Released in the late 1990s, the SU700 was Yamaha's entry into the affordable sampling workstation market. It was designed to compete with the Akai MPC series and Roland SP-series samplers. The SU700 offered a unique combination of sampling, sequencing, and effects in a compact desktop format. It was particularly popular among hip-hop and electronic music producers for its workflow and sound quality. The unit supported SmartMedia cards for sample storage and featured a built-in floppy disk drive. Production continued into the early 2000s before being discontinued as software samplers became more prevalent.