best digital piano

The Best Digital Pianos To Buy In 2019

by

A short intro to the Best Digital Pianos

It’s every musician’s dream to one-day play on a grand acoustic piano. Unfortunately, there aren’t that many avenues for practicing on an acoustic piano, and that’s because they are usually expensive. This means that owning one is a challenge by itself, and if you can’t get one to practice on, then how else would you sharpen your skills?

There is an alternative, though. Through the best digital piano, you can get an experience that is as close to an acoustic piano as possible. Such a piano can equip you with perhaps all the skills you need for your ultimate performance on an acoustic one. However, to get this, you need to make sure that your choice is spot-on and this may sound like something simple, yet it is anything but. With so many options to choose from and a lot of technical terms involved, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and spend a good amount of your hard-earned cash on a rather useless instrument.

Digital Pianos Buyers Guide

Keyboard Action

Digital Pianos are like an electronic version of the acoustic piano. They try to reproduce the sounds produced by acoustic instruments, and they also try to replicate the same keyboard action. Digital piano keys have significantly improved over the years, but not all brands have managed to create a near-acoustic feel. Remember that if you ever want your experience or transition to an acoustic piano to be smooth, then you must learn and practice on a keyboard that feels as close to the acoustic as possible. To that end, you must always lookout for a piano with weighted and graded keys. Through the weighted keys – which use hammers –  expression becomes super easy, and this will be improved further if the keys are touch-sensitive. The strength and speed at which you press the key determine the volume of the produced sounds. Meanwhile, the graded action will familiarize you to how grand acoustic pianos feel i.e., heavy on the bass and lighter as you move down the treble.

While checking on the keyboard action, it’s also important to look at the number of keys. We normally recommend that everyone, including learners, to start with an 88-key piano. Learning and perfecting your skills on these keyboards will set you up for a seamless transition to the equally big acoustic piano.

Sound Quality

Digital Pianos usually produce samples captured from actual acoustic pianos and other instruments. The technology used in capturing and refining these samples has improved significantly. The realism and overall sound quality of digital pianos are better now more than ever before. In most cases, you’ll need to invest in the high-end pianos to get high-res and realistic sounds. A few affordable digital pianos try to deliver such sounds, but they rarely match their premium counterparts.

You should also look at how the notes are sustained and decayed in the keyboard. All these are factors that help to improve the sound quality and overall learning and practicing experience.

Number of tones and Sounds

You would want a digital piano programmed with many tones and sounds to increase your creativity and make playing the piano a fun experience. However, learners must be aware that a keyboard with too many tones and sounds can get overwhelming or rather distractive, thus interfering with your learning curve.

Polyphony

128-note polyphony is ideal for the best digital piano. A piano that can produce such a high number of notes at once allows you to express complex emotions as compared to the smaller 32-note polyphony. If budget is an issue, you can go for the 64-note polyphony while guys with more money to spare can get digital pianos with up to 264-note polyphony.

Educational Tools

It’s advisable for beginners to get pianos that come with numerous learning tools. These will help you get started a lot faster plus they will supplement your music instructor. If you already know the basics and you are simply looking for a piano to perfect your skills, learning tools shouldn’t be a priority for you.

Portability

Digital pianos are available in different types i.e., Portable, Stage, Console/Upright, and Hybrid digital pianos. If you are expecting to be on the move with your keyboard, a portable digital piano is an ideal choice. If you want a piano that you can permanently house at home or in the studio, a console or upright piano will make more sense. Finally, if you are after something that can deliver professional performance, you can look for either a Stage or Hybrid Piano, both of which are usually expensive.

What’s the Best Digital Piano?

The Best Digital Piano today, especially among beginners, is the Alesis Recital. This full-sized semi-weighted piano comes with dozens of features and educational tools that will help newbies get started and grow their skills in preparations for an acoustic piano.

Here is a more detailed review of this and other excellent digital pianos:

Alesis Recital

The Alesis Recital is an 88-keys piano fitted semi-weighted keys that deliver a premium yet natural feel. You can adjust the touch response of these keys, which basically means that you can customize them to match with your preferences. If you feel like your fingers are a bit weak or too strong, you can adjust the response accordingly to make sure that your performance remains top-notch. You could also adjust these keys to match with your mood and the play you are trying to put up. This enhances the piano’s versatility so much while also accommodating more people.

The semi-weighted nature of the key tries to emulate the feel of acoustic pianos. Although they haven’t nailed it 100%, they do enhance the experience of the player and should make it much easier to switch to a weighted one.

The Alesis Recital piano is packed with five in-built voices i.e., Organ, Electric Piano, Acoustic Piano, Bass, and Synth. What impressed the most here is how brilliantly these voices sound. Your compositions should be really impressive, and the fact that you can blend two of the voices opens the window for unlimited creativity.

For all beginners looking to expedite their learning, excellent educational features of the Alesis Recital will prove very beneficial. The piano offers a very thorough lesson mode making it easier for the student to understand and learn through the keyboard. The adjustable metronome (30 to 280 BPM) will also enhance your learning significantly. The piano is also designed to be portable, making it just the right choice for all students who want a piano they can move around with. You could even go with it to the park and still use it without an external power source thanks to the 6D cell batteries.

The Alesis Recital performance receives an even bigger boost from the different connectivity options onboard. This includes RCA outputs which you can use to connect an amplifier, mixer or any recorder, a ¼-inch sustain pedal input and a ¼ -inch stereo headphone output. You can also connect the piano to your PC or Mac via the MIDI output. By connecting the piano to a PC, you will also get to utilize more learning and composition tools.

Specs

  • Dimensions: 3.6” by 11.52” by 50.52”
  • Weight: 15.65 pounds
  • 88 semi-weighted keys
  • 128-note polyphony
  • Five piano sounds
  • Split two voices simultaneously
  • 20W speakers
  • Divide the keyboard into two sections through the lesson mode

Yamaha P71

Yamaha is a very experienced manufacturer of musical instruments, and the P71 is one of their best digital pianos. This piano features ten voices, some of which are sampled from Yamaha’s Best Selling acoustic grand pianos. Yamaha utilizes the Advanced Wave Memory (AWM) sampling to record sounds from acoustic pianos. The AWM utilizes two microphones to come up with rich and spacious sounds through L and R waveforms.

Other than the incredible sounds, users will also get to enjoy the Graded Hammer Standard weighted key action. GHS is a very popular trend in the digital piano industry. Through this tech, the keys will feel heavy on the lower end, and as you move higher up, they get lighter. This is the same key action found in acoustic pianos. By learning and practicing on the P71, you will get a better grip on how to use and work with GHS weighted pianos, and this should polish your skills accordingly.

In the department of connectivity, the Yamaha P71 offers two jacks for a sustain pedal and headphones and a USB port. You can use the USB port to connect the keyboard to a computer to expand the keyboard’s functionality further. For instance, you could utilize some of the latest music software to improve your piano. You can also transfer some of your samples to your computer through the port.

Using and customizing the P71 is also super easy even though there is no display. By holding down the Grand Piano button and pressing the other keys, you can change voices, adjust and configure the metronome, play demo sources, and perform many other functions with ease.

Specs

  • Dimensions: 11.7” by 16.1” by 58.2”
  • Weight: 25 pounds
  • 88 fully-weighted keys
  • 64-note polyphony
  • Graded Hammer Standard action
  • Dual and Duo modes
  • Ten instrument sounds
  • Sustain pedal included
  • Intuitive controls

Casio Privia PX-160

The Casio Privia PX-160 is your best choice if you are in the market looking for a complete package that can get you started straight out of the box.  This digital piano comes with a CS-67 Stand, a furniture bench, an SP-33 pedal, an Instructional book, and an Austin Bazaar Instructional DVD. This essentially means that your money isn’t just invested in a remarkable instrument but also on a complete setup to get you playing as soon as it’s delivered. You’ll even get a polishing cloth to keep the piano and stand to look gorgeous. Basically, the Casio Privia PX-160 is a good option particularly to guys who are just getting started, and they don’t have a bench or stand or to the advanced players who want an improvement on their current setup. Also, buying all these items as a single package saves you a lot more as compared to buying them individually. You can still choose to buy the keyboard without the stand.

The Casio Privia PX-160 feels as good as it looks. It features a Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer Action II keyboard that delivers a precise near-acoustic feel. The keys are ebony and ivory textured, making them feel super smooth to the hands. Interacting with these keys feels really good. You can also adjust the sensitivity of the keys between three levels.

The Privia PX-160 comes with dozens of tones to play with. You will get up to 18 grand piano tones ranging from Bright and Mellow to the Classic, Modern and Concert tones. There is also Electric Piano 1 and 2, Elec Organ 1 and 2, Jazz Organ, Pipe Organ, FME. Piano, Vibraphone, 60’s E. PianoHarpsichord, Strings 1 and 2 and a Bass. There are several digital effects, including a hall simulator and chorus. From all these incredible tones and effects, it’s fair to say that the Privia PX-160 is meant for players of all skill levels. And the presence of the three-pedal system is further testimony to that.

Specs

  • Dimensions: 5.6” by 11.5” by 52”
  • Weight: 25.5 pounds
  • 88-weighted keys
  • 128-note polyphony
  • Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer Action II
  • MIDI Recorder
  • Dual, Duo and Split modes
  • Lesson function
  • 17-type temperament
  • Two headphone jack ports, USB Port, Line out jack and sustain pedal jack