Best Digital Piano Review 2019 Top 10
The digital piano offers a lot of great advantages as compared to having a traditional acoustic one. First, the digital piano is a lot smaller and more portable than the traditional one allowing you to set it up in your home with lesser space or bring it anywhere you want with relative ease.
It’s also a lot cheaper making it a great tool for anyone who wants to learn the piano. Also we discuss about the Best Digital Pianos comparing responsiveness and quality of sound for each model .
The only problem, however, is that there are numerous brands and designs that you can find in the market today and choosing the one that fits your needs and your budget can be quite a daunting task. To save you from all the trouble, we have made a comprehensive review on the 10 best digital piano of 2019. This will help you a lot on picking the one that is tailored to your own personal needs.
Top 10 digital pianos reviews
Table of Contents
Casio PX850
The Casio PX850 comes with a full keyboard with weighted keys using Scaled Hammer Action with three different layers of touch sensitivity and simulated ebony and ivory texture keys that give it a distinctive feel and touch that resembles closely that of an acoustic grand. It’s intuitive resonator sound source also allows the device to generate acoustic sounds beautifully. The PX850 also currently has the highest maximum polyphony at 256 which is great if you want to play more advance pieces. You will also find a lot of great details in the model such as its matching keyboard cover and pedal board and stand that makes the digital piano a great addition to your home’s existing decor.
I have experienced however, some form of clicking sound after using the digital piano for quite a while. The sound can be quite annoying specially if your concentrating on mastering a certain piece. Aside from this, however, the Casio PX850 was a great piece! It comes with a host of great features that allows you to generate true acoustic grand sound. I would recommend this as the ideal tool for beginning players but also has some great features for advanced level pianists as well.
Casio PX-5S
The Casio PX-5s Digital Piano is an amazing new stage piano. It is priced just around a $1000 dollars and the kind of value it brings far outweighs its decent price. It’s hard to fathom how Casio manages to build extra ordinary digital pianos at superb price tags but one thing is for sure – what they are doing is being welcomed by numerous users worldwide. Just check the reviews for this digital piano, for instance, and you will know that people are simply raving about it.
Now if you need a digital instrument that produces excellent quality sounds – including all kinds of instrumental sounds and not just piano ones – the Casio PX-5S is the ideal choice. Majority of digital pianos in the market for the same price simply do not offer the kind of top notch sound options that would feel right at home in even the most professional musical settings as the PX-5S does. The P-X5S, however, is not free from any form of weaknesses such as the absence of a global PC “Off”, but given its affordable price tag, you will surely be more than happy to take its flaws and enjoy all the superb features that it brings.
Casio PX-780
The Casio PX-780 is part of Casio’s prestigious Privia line, which is actually the brand’s high end line of digital pianos. With that being said, the PX-780 comes with a superb design and construction with a lot of great features that most piano players would surely rave. The digital piano looks lovely with its furniture grade cabinet that can easily spruce up any home’s interior decor. The first impression that came to mind with the keyboard is that it is amazingly well made. It has a straightforward key activity equipped with an updated graduated weighted style for the keys that allows the piano to produce an authentic feel of an acoustic piano. And it not only feels like a real acoustic piano, it also sounds like one as well.
Its full 128 of polyphone with great reverberation is simply amazing and with its three set of pedals that enhance sound and play and a 20 watt speaker system that highlights all the effects, you can easily get captivated by your own performance. It also has a built-in USB-MIDI which gives you the option to connect your plays to your laptop, Ipod, or portable workstation. And with its LCD display screen that is intuitive and very convenient to use, you can incorporate an array of applications to enhance your experience.
The two flaws that you need to expect from the Casio PX-780 is its lack of portability and its headphone jack that can encounter some issues at times. Other than that, it’s hard to find other reasons why this digital piano is a great buy. It performs all the things that you can expect from a digital piano and then some. It’s a great value for its price!
Yamaha YDP-181
Every Arius digital piano is built to be what is referred to as a “home digital piano”, not a portable keyboard, and the same can be said with the Yamaha YPD-181. This simply means that if you are need of a portable model, then the YOD-181 is not the one for you since this device includes an exquisite beautiful cabinetry and will need some form of set-up upon deliver. While it is virtually immovable, the advantage of having a home digital piano is that it replaces an acoustic upright or grand piano in your home right away. What’s more, these advanced pianos are equipped with features that allow the player to gradually increase his/her skill level through time.
The YPD-181 comes with three pedals (damper, sostenuto, and soft) along with a full 88-key keyboard. The pedal design allows players to perform “half-pedal” moves and blend two voices at once for a more diverse sound and gives you the option to record your own performance directly into the device. Graded Hammer (GH) keyboard action with plastic keytops that brings in better resistance in the bass and less in the treble just like an acoustic piano.
All, in all, the Yamaha YDP-181 is a great option for a home digital piano for all types of players of different levels. The graded action feels naturally amazing to ones fingers and its built-in features allows you to take your performance to the next level. And because you can play it with a headphone, it is also a great addition to an apartment or any living where the sound produced by the piano can be an issue for nearby renters.
Yamaha P35
The Yamaha P35 is a straightforward keyboard packed with features that would suite best for beginner level players. It has a touch response with natural feel that comes with an acoustic piano but for a lot less in total weight at 40 pounds. Being lightweight, it’s a great portable piano for the pianist who is always on the move. It is also equipped with a Duo Mode that can divide the keyboard into two to aid in instruction and learning. And if you put into consideration its very affordable price while providing the kind of features that players look into a digital piano, the P35 becomes a great purchase.
But while the digital piano is lightweight and portable, it becomes somewhat surprisingly heavy when the piano cover is added. Its pedal also responds quite weirdly in the opposite way that majority of pianos do. Aside from these two weaknesses however, the Yamaha P35 is still a solid digital piano that can meet the essential needs of different types of players.
Yamaha P45B
The Yamaha P45B is the latest model in Yamaha’s Contemporary line, the P-series. The digital piano was built to succeed the previous P-35 model which was also discussed in this review. The P45B follows a modern and sleek design that makes it portable. The 88 weighted action keys are great and its upgraded 64-note polyphony provides a richer and more detailed quality of music than the P-35. It’s connectivity technology is also up to date utilizing a USB-to-Port connectivity option that allows users to connect with an extensive array of electronic devices such as computers, smart phones, and laptops.
For beginners, the Yamaha P45B would be a good choice because of the sound quality that it provides for an affordable price. It’s portable design also makes it a good tool for musicians who are always on the go. The drawbacks with this digital piano, however, lies in its lack of features – does not come with a recording option – and quite complicated interface that could be challenging for newbies.
Roland RP-301
The Roland RP-301 is a great choice for users who are still entering the world of digital piano because of the kind of realistic, acoustic-like piano sound and feel that it brings. It’s also very budget friendly and space-efficient with a lot of great features and a sleek cabinet with an exquisite rosewood finish. More importantly, it carries Roland’s SuperNATURAL Piano engine which offers authentic sound by improving velocity response, note decay, and key-range behaviour.
The RP-301 also comes with Ivory Feel-G keys with Progressive Hammer Action with Escapement and inherit the functions, which is brings in a great sensation to ones hands while playing. And aside from its natural sound and feel, the digital piano also has its own features to facilitate the development of the player in its built-in metronome and recorder plus Roland’s Twin-Piano functionality. The Twin-piano functionality is the same feature you will find among other models mentioned in this review where in the keyboard becomes divided into two parts, each of which covers the same octaves, which helps when practicing with an instructor. Overall, it’s a great digital piano for beginners because of its cost effective price and host of helpful features.
Roland F-120
The Roland F-120 comes with a host of features that are simply great for the beginning artist. It has a Twin piano mode like the other models mentioned in this review that splits the keyboard in half to aid the student in enhancing his/her skills with an instructor. It’s also a cool feature for playing duo with the digital piano. The key action with this digital piano also resembles closely to that of an acoustic grand, making it easy for the player to make fast, frequent strokes. When it comes to sound effects, the F-120 delivers an authentic piano sound with strong speaker projection. When you play lower tones, the piano produces a rich sound specially when tuned through speakers. Also, the sound quality does not diminish when listening through a headphone.
The Roland F-210 is also a sleek looking digital piano with clean lines and a modern style that can mesh well with your home’s surrounding decor. Simply speaking, it is a furniture in itself and would be a great addition to your home’s interior specially when set-up against a clean white wall.
The downside with this digital piano is that once its set-up it would be hard for you to move it around since it becomes attached to its stand. It’s a stationary unit without any wheels which makes portability quite an issue. The digital piano also lacks a number of essential button functions that would have been very useful to once performance. There are buttons but there functions are not that efficient.
Overall, however, the Roland F-120 is a superb digital piano that provides exceptional sound and a natural touch. It would be best suited as a stationary or somewhat permanent piano in one’s home because of its lack of portability.
Kawai CE220
The Kawai CE220 is a great digital piano primarily because of its AWA PROII wooden-key action, which is a feature present in most award-winning Kawai instruments. Aside from its iconic AEA PROII, it also has added other excellent features such as Kawai’s Progressive Harmonic Imaging sound technology with 88-key piano sampling, which brings in richer and more genuine piano sounds. It also has some handy features in its design such as a USB to Device capability that allows users to record their performance to a USB memory stick. The recorded piece can be loaded and accessed into a computer for printing a score or emailing to a colleague or instructor.
Another notable advancement is a 192-note polyphony, which is almost 100 more than its previous model. It also has the convenient dual mode for enhancing piano skills and a convenient Balance Slider on the panel that manages the harmony in a Dual or Split Keyboard mode. It also looks great with a stunning premium satin black finish with a complementary bench, a sliding key cover, and three pedals making it a great addition to anyone looking to play the piano.
Kawai KDP90
The Kawai KDP90 digital piano comes with a cabinet styling and a host of superb features including genuine grand piano sounds, electric sounds, and array of musical sounds such as strings and many more. It’s budget friendly price along with its set of great features makes it an ideal digital piano for people looking for excellent value in a decently priced model. It has 88-keys that use what Kawai calls as AHAIV-F Graded-hammer Action which brings in a natural feel, while the sounds are produced utilizing Harmonic Imaging technology. The cabinet comes with its own built in amplifiers and speakers with a beautiful rosewood finish.
While the KDP90 is a superb option for its cost-effective price, it does not come with a huge number of digital features such as USB connectivity and multi track recording. Given its lack of advanced features, it is still hard to find an electric piano that gets more accolades than the KDP90 for its price. If you need a digital piano to enhance your musical skills without taking much space in your home, the Kawai KDP90 is something that you can look into.
Digital piano buying guide – What to Look For ?
The market is certainly teaming with a wide range of digital pianos coming from different brands that promise different results and the best user experience. So you can pick the best out of the rest, here are some of the guidelines that you can use:
Keyboard action and Responsiveness
Choose the digital piano that offers full weighted keys. These keys come with graduated weighting which allows the piano to produce sounds that closely resemble those of acoustic pianos. Aside from the design of the keys, you may also want to look into touch or velocity-sensitivity. The best digital piano should be able to sense acute differences in velocity that directs the volume of each note. If your digital piano has these crucial features, then your investment will surely be worth it.
Quality of Sound
The quality of sound that you will enjoy in your digital piano will depend largely on the kind of components that it is built with. More specifically, it depends on the digital technology used to capture and reproduce sound. As a good rule of thumb, higher end digital pianos posses higher digital memory giving them the ability to produce high-resolution sounds with better authenticity that reciprocates those of acoustic instruments. The kind of amplifiers and speakers used by the model is also an important factor that you need to look into if you want to enjoy a richer and more detailed sound quality.
Polyphones
When you hear the word polyphone in a digital piano, it basically means the number of individual notes or tones the piano can give. The least amount of polyphone in your digital piano should be somewhere around 32-note polyphony. If you want to perform more complex pieces and sounds, a 64-note polyphony should be enough. The highest quality electronic pianos deliver 128-note or 264-note polyphony which is enough to cater advanced musical pieces for higher level players.
Available Sounds/Tones
It’s not a secret that today’s digital pianos are capable of producing a great number of different sounds from different instruments including accordions, organs, synthesizers, flutes and many more. While this can be a cool feature, you will more likely end up sticking to the more basic piano sounds. Having all these different sound samples and effects can sometimes be more of a distraction than a big help to your piano training. But if you put in the novelty and fun factor, having all these sound effects would be great.
Learning tools
A lot of digital pianos are equipped with helpful learning tools such as lessons that increase your learning curve in numerous folds. Choose those models that provide displays that show off cords being played and have reliable lighting effects that aid you in sorting out melodies and chords. Having its own metronome could also prove beneficial in enhancing your rhythmic skills. Having a keyboard split option can also help the student in his/her training with an instructor.
The Best Digital Piano
In terms of ideal keyboard action and responsiveness, sound quality, polyphones, available sounds and tones, and learning tools for its price, the Casio PX850 is the best digital piano in the market today. It utilizes weighted keys using Scaled Hammer Action with three different layers of touch sensitivity and simulated ebony and ivory texture keys that offer an authentic feel, touch, and sounds that closely resembles that of an acoustic grand.
It has more than enough polyphone, at 256, for the average player and has all the advanced learning tools available in the industry to help the beginner increase his learning curve greatly. Built with premiere quality materials and a host of great features, the Casio PX850 is truly a great value for the kind of price it offers. This digital piano is highly recommended to all players of different levels and is guaranteed to give you a whole new level of experience that you can expect form a high-end model.