Unfortunately, in moderate sunlight while the channel scribble strips are clearly visible, the LEDs and touch screen wash out. The touch screen's no so bad, actually, but the LEDs all but disappear, even at full brightness. I kind of need them to mix.
The channel scribble strips, additionally, are only 5 characters. You'd think that wouldn't be such a big thing, but having 5 characters instead of 6 like I had on that other digi desk was actually kind of a pain. Try indicating "Second Band Stage Right Guitar SM57" in 5 characters. 2SRG7? G2>57? One more character lets you do "GT2>57" which is, like, way better. Imagine what I could do with seven character!
Additionally, while moving an input fader, the scribble strip display changes to the position of that fader in decibels. That's all well and good, but then I can't see what fader I'm controlling after all. This was annoying more than once... I'd rather just not have it at all. The fader is right there, I can see right where it is... or should be. I've also noticed that if I take a row of faders and line them all up perfectly so they think they're at 0dB, they don't line up perfectly on the console. They're always plus or minus several dB... so it's hard to quickly throw faders where they need to go, which means a lot of mixing with my eyes, which is never good.
While the physical interface for the console is very polished and usable, and overall one of the best I've seen (and I'd say the best in this price range), the interface behind the touch screen is not as polished. It could be a lot more information dense, it could be a little shallower (I shouldn't have to dick around two layers deep on the touch screen so much), and it could be higher contrast. For instance, here are shots of a couple of channel screens, I think you'll see what I mean:
There's a lot of wasted space, some controls (especially the graphs on the overall channel screen) are very hard to interpret quickly, and some graphs (the EQ!) are oddly squished so they're an abnormal aspect ratio, which makes it very difficult to quickly get an idea of exactly how big a cut or a boost I'm making. For the compressor especially, engaging the "soft knee" only appears to change the ratio and threshold on the screen, it should round off the knee... in general the whole screen interface feels a little rough and could definitely use a graphic designer. It's usable, but there's too much of a disconnect between what my eye is seeing and my ear is hearing.
Back to the subject of sound quality, while the mixer sounds great during normal operation, when it clips it REALLY clips. Like, clipping a Mackie mixer bad. You can hear it, but unfortunately it's hard to see since the clip indicators on the channels only stay on a second or so, and if you're a bank away there's a clip indicator per bank so you should know where to go, but it only stays on for a second as well, so by the time you've heard it and reacted you can't see it anymore. Get to the right bank and then you have to wait, watch the board, and hope it happens again (or that you were able to identify the channel by ear). I was unable to find any menu option to extend this.
Additionally, while I found it a little easy to clip the front end, I also managed to clip some of the internal processing. That just shouldn't be... once I get the signal in, I should be able to beat it up however I please as long as I bring it back down so I don't clip my analog output on its way out of the desk. I found myself having to worry a bunch about gain-staging internally... on a digital console! That was annoying, especially because the clip indicators didn't stay on long enough for me to figure out what was clipping. I managed to catch a compressor doing it once, or else I never would have looked for it.
Finally, the internal effects are a little lackluster. They do the job, and they offer reasonable amounts of control, but I spent a lot of time looking for reverbs that didn't sound like, y'know, a ton of generic reverb. It was very hard to find a 'verb that complimented vocals especially, and while there were tons of helpful presets for brass and percussion and doubling and flanging, there were only one or two (if that many) for vocals. I'm not sure I ever found one that really worked the way I wanted it to, and I'm not sure I can really describe what it was doing that I didn't like, but I know I can do better and the console wasn't letting me.