One month ago I purchased the Volca Sample to make the quarantine less painfull. After two weeks I discovered that Korg was about to release the new generation of Volca Sample, and as I was in the return period, I returned it and got my refund.

After a week trying the Volca Sample 2, I can say that the upgrades are more relevant than may look at first glance. The USB port interaction with the Librarian software is easy and smooth, and makes the unit way more flexible in terms of music composition. I just use all my sequences for one song. Got stuck? save it, and go with the next song. Song 2 is cool but something doesn't work? Save it, then screw it up, then load again. No worries.

About some of the other new features, the start delay is gold for me, specially while playing at slow tempo, for example introducing double hi-hats at 60 BPM just duplicating the parts and moving one 50% from the starting point. You can imagine how far can this go in terms of creativity. The double memory is cool, and I think 200 samples is a good number to have, more than that would be a bit painfull to dial in this unit. And the chain mode, even if has its limitations, it's quite satisfying. For me makes a difference.

What I haven't tried in depth yet is the new DAW interaction throught the USB, will see if that's a remarkable improvement.

That being said, all this improvements are significant if you are doubting between going with the first model or the new generation one at this moment. It's worth the money, don't doubt it. But of course if you already have a Volca Sample, and you don't have the bucks, it's understandable that you may like to keep it, specially if you have the u/pajen (amazing) firmware installed, and at least till we see if the Volca Sample 2 gets upgraded too.