The company’s philosophy was that the Sync E mkII had to remain as easy to use as its predecessor. If your recipe results in a good cake then you don’t go changing it. It is hard to improve on something that is already good, to begin with. The original Tentacle Sync on the left and the Tentacle Sync E on the right.
Tentacle Sync was amongst the first companies to recognize the need for making a completely stripped-down timecode generator that was accurate, small, lightweight, easy to use, and affordable. Nothing beats having matched timecode from all of your cameras when you are working in multicamera scenarios, or when recording separate sound. Later on, software like Plural Eyes appeared, and although it worked reasonably well, it relied on comparing audio waveforms which were far from ideal if you were working with multiple cameras. In the beginning of the DSLR era, you were probably using a clapperboard or clapping your hands just to get a reference point for an editor.
Syncing audio and vision from cameras that didn’t have the ability to accept a timecode signal used to be a pain in the backside.
In saying that the Tentacle Sync was also very capable of being used to sync timecode from cameras that did have timecode I/O as well. The original Tentacle Sync was launched in 2015 and it was designed to be a low-cost way of syncing timecode to cameras that don’t have the ability to jam timecode by themselves. The new Sync E mkII adds Bluetooth 5.0 and better battery life. The Sync E mkII is the successor to the very popular Tentacle Sync E that was announced way back in 2017.