A comparison:
Full-Size Congo & Congo Jr.
3072 Channels / 6144 Outputs
Congo Kid
256 Channels / 1024 Outputs
Eos
10,000 Channels / 16,000 Outputs
Ion
10,000 Channels/ 3072 Outputs
Element
250 or 500 Channels / 1024 Outputs
Kid is effectively to Congo/Congo Jr. what
Element is to
Ion/
Eos.
Re: detachable wings, while it is nice to be able to configure your workspace however you want, there are plenty of people who don't want to configure their workspaces. They want to show up and have as few distractions as is possible, and for some people (myself being one of them), the thought that I
can move things around, makes me more likely to spend my time thinking about
how I can move things around. Next thing I know I'm dragging another table up from the basement and rearranging furniture in the control room, seeking "the perfect workspace".
A lot of us here at CB are nerds -- when
can, we
will, but there are many users, especially at schools, churches, and small community theatres (essentially the target market for this
console) that just dock their wings and never think twice about it.
But give me a moment to contradict myself; I leave our master playback
wing docked because the other options for our particular workspace don't make an undocked
wing very favorable (something I've learned only after moving it around a bunch),
but my left-handed cohort likes to be able to move the
wing from one side of the main
console to the other side to make it a little more ergonomic. I also like being able to undock the master playback
wing and use it with a client laptop elsewhere in the
theatre.
To my amazement though, I can't name a single other Congo user that users their master playback
wing with a client PC -- I know, I've asked around.
Excluding myself and our left-handed
programmer, there's not a single person who steps into our control room and cares about the
wing being attached to the main
console or not.