I just bought the Akai Professional LPK25 and I'm fairly happy with it. The pressure sensitive keys sometimes fail on very light pressure, but I'm getting used to that. And I was not impressed with the software. I use my old version of Cakewalk for composing and "Simple Piano" for just playing around.

Sorry I don't know anything about the Novation. So I can't compare them. And of course my Akai does not have the pads etc. that this one does.