should be a solid choice if the hooking up the ipad is what he needs. personally, even if i had an ipad, i would buy something else, since i dont think using midi keyboards on ipad is what i would want to do. i have actually looked for a midi keyboard for like 2 weeks pretty intensely and narrowed it down to novation impulse(and will get it after i get a camera lens sold), i also looked akai carefully and pretty much all the midi keyboards in the price range and akai would be my second choice(more expensive non ipad version tho). akai is pretty famous for its drum pads and well respected on their midi controllers. dunno about the quality of the keys, but drum pads im sure are really good and i doubt that the keys are bad either and most likely are best you find for ipad keyboards on the price range. i suggest you look at the price range you are considering and look some reviews on youtube and google that vs those others.