Alesis Nitro Max review | The best first electronic kit?

The Alesis Nitro Max is the kit most people mean when they ask “what is the cheapest electronic drum kit that is actually any good?” It replaced the Nitro Mesh in 2023, kept the price, and fixed most of what the old kit was criticised for. At around £330 or $400 with the pedal in the box, it is the entry point to electronic drumming, and it is a better one than the entry point used to be.

This is the full review. If your question is really “this or the Roland?”, the TD-07KV vs Nitro Max head-to-head answers it in a table.

Who is the Alesis Nitro Max for?

Beginners, and anyone buying for one. A child starting lessons, an adult who wants to find out whether drumming sticks before spending serious money, a second kit for a flat where an acoustic kit is out of the question. It is also a fair choice for a drummer who already owns a real kit and wants something quiet to run rudiments on at midnight.

It is not for gigging, and it is not the kit for someone who already knows they are in this for years. That drummer should read the Roland section below and then the head-to-head.

What is in the box

• Snare: 10-inch dual-zone mesh pad (head and rim)
• Toms: three 8-inch mesh pads, single-zone
• Kick: a kick tower pad with a real bass drum pedal included
• Cymbals: three 10-inch pads, the crash with choke, plus a hi-hat controller pedal
• Rack: a four-post steel rack, with the cable loom and the module
• Module: the Nitro Max module, with a headphone out, aux in and USB

The two things to notice are the snare and the pedal. A 10-inch snare pad is bigger than the one on Roland’s TD-07KV, and it is the pad you hit most, so that matters every day. And the pedal being in the box is the difference between a price on a shelf and a price you can play: Roland’s kit at this level ships without one.

All the drum pads are mesh, and mesh at this money is the whole story. The old rubber pads on cheap kits were loud, hard on the wrists and taught people to hit the wrong way. Mesh is quiet, has real rebound, and can be tightened to taste. Tuning a mesh head is about feel rather than pitch, so a tuner will not read it — if you also own an acoustic kit, our free drum tuner covers that side.

What the module can do

The Nitro Max module is where Alesis put its effort. There are 32 preset kits and more than 440 sounds, and a chunk of them come from BFD, the sample library people pay real money for in a DAW. They are a step up from the old Nitro’s sounds, especially the acoustic kits, and they respond reasonably to how hard you hit.

What else is in there:

• Bluetooth audio, so you play along to your phone through the module and hear the kit and the song in the same headphones.
• USB MIDI, which is how you connect it to a laptop and trigger better drum sounds from software. That is the upgrade path for the sounds if you outgrow the built-in ones, and it costs nothing but a cable.
• A metronome and a set of play-along tracks. The metronome is basic; if you want a click that climbs and drops out on you, our tempo trainer runs in a browser next to the kit.
• Trial subscriptions to online lessons apps come in the box. They are worth using while they last; our free beginner course does not run out.

What it does not do: USB audio. To record the kit’s own sounds into a computer you go out of the headphone jack into an interface, or use MIDI and a software kit. The Roland does audio over the one USB cable, and that is one of the things you pay extra for.

How it feels to play

Good, for the money, with two honest caveats.

The mesh heads rebound properly and the snare triggers cleanly across the head. Rim shots on the snare work because it is dual-zone. The toms are single-zone, so there are no tom rim sounds, which you will not miss as a beginner and will notice in year two.

The first caveat is dynamics. Play a ghost note and you get a quieter snare hit; play one on a Roland and you get a ghost note. The gap between soft and loud is narrower here, and that is the thing that separates the kits at this price from the kits at twice it. Practising the accents and dynamics lesson on this kit is possible, just less rewarding than on a real snare.

The second is the hi-hat. It is a pad on the rack and a controller pedal on the floor, not a pad on a hi-hat stand. Open, closed and a half-open in between all work, but the foot does not feel like a hi-hat, and that is true of every kit under about £1,000. The cymbals are fine: the crash chokes, the ride is a single big pad without a separate bell sound.

The rack is the last thing. It is steel and it holds the kit up, but it flexes more than Roland’s, and if you hit hard the cymbal arms move. Tighten every clamp, put it on a rug, and it is fine.

What goes wrong

Nothing that stops the kit working. The things owners complain about are the ones above: the flexy rack, a hi-hat that is a pedal, and single-zone toms. Cable looms on cheap kits are proprietary, so keep yours tidy; a replacement is not expensive but not something a local shop has on the shelf either.

Resale is modest. There are a great many of these in the world, and a used Nitro fetches a fraction of what a used Roland does. If you know this kit is a stepping stone, that is a real cost, and it is the argument for the Roland in the head-to-head.

Nitro Max or Roland TD-07KV?

Short version: the Roland is the better instrument and the Alesis is the better deal. The Roland’s pads and sensing make ghost notes and rolls speak, its coach functions are the best on any e-kit, it records over USB, and it holds its value. It also costs roughly twice as much once you add the pedal it does not come with.

If the budget is firm and under about £400 or $450, or the kit is for a child who may not stick with it, the Nitro Max is the right call and the money saved goes on lessons. If you are an adult who is fairly sure, the Roland is the kit you keep. The full comparison puts the two side by side, row by row; our Roland TD-07KV guide goes deeper on that kit, and the electronic drum kit buying guide covers the rest of the ladder.

Where to buy the Alesis Nitro Max

It is stocked everywhere that sells electronic kits, which is the other advantage of buying the most popular kit in its class. The right shop depends on where you are: Guitar Center in the Americas, Gear4music in the UK, or Thomann for Europe and the rest of the world. Buying used is possible but check the module and every pad triggers on video first; our guide to buying used drums online has the checklist.

Final thoughts

The Nitro Max is the kit that made the cheap end of electronic drumming respectable. All-mesh pads, a decent module, Bluetooth, and the pedal in the box, for the price of a good cymbal. Its limits are real, and they are the limits of the price, not of the design: dynamics, a hi-hat that is a pedal, a rack that flexes.

Four out of five, and the missing star is the one the Roland costs twice as much to buy. For a first kit, or a quiet second one, this is where to start.