Elektron has spoken
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Exposing your lap area to warmer temperatures too long may harm your frutality
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I use the Syntakt for pad chords in nearly every song. The arp trick was just an idea, I haven’t needed it myself because I prefer my arps to be quite plucky anyway, so the note cutoff isn’t problematic for me. But it’s good to know that there’s a really easy workaround.
So can the Syntakt and that was my point earlier. It’s a question of which workflow compromise you’re most prepared to make (drums vs melody/harmony workarounds).
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Btw, on your YouTube channel I listened to the songs you made on Syntakt, they are nice, I was most interested in the melodies and pads. Nice work! 
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If you only have one elektron you will always be missing another Elektron.
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Unless you have a friend who has more. This is known as a hydrogen bond.
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Hey, I really appreciate it! The latest jam at around 3:12 and onwards is playing a pad chord using 3 voices/tracks (1, 2 and 6 to be specific). They’re all using slight variants on SY Swarm. As a side effect of using three separate tracks, you get to play with keeping them slightly different for added depth. It’s probably hard to hear it clearly but I’ve got the fundamental centered and then the two higher notes are panned to left and right, respectively, with more of the reverb and delay on those two notes.
And this other jam @ around 3:15 uses only two voices for the same thing, again SY Swarm (by far my favorite machine). Here it’s other things that create some movement, particularly detuning/wobbling. I think they’re sort of decent examples of what I mean with how you can absolutely use a Syntakt for more than hollow FM:y blip blop sounds.
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Stop I can only be so convinced to get both.
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Just pick one to start, have a blast with it, and either add the other one later, or sell the first and help fund the other one. There’s not too much lost on the second-hand market.
There is a lot of overlap in the capabilities of the different Digi boxes - certainly one can make make beautiful full tracks standalone with any of them - but they also play very nicely indeed with each other, and having so much similarity in form-factor and workflow makes it relatively easy to wrangle them together.
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I have the digitone which I love-it probably has the best sound of any synth I own. And I do not have/and have not tried the Syntakt. Though I do have the digitakt.
On the digitone, I create truly beautiful music soundscapes on the 4 tracks-mostly without percussion. I tend not to use synths to make drum sounds. If you can get your head around FM-which is relatively easy in FM terms on the DN (by limiting the options on moderators). But FM is tricky to work with-for a beginner (and also for the more experienced people) it is not obvious how slight changes make big sound changes-some which sound noisy/wrong/non-musical very quickly. But if it truly is your first synth, I think it may too confusing-not impossible but buy with the expectation of a steep-ish learning curve.
If you want an all-in-one groove box to sit on your lap, with 12 tracks to play with-especially one tracks for kick, one for the snare, one for Hi-hats etc. Then the Syntakt will no doubt build a groove. But it does seem slightly limited in synth melody duties. But probably fun-if Elektron put a few more synth machines on it then it will become a buy for me.
Think most things have already been pointed out. But here’s an additional view:
Digitone’s complexity next to FM itself is to squeeze a lot out of the 4 tracks and 8 voices. However once you get a feel for this, it’s not that big of a problem really. I personally don’t use it for grooves that have a lot percussion in them but I tend to program synth lines in a percussive way. The two kind of melt together on digitone which can give a very interesting flavor to groove design. It’s a matter of choice of course but I like to embrace the direction that an instruments points me towards, if that makes sense.
Syntakt is complex in a different way. Personally I’m not a big fan of most of its default, vanilla, sounds. So it takes work to take the machines to other places, further than their “intended” use. Often I use layering of multiple tracks to create sounds as well and specific routings through the fx block with careful chosen settings. And this often means working on several sequence lanes and several audio tracks at the same time with a lot of back and forth etc.
With digitone this feels more organic as I can use a single sound that is multiple completely different sounds simultaneously. Which also makes mixing a lot easier on the digitone in my experience. On the other hand, syntakt is way way way faster when it comes to creating sketches and grooves. It’s super fast. After that sketch phase comes the complexity. So syntakt offers a bit more instant gratification, which is great :).
Both digitone and syntakt are gifts that keep on giving.
And Digitakt as well off course.
Here two of my own examples, both 100% on one box, to offer some extra insight in possible sounds:
(This one is probably my most vanilla sounding syntakt groove but from what I read a gentler side of sound design was preferred in this topic 
)
And an uptempo track on digitone. I have more mellow ones as well but I thought this one showed the capabilities of digitone quite well:
As to what would be the best choice is very difficult as usual but if playing chord progressions and FM are something you gravitate towards, then it’s kind of a no brainer: Digitone.
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I agree that you need to work to push the Syntakt into more interesting sound territories, but on the other hand I find that to be quite easy and straightforward. I tend to use the FX block like you suggest, meaning dedicating it for a particular sound. This is also because I want to keep tracks separated in the mix. In other songs, I use it for simple sidechaining/pumping, but only to get the groove going - I then recreate that effect in the DAW after recording the stems to retain the separation of tracks.
I agree that the default sounds on the Syntakt are uninspiring. I very rarely reach for presets and and find the default kit on a new project to be a bit of a joke. It always me sad when clicking on a YouTube jam only to hear this default kit. 
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Digitone is just more interesting sound-wise
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That “DN only” track is impressive… Most impressive.
Not to say your other work is not 
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@DaveMech Thank you Dave! 
Syntakt track is beautiful, exactly the kind of techno I like, very melodic. Although I know that it is very complex to get that result (for a beginner).
The Digitone track is also great, I really like it because I love the FM sound (it can be harsh but pleasant at the same time, and it can be nicely “rounded”).
After listening to both examples, it is even more difficult for me to decide, but I understand that it takes time, effort and a lot of learning to get such a result. Maybe I’ll start with Digitone, just to start learning and doing anything from scratch (I’m aware it’s going to cost me my nerves) but I like experimenting with sound because it’s fun for me and even if it doesn’t sound good aka crap. If I make a few presets that I like and save them and use them in future projects, I will be more than satisfied. After all, I have to start from somewhere.
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I would grab digitone if you can find one around $500. If you don’t like it and they release an update, you can sell it for a profit.
I think in the long run, Digitone will offer something more flexible, unique and useful. In the beginning, with literally only one device, I’d say Syntakt would be the best choice. Syntakt has a lot of voices and a good variety of ‘machines’ that make it a killer standalone box. That said I don’t know anyone that has ever bought one Elektron and never added anything else to it so that is something to consider.
I’ve had DN for a couple of years now and it still surprises me, can’t wait to see what they add with 1.5.
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Good way to approach it :). And a lot of what you will learn on digitone will become in handy when you decide to add the syntakt. 
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This is what I did: found a mint Digitone for $515 with Elektron branded cover, box, unwrapped guide. It was practically new.
I’m also a huge fan of FM synthesis.
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Same boat. FM is what pushed me the DN direction, found a mint used for around there as well.
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