TourBox 2020… aka TourBox 2.0.
Unlike any competitor we can think of TourBox has taken a radically different approach to editing hardware and as form follows function it looks nothing like say a BlackMagic Speed Editor, or Contour Design Shuttle Pro v2. Instead TourBox started with a blank slate and asked one simple question: what would make things easier for the first-time user? From that question multiple more followed and the end result was a kickstarter campaign in late 2018 for the first generation TourBox. As the successor, the TourBox 2020 offers a bit more refinement while still not radically departing from the basic design of the original… albeit at a much great price tag of $169 (USD) vs. the kickstarter’s $90.
In this review we are going to take a deep dive into what the TourBox 2020 is, how it works in theory and how it works in the real-world. To this end we will not only be talking the talk, but actually walking the walk and using it as our sole editing enhancement device in DaVinci Resolve, in Adobe PhotoShop CC, Adobe LightRoom, and SolidWorks… which should give any prosumer an eye-twitch as it did us. We have been using various editing tools for years and none look or act like this new take on things. When we are done, and without coloring others with our opinion, we will then hand it off to a complete and utter novice who has never use any such device in those four programs. When the dust settles, we will give our personal opinions on who this device is right for… and who might be better served elsewhere.
