In my opinion, the PMA-5 is a nice sound module and a great sketch pad tool. But you cannot flat out grab a bunch of notes and start throwing down a nice groove. Yes, you can do some pretty incredible things one note at a time with the unit. Enter chords and I do mean entering is a real chore with the PMA-5. Which is why I prefer, hands down, no contest the Yamaha QY-70. In my estimation the PMA-5 can't touch the features of the QY-70. Don't get me wrong the PMA-5 still has a place in my portable studio. The drawbacks for me with the PMA-5 are as follows. You cannot edit the sounds when you are out of GS mode. With the QY-70 I can edit for days right in the unit with no external software or devices. The QY-70 has 3 effects processors. One of which has 40, count them, 40 effects alone!!! All effects parameters are programmable with sys-ex. You can edit a lot of the parameters right on screen but there additional ones as well. Which by the way the QY-70 Allows you to enter sysex commands right from within the unit. So you could pretty much control parameters in another unit, say, like a PMA-5 perhaps. Let's not forget 16 tracks, plus another 8 with 8 bars available for these 8. So on and so on. To sum up my response, NO CONTEST!!! The QY-70 had some years to create a tool that is very flexible. My hat goes off to Roland for setting a standard with the portable norton like units. I am still very fond of my PMA-5. I should point out, when I first seen the QY-70, I thought it looked very cheesy!!! The only reason I bought the QY-70 was to play chords on the PMA-5. Needless to say I've since eaten those cheesy words and I am now a proud owner of two QY-70's and my PMA-5 keeps the paces with the other two. I don't even compose in my studio any more.