On its release in 2007, the Tascam 2488 MKII sold for just under two-thirds of the original 2488's price. This does not necessarily reflect that the MKII is an inferior product; the cost of producing functional recording products has become cheaper. Sound on Sound Magazine listed the release price as of the MKII as £649 (approximately $1038) as of March 2011; at the same time, the original was listed at £999 (about $1598). Both products have now been discontinued and replaced with the Tascam 2488 "Neo" which costs approximately $700 as of March 2011.
On the original 2488 you accessed the synth via a dedicated fader; in the MKII the space was given over to the sub-mix faders, which let you bounce down multiple tracks to a single channel. In 2007, as most music production software programs featured accurate-sounding synthesizers, and MIDI devices were decreasing in value, replacing the synth section with greater sub-mix capability made commercial sense.
The tap tempo function on the 2488 lets you set a tempo by tapping a button. The onboard processor calculates an average tempo from your taps. Tascam removed this button from the MKII and replaced it with a "locate set" button; this function made it easier to set and adjust recording markers.
The original hard drive on the 2488 was 40Gb; Tascam replaced this with an 80Gb hard drive, making the 2488 MKII capable of storing twice as much data.
The LCD display on the original 2488 was backlit in green; users complained about visibility issues. Rather than taking up valuable console space with a larger screen, Tascam replaced the green LED with a clearer, white back-lit screen.
The 2488 MKII features an integrated guitar overdrive and acoustic simulator effects, where as the original 2488 did not.