The Sonicake Pocket Master was one of those pedals (well, FX unit maybe?) in 2025. The kind that quietly landed, didn’t look like much, but then completely changed the guitar landscape. It was one of the first genuinely affordable ways for everyday players to dip their toes into Neural Amp Modelling on the go, and once people realised what it could do, it absolutely took off. Small, unassuming, and way more capable than it had any right to be.
The Smart Box is very much the next step in that journey. If the Pocket Master proved the concept, the Smart Box feels like Sonicake taking that idea seriously and asking, “Right… how do we actually make this usable outside the bedroom?”
The most obvious upgrade hits you straight away: footswitches. Two of them, no less. This might sound like a small thing, but it absolutely isn’t. The Pocket Master relied on those little rubber buttons, which were fine for desk use but always felt like it prohibited live use. The Smart Box fixes that in one move. Suddenly, this feels like something you could actually put on the floor without fear.
It’s hard not to draw comparisons with the Valeton GP-50 here. Both companies seem to be circling the same idea at the same time: take a compact NAM-capable unit and make it genuinely stage-friendly. With proper footswitches, LED rings, tap tempo, and control switching, the Smart Box immediately feels more confident in that role. You can still pair it with something like the M-Vave Chocolate Plus if you want to go even further, but you don’t have to anymore.
The front panel layout is another big win. Instead of burying everything in menus, Sonicake have added dedicated buttons for each block in the signal chain — amp, cab, delay, reverb, EQ, and so on. Editing patches directly on the unit is now much quicker and far more intuitive. The Pocket Master wasn’t hard to use, but this feels friendlier again, especially for players who don’t want to spend half an hour scrolling through menus. Even the most technophobic guitarist should be able to build a usable patch without getting nervous.
Internally, there are some meaningful upgrades too. The effects list has grown a lot. Where the Pocket Master gave you one or two flavours of each modulation, the Smart Box gives you proper choice — including some more adventurous options. There’s a clear nod here towards ambient and shoegaze players, with textures and effects that go well beyond the usual budget multi-FX safe zone. It really feels like Sonicake are pushing the boundaries of what “affordable” gear is supposed to sound like.
Now, we do need to talk about the NAM situation, because this is still the elephant in the room. Like most compact NAM players at the moment, once you engage NAM profiling, the internal cab sim is bypassed. That means you’re either using full rig NAM profiles (amp and cab together) or running an external cab solution. The Smart Box sticks with this limitation, which is a little disappointing — simultaneous amp and cab modelling would’ve been a genuine leap forward.
That said, it’s not a dealbreaker. There are loads of excellent full rig NAM profiles available for free on Tone3000, and realistically, most users are going to find plenty of sounds that work for them without much hassle. It’s just one of those “we’re not quite there yet” moments for NAM tech at this price point.
Feature-wise, the Smart Box is absolutely stacked. You’ve got over 130 effects, up to nine blocks running at once, 100 presets, drum rhythms, a looper, tuner, metronome, stereo outputs, USB audio interface with re-amping, OTG support for phones, wired and wireless MIDI, expression pedal input, headphones out… and it’ll even run on its internal battery for a few hours if you need it to. It’s one of those pedals where you keep discovering another feature you didn’t realise was there.
Crucially, it still comes in under £100. That’s the headline for me. Yes, it’s not the bold technological leap some of us were hoping for, but it is a clear step towards being a proper gigging unit. More usable, more intuitive, more flexible — and still very affordable.
If Sonicake keep refining this platform, especially on the NAM side of things, this could end up being something really special. As it stands, the Smart Box feels like a confident evolution rather than a flashy reinvention — and honestly, that’s probably exactly what most players actually need.
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