Sounds like you were thorough in your deliberations and honest in your appraisal.
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There’s no shame!
Grooveboxes are like instruments. It’s a vibe thing sometimes, a workflow thing, a sound thing. It has to mesh and gel
Sometimes people can hear a guitar and think, “damn that’s cool”, and then they try to learn to play, and nothing about it clicks. Their hands fumble, the strings don’t make sense, etc… That’s ok. They can still like guitar music. Sometimes they’ll pick up a different instrument and everything just clicks!
That’s how it is with grooveboxes IMHO
Sometimes one person’s groovebox trash is anothers groovebox treasure. What makes the OP1 unique and fun for Jimmy makes it insufferable for Susan.
you’ll find a groovebox that’l fit you and then you won’t be able to put it down 
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You did the right thing. If you don’t get on well with it, get rid of it.
For me, I’m really not feeling the love for the OP-Z I got awhile back. I am persisting though. For now 
I couldn’t have said it better myself!
Honestly I think a lot of it has to do with whether you enjoy learning the instrument. I had a Maschine, which is a pretty solid device that did literally everything you could possibly want to do with NI stuff. I just hated learning it. It never felt natural and the thought of spending hundreds of hours mastering it was daunting.
Same thing with the Digitone–I learned it fairly quickly and enjoyed its sound but something just never felt right. I didn’t like having to press a separate button to see keys, I didn’t like the yellow screen, and I didn’t like this weird “now what?” feeling I was left with every time I used it.
In both cases I felt this weird guilt like it was my fault for not wanting to learn this device because each one did do everything I wanted it to do, did it well, and seemed generally well-received. I have no regret whatsoever selling/trading them because I didn’t end up sinking more hours trying to master a device I wasn’t enthusiastic about.
On the other hand, lots of people seriously hate the OP-Z, and I totally understand why… but it’s perfect for me personally. I’ve spent hundreds if not thousands of hours mastering my OP-Z and I’ve loved every single second of it. The whole thing feels cohesive, for my purposes its limitations feel more like guardrails than pitfalls, and it complements my other gear nicely. For me, speed and design are way more important than flexibility and versatility.
I guess that’s a lot to say: @agraham, I think you made the right choice, and I hope you’re able to explore more options and pinpoint what you’re looking for and what works best for you.
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TE’s primary weak point lies in their DSP techniques for synths, along with MIDI clock stability. Their synthesizers don’t sound as good as the digital offerings from Elektron, Nord or Roland. The only things that stand out are the CWO effect and the Microtonic, which were developed by a third party. TE could benefit from programmers with a keen ear. Perhaps they are headed in a good direction though since the Terminal effect sounds pretty good but we still need some synths with snappy envelopes, decent drum synthesis and quality filters for making acid type stuff. It would be great if their synths could be pushed in really interesting ways like a Monomachine. I’m not buying anymore TE music machines until they improve in this area lol
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