Small-ish but noy tiny Synth

Vintage65

ASM Hydrasynth, 3 or 4 octaves.

monquixote

Just to echo what other people have said.

If you want to get a synthesiser don't look at the specs look at what is on the front panel.

Something like a Reface CS, or a Monologue or a Minibrute it's all there on the front panel on easy to understand knobs

On a lot of synths like the MC-101 you have an insanely powerful synth that you have to program through menu diving on a tiny LCD screen so it's basically a much less powerful and harder to program VST. 

Also don't worry about keys. You are often better just sequencing things. For example the Roland S-1 is really powerful and tweaky for something tiny and cheap and can easily be combined with a midi controller. I actually put my modules on top of my electric piano sometimes. 

Also if you want some online research material then check out Bad Gear. It's by far my fav synth review channel. He basically gives gear a kicking for all the reasons people complain about it on the internet and then shows that if you are any good you can still make a great track with it:

Here is the Minilogue for example:

stickyfiddle

Ok so I spent a good 40 mins in the Roland shop on Denmark St yesterday. Great demo of all the relevant shit from their synth guy so I now have a much better understanding of what’s out there and the pros/cons of each thing. The Jupiter XM is ace, though maybe more than I wanna spend. And the little modular stuff like the JU-06A actually looks brilliant, so maybe something like that with an outboard MIDI keyboard might be a good starting point 


But then I saw the War on Drugs in the evening so all bets are off…