The principal controls on the panel are the three large Ring-Trackballs with the ball controlling hue and the ring contrast. Above each ball are three reset buttons, RGB, ALL and LEVEL. RGB resets the hue Trackball, Level resets the ring contrast and All resets, well, all of them. On the right hand side are 18 buttons for basic grading functions including saving, comparing and storing grades, moving between nodes and shots, and at the bottom the three simple Play, Reverse and Stop transport buttons.

Above the central Ring-Trackball are Log, Offset and Viewer. Log switches the trackballs into Log mode, Offset turns the right Ring-Trackball controller into an Offset control, the left Ring-Trackball into Color Temp and the Middle Ring-Trackball into Tint. The Viewer button simply pops you in and out of Fullscreen mode. Knobs run along the top of the panel with controls for Y Lift, Y Gamma, Y Gain, Contrast, Pivot, Mid-Tone Detail, Color Boost, Shadows, Highlights, Saturation, Hue and Luma Mix, running left to right. These knobs control the sliders under the Color Wheel panel in Resolve where they are split over two pages.

The only real drawback others have raised is the lack of assignable buttons on the Micro, but bearing in mind it is designed to plug and play with any DaVinci Resolve system from version 12.5 up and only works with Resolve, I personally don’t see this as a problem. What you get with the Micro Panel is a solid, well-designed tool that cannot fail, after a little practice, to improve your grading and speed up your workflow. After getting the hang of the layout grading became much more fluid and I spent more time thinking about the actual grade than about fiddling with the mouse and struggling to make the changes I wanted, it was also a noticeable help with my RSI and I felt less sore after a day’s work than I expected. The extra micro control it will give you over your grades alone is worth the price but having all the basic functions at your fingertips also makes grading fast and fun.

RRP: $860