Pioneer DJ merges producer and DJ workflows together with the DJS-1000, essentially a standalone sampler and sequencer that plays nice with everything else.
There's nothing quite like a Korg Kaoss pad, apart from an updated one. Ray embeds a Korg Kaoss Pad KP3+ in his setup, plays live, and reports back.
The Akai Pro MPX8 sample player is sort of a baby MPC that grabs sounds from an SD card. We had a look and wonder where it fits in this age.
Serato DJ 1.9.3 is in public beta. This release sees the end of the Sp-6 sample player and replaces it with plain old Sampler, but adds two more slots.
While DJs play music, and producers make music, there's a crossover area in the middle for performance. James Pullen aka Mistabishi is an established artist who uses Electribes for his sets. Watch him cradle the new Korg Electribe for a full demo from BPM 2014.