Saw that, great review! Except the pads ARE velocity sensitive so #fakenews on that one 
“Stylistically, perhaps it lacks a bit of the retro charm of the originals, but that’s a fair trade-off”. …Huh? Retro charm. Have i missed something. The S2400 looks retro and is more stylistic.
That threw me off too. I was going to double check the specs after reading that.
“Retro charm” is obviously subjective. Based on what I think he’s referring to I do agree, stylistically the S2400 looks modern IMO - but again, subjective. To me “retro” style is plastic buttons and gray pads, encased in a dull-colored plastic with as minimal color as possible (Akai seemingly only wanted color on their logo, and EMU didn’t much care for color aside from red for record and sample). Based on that set of criteria for retro styling, the S2400 does not meet it, but everyone is going to have their own criteria for what makes something look retro.
The S2400 is more stylistic (still subjective), as are most modern counterparts to vintage hardware. A flat screen TV looks much better in a room than an old box with an antenna (to most)…but is that box TV retro? Or is the older, wooden-encased TV with a single hand dial retro? I guess that’s my point - retro is entirely too subjective AND associated with an ‘x’ timeframe, for any single opinion to really matter.
Hmmm. I think the point that the author made was very subjective. And being as it was meant to be an objective article ( i think) makes it a moot point that didnt need to be mentioned. Being old enough to actually live in the early 60’s and onward most of these ‘things’ you mention are not retro to me as i lived through them. So im guessing the article was written by someone much younger 
The only reason why anything is retro is because time has passed.
The SP1200 at the time looked pretty standard for a drum machine. Most drum machines and samplers back then looked like medical equipment lol