I actually have an older generation 880 Expanded version that I bought used (it has internal effects which are awesome) and for the most part, I love it. Only major drawbacks are having only four inputs (same as 840) which means you have to submix if your tracking with live drums, and you can only record 4 tracks at a time (this might matter to you or it might not). I think the 840EX has the new 250mb Jazz drive which I guess would be pretty cool. If you have some more questions e-mail me at sag@iamerica.net