Maschine Vapor Gray - How to see the label buttons better?

Thanks for the suggestion but I always have the power supply connected. It's just a function of the combination of the labels on the pads on each M color edition. On the vapor gray version (whose case I love aesthetically otherwise) the letters are translucent which looks great when they are backlit but makes them almost invisible in daytime use. (See photo.) On the other hand it does look great at night!

Can other owners take pix of theirs in other color combos for comparison? I know some for example have dark opaque printing like the standard version, don't they?

BTW yes, I understand that every product design has its own positives and negatives, just trying to see if there are any workarounds in this case. Still love my M+ anyway and I guess it just makes me have to work harder to learn the button text by memory. 😉

Yep. That's the one. I know, it looks VERY different depending on the ambient room light and different pad brightnesses. That's the graphic that made me choose the color but it doesn't really look like that much of the time because the button labels are translucent not opaquely printed as it appears.

Unless I got a weird batch or something? Aren't you NI staff? Does mine in the photo look wrong compared to other ones you've seen or you've never seen what it really looks like in an actual photo instead of a staged graphic?

And here, it looks best switched on when it's in a dimly lit room at night. Button labels clearly visible and illuminated pad labels clearly visible. Under these circumstances only non-illuminated pad labels are illegible. (Much as they are also in the first photo above.)

Would love to see comparable photos of the other colored models in similar day/night back-lit/front-lit scenarios out of curiosity.

So I'm afraid you never answered my underlying question which was whether there was some way to improve the visibility on the vapor gray pad labels. If not, is there a way to order a replacement set of pads that has the black labeling (like the more common black Maschine/MK3 schemes) so I can actually see it more easily? And if so, how hard is it to swap them out? Would it invalidate my warranty?

Not sure why you are not reading my questions thoroughly so let me try AGAIN. I've never been suggesting it's defective, I've been asking two things:

1. Is there a hot-key or other way to force the pad/button backlighting to be on even if the pads are not populated with sounds in a particular kit?
2. Can I buy a replacement set of pads pads where they have the dark printing on the drum pads (like the dark colored M/M+ editions) instead of the knock-out transparent labels as they do in the vapor gray scheme?

This is so helpful D-One! I really appreciate your participation on this because I felt like I was getting nowhere before.

I hope NI pays attention to this sort of discussion and comparison because it should really inform new product development especially color choices for pads and screen printing, and when they make a mistake like the translucent buttons with knockout text it would be nice if they offered users a replacement set with the black printing as an alternative but if replacing them would void the warranty then I guess there's no point. I have actually been thinking of printing my own in black text on clear labels that I can stick on top of the pads but haven't done it yet. In fact if I put the text on the lower right of the pads then it wouldn't even interfere with the existing knockout text when it's visible In the right light conditions.

I find that especially surprising because aesthetics, font choices (esp. anti-aliasing) and color groups/gradients etc were clearly so well considered in the product development cycle. That was one of the biggest factors when I switched from the Akai MPC One to NI Maschine/M+. (Except for some of the nice GUIs for plugins like Hype, the interface designer in me couldn't stand the DOS text-mode feel of the MPC hardware and the software looks like old Borland modules jammed to the main interface until it's completely overwhelming.) Overall Maschine feels like designers and UI/UX specialists were involved alongside the engineers in the creation of the whole visual and technical language of the product line. Akai products feel to me like they were built by programmers without any importance given to design or usability.