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I have had Elektron kit since the original Monomachine/Machinedrum. At the time they were a great alternative to the workflow on DAW's like Ableton and Logic. 16 tracks for drums and 6 synth tracks was plenty for tracker/chiptune type music but mostly they were fun to interact with and for jamming on.
Fast forward to the contemporary synth scene and you have a multitude of small cheap synths to choose from. Elektron has their approach and they provide a lot of synth power and tracks for the money, you can use 2 or 3 machines together, they're no longer stuck with quantised notes or short fixed scales. However, everything happens with a small amount of knobs and a tiny screen. It's not a workflow that suits everyone.
I've had the octatrack for a few years, I'm currently reading through the manual and learning a bit more about the inner workings. It's a very deep machine, personally I lack the energy to program it to reach anything like it's capabilities. It's multidimensional in its abilities and the quality is great. If you feel there are not enough tracks then you need a second machine or third, then you need to mix them and everything gets exponentially more complicated.
TLDR - The Oktatrack is a great sampler but it takes time to learn and operate.
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Also to answer your question regarding Techno. They're popular because they were developed as a tool to make Techno so they're good at it.
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Airhead
@JVBulman
Looking at the Digitakt and Octatrack again. Everyone raves about param. lock, but the more I look at it, the more it seems like it's a necessary part of the workflow to overcome some frankly backwards limitations on the machines, namely the track count.
Coming from an MPC 1000 w/ JOSXl, I'm just not seeing the appeal of Elektron samplers, but I really want to know why they're so popular for Techno in particular. Anyone have experience with both Akai and Elektron that can chime in?