Casio Piano Review

Casio PX-160 vs Casio PX-770 (Full Review) The Casio PX-770 is the next model up in the Privia line and has just been released in the US. While the piano is quite similar to the PX-160, it has several significant advantages. Today we’re doing another “ Pro Series ” review, and this time we’re going to take an in-depth look at the Casio PX-560. The PX-560 is the most expensive and technologically advanced digital piano in the Privia line. The keyboard was released in late 2015, but, only recently it started getting the attention it deserves.

Casio has a unique pop-culture legacy among makers of electronic keyboards. In the 1980s, the brand became so synonymous with fun, inexpensive, portable keyboards that Casio is still often used as a generic term for the entire product category, as Kleenex is for tissues or Xerox for photocopiers. Yet Casio has often aimed to transcend this image’s association with toy-like products, an image that has otherwise served them well. The company’s best-selling and longest-lived such effort, dating back to 2003, has been the Privia line of portable digital pianos, which offers professional-grade sound quality and keyboard actions while sacrificing neither affordability nor ease of use.

The Privia PX-S3000 establishes a new benchmark in this effort. Here’s the Twitter version of this review: Almost everything about the PX-S3000—keyboard feel, realism and nuance of acoustic piano sounds, variety of great non-piano sounds, build quality, auto-accompaniment features, and more—makes me feel as if I’m playing an instrument that should sell for $1,500 or more. But the PX-S3000 costs only $799, with retailers such as Sweetwater bundling it with matching console stand ($130), soft case ($130), and triple-pedal unit ($100) for a discounted total of around $1,125.

You also get a surprising amount of audio effects power, the ability to stream audio through the Privia’s speakers over Bluetooth (to play along with songs stored on your mobile device), a useful MIDI song recorder, audio recording directly to a connected USB thumb drive, and wired USB connectivity to Casio’s Chordana Play for Piano educational app for Apple iOS and Android devices (see sidebar, “Chordana Play for Piano”).

Build and User Interface

The Privia PX-S3000 is the most compact instrument with 88 weighted keys I’ve ever beheld, bar none. It weighs under 25 pounds and can run on six AA batteries, though an AC power supply is included. At first sight, the instrument gives the impression of having been carved from a solid block. It’s made of plastic—there’s no other way to build an 88-key instrument that weighs so little—but the plastic is thick, the few seams are tight, and the overall fit and finish are excellent.

The PX-S3000’s design is a study in minimalism. Physical controls with moving parts are limited to the power button and master volume dial at top center, and a pitch-bend wheel and two assignable knobs along the top left cheek—a boon for use in live bands. All else is achieved with touch-sensitive “buttons” that are actually backlit icons shining up at you from just under the completely smooth surface of the top panel. The icons change based on which mode you’ve selected for a given area of the panel; and if you don’t touch the instrument for a few minutes, it goes into a “screen-saver” mode in which the buttons cycle off, then reappear if you press a key or anything else. When the PX-S3000 is powered off, the controls vanish.

All those touch-sensitive backlit buttons are in high-contrast white on black—I had no difficulty reading them under changing stage lighting or in direct sunlight at a backyard-barbecue jam. If there’s a downside, it’s that, as with a touchscreen, you have to look at what you’re doing. With physical buttons, you can learn to navigate an instrument by feel. Moving parts, though, are some of the costlier components on any keyboard’s bill of materials, so the Star Trek touch panel is surely a factor in the PX-S3000’s low price. Not that it conveys cheapness—on the contrary, its retro-future look is classy; as if, back in 1990, Casio took notes from home-hi-fi-as-sculpture mavens Bang & Olufsen.

Keyboard

Even without taking into account the PX-S3000’s diminutive size and weight, its key action would be considered excellent—but when you factor them in, it’s extraordinary. The texturing on the key surfaces, to provide grip and an authentically piano-like feel, feels a bit coarser and more pronounced than I’m accustomed to, and I’ve come to prefer it.

The action more than qualifies as fully weighted, but gives a first impression of being on the light side if you try playing with the power off. The PX-S3000 has five touch-response settings—two light, one normal, and two heavy—plus a fixed-velocity (non-touch-sensitive) option. As in all electronic keyboards, the PX-S3000’s touch settings alter the touch response, not the actual key weight, thus requiring a faster striking of the key to achieve a given loudness and brightness of tone. Nonetheless, I found that they ingeniously tricked my brain into perceiving the action as physically harder to play. With the heaviest setting, anyone looking to develop virtuosic finger strength can get a genuine workout. The Normal and Light settings are good options for playing fast passages in non-piano Tones (aka Voices) such as organs, strings, or synths. Best of all, a touch response is stored as part of a Registration (a memory preset in which can be saved combinations of virtually every sort of setting the PX-S3000 offers), so you can optimize it for different combinations of Tones.

Speaking of Tone combinations, the PX-S3000 permits basic splits and layers. You can: layer two Tones (e.g., piano and strings) across the keyboard’s entire range; split the keyboard so that the left and right hands can respectively play, say, double bass and piano; or do both, with one Tone in the left-hand part and a layer of two Tones in the right. The split point can be changed by holding down the Split button (revealed by using the Function button to toggle the rightmost bank of buttons into “Ctrl” mode) and striking a key.

Selecting Tones and turning on splits/layers is achieved using different “pages” of the same button row—again, you step through these pages with the Function button, so there’s some going back and forth. With layering active, the instrument will consider the current Tone to be the first Tone in the layer—that is, the Upper1 part—and the panel will select only the layer’s second Tone, called the Upper2 part. With splitting active, you can select the Tone for only the Lower part. The display will show a U2 or L icon to remind you of this, but to change the Upper1 part, you have to step back down into Ctrl mode, turn off the split or layer, then step back into Tone selection mode. You can save the whole thing as a Registration (up to 96 of them), which will also save any rhythm or accompaniment setups you may have selected. If you create a lot of splits and layers, the procedure can feel a bit clunky. That said, having the same few buttons perform multiple tasks is a necessary concession to a slender profile and low cost. Splits and layers are much quicker, however, when you’re controlling the PX-S3000 from the Chordana Play for Piano app; I describe the procedure in the sidebar at the end of this review.

Casio refers to the PX-S3000’s action as “Smart Scaled.” This means that while the keys are physically graded—with heavier weights toward the bass and lighter weights toward the treble—the PX-S3000 takes things a step further. Internal algorithms use a combination of number-crunching and the physical key-weight differences to emulate the individual behavior of each of the source piano’s 88 keys. It works quite well.

Acoustic Piano Sound

The main piano sound in the Privia PX-S3000 is an acoustic-piano sample re-engineered from recordings originally made for Casio’s Celviano Grand Hybrid (models GP-300 to 500), the company’s proof that they can build a high-end home digital piano at a price that lets you afford a home to put it in. Specifically, it’s the variant called “Hamburg Grand,” and while Casio doesn’t say so, in the industry we know this to be code for a sampled Hamburg Steinway.

The piano is sampled at four velocity levels, which is important: striking a note harder makes it sound not just louder but brighter. I detected no breaks between velocity layers as I gradually increased the weight of my touch from feather-like to Thor’s hammer, the sound beautifully growing in harmonic richness along with the touch weight. Casio informed me that the PX-S3000 doesn’t switch velocity layers per se; rather, it gradually fades from one level to the next, in response to precisely how strenuously you play each note.

Privia pianos have sometimes been criticized for their sound decaying too quickly. Not so with the PX-S3000. The lead piano Tone, called Grand Piano Concert, and its Bright and Mellow variants, had long, singing sustain, whether I was simply holding down keys or using the damper pedal. Tones such as Rock Piano and Stage Piano decayed slightly more quickly, but for my money that’s the desired behavior for the applications their names suggest.

The PX-S3000’s piano sound is further enhanced by the Acoustic Simulator feature, which reproduces five important characteristics of an acoustic piano’s sound: string resonance (undamped strings vibrating in sympathy with each other); damper resonance (all strings vibrating in response to notes struck with the damper pedal pressed); and mechanical noises (for key-on, key-off, and the damper pedal). You can adjust the intensity of each characteristic in the Function menu.

These sorts of nuances make a much greater difference when the piano is front and center, as in solo performance or perhaps a jazz trio, than if you’re plonking along to “Mustang Sally” in a bar band. But they do make a difference—one that perceptibly enhances the illusion of playing an acoustic piano. Until recently, they were the exclusive domain of higher-end stage pianos and home digital pianos, as well as professional software libraries of sampled sounds. To hear them so well executed in a sub-$1,000 portable piano is a big deal.

The PX-S3000’s built-in speakers play surprisingly loudly and cleanly, given they comprise just two oval (16 x 8 cm) full-range drivers, each powered by its own 8W amplifier. However, they lack the bass response to do full justice to the thunder this piano can summon. When I plugged the PX-S3000 into my go-to studio monitors (ADAMs from Germany), playing bass octaves shook the Patrick Nagel prints off my studio walls—which probably needed to happen anyway.

Non-Piano Tones

Casio has dramatically upped its sound-design game over the past few years, with the PX-S3000 getting the latest and greatest. It’s packed with a total of 700 Tones, and since most of these fall outside the acoustic-piano category, we’re talking workstation-class variety here. (Approximately 500 of these Tones are shared with Casio’s CT-X5000, a powerhouse of a portable arranger keyboard.)

Where to begin? The E. Piano bank houses Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Clavinet, and Vibraphone (mallet) sounds, many of them augmented by onboard DSP effects such as Phaser and amp/cabinet (Amp Cab) simulation. Whether you want a metallic-tinged FM piano to evoke the Law & Order theme, or bark and grit for covering old R&B tunes, it’s all here. I especially liked the five variations on the Clavinet, the stringed keyboard made famous by Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.”

Hammond-style organs are throaty and beefy, and made more realistic by a Leslie rotary speaker (Rotary) DSP effect that’s surprisingly good. You can even use a knob to switch between a Leslie’s fast and slow speeds, like an organist. Press the Function button until the rightmost bank of buttons is in Ctrl mode, then press the Knob button, then use the increment (+/–) buttons until you get to “14: DSP Param” (parameters) in the display. Now, the top knob on the left cheek will control the Rotary speed and the bottom knob will control the effect’s depth/intensity.

Three other category buttons cover the remaining Tone multitude: Strings, Pad, and Others. Each press of the same Tone category button takes you to a different useful starting place within that category: ensemble vs. solo strings, for example. Synthesized strings (Synth-Strings) are actually found in the Pad section, as are Choirs and various ambient Synth Pads. The most crowded category is Others, because it covers everything else—including, at the beginning of the bank, the best acoustic guitars I’ve heard from a Casio keyboard, a number of punchy acoustic and electronic drum kits at the tail end, and, in between, synthesizer basses, leads, and poly sounds aplenty.

In general, the non-piano Tones sound a little less premium than what you might expect from a $3,000+ synth workstation—but not by much. I’ve owned nearly every one of those made in the past 25 years, and there’s no professional gig where I’d be embarrassed to use the PX-S3000 as my mothership keyboard. For enhancing the experience of learning music and recreational playing at home, these sounds should exceed all but the most jaded expectations.

Rhythm and Accompaniment

Auto-accompaniment has become almost a must-have in instruments destined for the family room. Sounding more like a band keeps children and adult beginners alike more engaged, and if traditional piano practice is called for, these features can simply be turned off. The Privia PX-S3000 has 200 rhythms, each in two modes: just the drumbeat (Rhythm), or with a full virtual backing band (Accompaniment). In addition, as inspiration fodder, 310 Music Presets combine accompaniment styles, Tone splits and layers, and chord progressions cribbed from pop hits, the American songbook, and familiar standards. Oddly, and unlike some other Casio keyboards, the PX-S3000 does not display what the chords are—not even in the Chordana Play app. An update could easily address this.

That a huge variety of rock, pop, R&B, jazz, and world styles is covered goes without saying on pretty much any instrument of this type. What’s important is how well it works. Does the accompaniment engine interpret your chords accurately? Is it flexible about chord extensions, or is it confused by anything more complex than simple triads? Are there “easy play” modes that let beginners voice chords with one or two fingers? And when you change chords, does the accompaniment follow you in time without playing a clam?

I’m happy to report that the PX-S3000 gets high marks in all these areas. Rhythmically, it tracked very well. It didn’t miss a thing when I played a chromatic passing chord (D#min7) between Dmin7 and Emin7—even on the “and” of a beat. The seven modes for chord interpretation include one called Casio Chord. This lets a beginning player voice a major chord with one finger, a minor chord with two fingers, a dominant seventh with three, and a minor seventh with four. Notably, as long as the root is correct, it doesn’t matter which additional keys you add; the Privia is just looking at how many keys are pressed at once. Fingered Assist mode is similar, but with the nearest black key below the root making the chord minor and the nearest white key below adding the dominant seventh. More advanced players will appreciate Full Range mode, which looks at the entire keyboard (not just the left-hand part) to determine your chordal intentions.

I’ve never met an accompaniment engine I couldn’t stump if I really tried, but the PX-S3000 mainly shone. Switching among minor seventh, minor sixth, and major seventh chords was one of many tests that didn’t faze it.

Any accompaniment style features an intro, main and variation sections with associated fill-ins (the variation tends to have more riffs and instruments in the arrangement), and an ending. Developing some skill at switching between these is key to sounding more like a one-person band, and for this I’d prefer physical buttons over a touch panel. Fortunately, the PX-S3000 lets you trigger all these sections, and start and stop the accompaniment, using the keyboard’s lowest six white keys. When performing, this is far easier than using a touch panel, and makes sense because, in Accompaniment mode, you don’t need to go down that far to play root notes. To activate this feature, hold down the Rhythm/Accomp button until “KC” (Keyboard Control) appears in the display.

Song Mode

The PX-S3000 can internally record your performances as MIDI data, or record them in real time as Audio to a thumb drive inserted in the USB-A port on its rear panel. Whether you’re recording a performance as MIDI or as Audio feels much the same in terms of which buttons you press and when you press them. The difference is that, down in the Function mode, the Song Type parameter is set to one mode or the other. Audio is recorded as stereo WAV files at 16-bit/44.1kHz resolution, the same as on a CD.

Like the roll of punched paper in an old-time player piano, a MIDI recording is not a recording of sound itself—it’s a set of instructions that tell the instrument what to do. For this reason, it can also capture Tone changes, movements of knobs and the pitch-bend wheel, and much more. The PX-S3000 provides three internal recording tracks. The System track captures your playing, including in splits and layers, plus everything the accompaniment section plays—so, technically, it’s multiple tracks that you interact with as one. Then, two Solo tracks let you overdub more playing on top of all that, without interfering with what’s already on the System track. Of course, you don’t have to record accompaniment or rhythm onto the System track; you could use it as just another track for capturing solo piano.

I could definitely see a budding songwriter tweaking the accompaniment to get a basic groove together in the System track, then developing melodic ideas using the Solo tracks. Since you can record Solo tracks while the auto-accompaniment is playing (that’s the point, really), you could also personalize accompaniment styles with little looping riffs.

One thing you can’t do is play back a MIDI recording if the Song Type parameter is set to Audio. Why would you want to? Suppose you’ve worked out your masterpiece using the auto-accompaniment and Solo tracks recorded in MIDI, and now you’d like to “print” it as Audio to a USB drive. No dice. I’m guessing that this is about the user interface letting you access the MIDI or the Audio recorder, but not both, and not about any limitations under the PX-S3000’s hood. If so, it also means that, in theory, this could be addressed in a firmware update.

More Features

The audio effects (DSP) in the PX-S3000 deserve special mention. There are 100 effect types, from EQ to Compressor, Delay to Reverb, Rotary speaker to Overdrive to Distortion, Amp and speaker-cabinet simulations to Auto-Wah, Flangers to Phasers, and more. Pressing the DSP button when in Ctrl mode will show you the current effect; long-pressing it shortcuts you into the Function menus that control all of the effect’s settings. These effects sound very, very good. Some effects are two in one, such as a Rotary speaker plus Overdrive. A Wah or guitar-amp simulation can add tons of character to a Clavinet or Rhodes electric piano Tone, and experimenting with some of the more ambient-oriented and time-based effects on string, synth, or percussion Tones is a great idea-starter for film-soundtrack–style experiments. For sheer sound-design power, the PX-S3000’s audio effects raise it above the level of anything I expected from something that calls itself a digital piano.

The Sound Mode button toggles the overall sound among three states: Hall Simulator/Reverb (separate from specific reverbs in the DSP section), Hall Simulator/Reverb with Surround (a pseudo-surround effect), and neither (dry). The Surround mode affects the Privia’s internal speakers only.

A basic footswitch is included for use as a damper pedal, but Casio also sent me the optional SP-34 triple-pedal unit ($100), which plugs into a dedicated multi-pin jack on the piano’s rear panel. It’s nicely hefty, with rubber grips on the underside; my foot never had to chase it around the floor. Notably, its rightmost pedal lets the PX-S3000 support half-pedaling, whereby a pianist presses the damper pedal halfway to get a sort of demi-sustain. This technique is occasionally called for in classical and jazz, and is a mark of attention to detail in digital pianos—especially at this price. What each pedal controls is user-selectable in the Privia’s function menu; by default, the middle pedal does proper sostenuto. With the SP-34 pedals, plus ¼” jacks for switch and expression pedals, there’s a lot of assignable control, including the ability to step through Registrations hands-free.

A dedicated Duet Mode splits the keyboard between two identical pitch ranges so that a student and teacher can play in the same range. If you have the SP-34 pedals, the leftmost pedal even works as a separate damper for the left zone of the duet—neat!

An Arpeggiator features 100 patterns ranging from simple up-and-down fare to Latin piano montunos, and it can be applied to just the Upper1 part, or Upper1 and 2 together. Alternatively, the Arpeggiator can switch into an Auto Harmonize mode that adds harmony notes to your right-hand melody based on your left-hand chords when Accompaniment mode is active. It actually makes some pretty decent choices that might inspire a new musical idea or two. However, you can’t have the Arpeggiator and Auto Harmonize functioning at the same time.

Conclusions

Digital pianos—even relatively inexpensive ones—have largely gotten good enough that even a positive review in a publication like this is usually a story of evolutionary improvements from previous models. But every once in a while, an instrument comes along that can be called revolutionary. One way that can happen is that it rewrites the rules for what you can and should expect for the price, and raises competitors’ eyebrows in the bargain. The Casio Privia PX-S3000 is such an instrument.

Anything I ran into that felt like a shortcoming or speed bump was largely due to the PX-S3000’s impossibly small size—which otherwise is an asset. The worst I can say about the instrument is that, between some buttons being context-sensitive depending on others, and some requiring long presses to make a desired thing happen, the user interface has a slight learning curve if you want to do much more than play one Tone at a time. However, if you’re looking for a family educational instrument, at $799 the PX-S3000 is very attractive, and the quality you get for that price means that even if the kids don’t stick with music, you’ll be saying, “Cool! More time on the thing for me!”

This free app for iOS and Android offers not only a game-like lesson experience, but also expanded control of the PX-S3000 and many other Casio keyboards. (Note: You want the app called Chordana Play for Piano. A simpler app, called Chordana Play, does only lessons and MIDI file playback.) Let’s look at its most powerful features.

Piano Remote Controller. This is mission control. On the Tone screen you can create splits and layers far more quickly than from the panel (see Fig. 1). Turn on Layer and/or Split, and a color-coded graphical keyboard shows you ranges for each Tone, and lets you set the split point by sliding your finger. You can also instantly assign tones to the Upper1, Upper2, and Lower parts. Doing that in the app and saving the results as Registrations using the PX-S3000’s panel, I flew at creating setups.

Other control screens include: Keyboard/Sound Source (where you set the touch response, transposition, duet mode, and scale temperament), pedal assignments, Acoustic Simulator parameters, Effects (which include the overall reverb and chorus but not the 100 DSP effects), playback of user-recorded and demo MIDI songs, the entire Accompaniment section including the Arpeggiator and Harmonizer, and MIDI settings. You can do anything from the PX-S3000 itself that you can do in the app (the reverse is almost true), but the app usually does it a lot more conveniently.

MIDI Player. This is where lessons live. A total of 201 pieces comprises classical standards, as well as exercises by the likes of Bach and Hanon. Colored blocks representing the notes fall toward the onscreen keyboard in Rock Band video-game fashion (see Fig. 2). You can pinch-zoom to change how many keys the screen displays. You can focus on the left hand, right hand, or both, with the app “grading” you based on the number of correctly played notes. The app also lets you import MIDI song files to customize your learning library, and to record yourself for later review.

Audio Player. Chordana’s Audio Player accesses the music library already on your phone or tablet, and has some surprising power (see Fig. 3). You can slow down or speed up a song without changing its pitch, or change its pitch without affecting the tempo. Singers can punch the Cancel Melody button to make the lead vocal in the recording all but disappear. Plus, you can set a section of the active song to repeat in a loop. This all amounts to what guitar players call a riff trainer, and it’s an effective one. To show up in the Audio Player, songs must reside locally in your mobile device’s storage or purchased music directory. To hear the output through the PX-S3000’s speakers (or an external sound system you’ve plugged into), you’ll run a ⅛” stereo cable from your device’s headphone output to the PX’s audio input. If your device has no analog headphone jack, pair it with the PX-S3000 via Bluetooth.

Rounding out the app is a handy music-score viewer that supports both internal songs and imported PDF files. Finally, a description library offers historical blurbs about the pre-loaded MIDI songs.

The PX-S3000 stands on its own, but Chordana Play for Piano takes the ownership experience to a whole new level. Be aware that a wired connection to the piano’s USB-B port is required. The USB-A port is only for a thumb drive—your charging cable won’t work. On the Android side, finding an appropriate cable is relatively simple since all Android devices use some flavor of USB. iOS users’ best bet is an Apple Camera Connection Kit for Lightning or USB-C, depending on how recent your device is.—SF

Stephen Fortner’s video series of his Casio PX-S3000 review can be found on our Videos page or on Youtube

Product Description and Specs for the Casio PX-S3000 can be found at:https://www.casiomusicgear.com/products/privia-series/px-s3000

User’s Guide and other support manuals can be found at:https://support.casio.com/en/manual/manualfile.php?cid=008021002

With such memorable keyboards as the Casio SA76, Casio was once known as the company that made toy keyboards. And maybe with hindsight, it deserved the tag. But slowly this brand is redeeming its image. You only need look at the Casio PX-130 to see how.

If you’re one of the skeptics and are consequently, doubting the PX130, you’ve come to the right place. In our review today, we’ll be presenting you the facts, so you make an informed judgment call for yourself.

From the quality of its keys, to the built-in tones, we’ll show you areas where Casio did it for us. And also, areas where we’re less than impressed.

As they say, time waits for no man, so let’s get this show on the road…

Contents

• Features Of The Casio PX-130

The Bottom Line For Those In A Hurry…

If you do not have the time to read the entire review, here’s the bottom line…

The Casio PX-130 is an entry-level piano best suited to beginners.

First of all, this piano belongs to Casio’s Privia series which means that it is portable and compact. It will fit into any space easily and even add some oomph to the space, because this piano looks good!

The sound quality is good, as close to an acoustic piano as Casio could manage for the price. You’ll also find that this transitions, from soft to powerful relatively smoothly.

The keys feel great too and come with Casio’s Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer action. So, they do feel like an acoustic piano in some sense, Casio even gave them simulated ivory keytops. So, there’s none of that plasticky feel that most digital pianos have.

There’s a split/layer mode, plus a duet mode. And there are 16 built-in tones with different sound effects including the Acoustic Resonance DSP.

Altogether, this is a fantastic entry-level piano. So, we recommend this for beginners. Pro players will definitely need more. But if you’re starting out and looking to get a quality keyboard, this makes a fine choice.

And now to the full review…

Features Of The Casio PX-130

In the bottom-line section of this review, we did mention that the PX-130 is for beginners. So, as you go through the features, keep that in mind. We repeat, it is not for pro players.

Design – Compact, Portable, And Sleek

As a beginner, you’ll probably be going from practice to home a lot. Or you might be staying in a dorm and therefore, cannot afford the space for a really heavy, space-consuming unit. And that’s where the PX-130 shines.

Casio Privia Piano Review

It is compact and portable, making this keyboard up to the task for convenient storage and portability. However, what impresses us immensely, is how Casio still manages to deliver on major features.

Check it out. The keyboard comes with 88 piano-sized keys. So, you don’t feel like you’re playing on a toy. It’s also important in building correct piano skills. And yet, it is compact enough to rest on a desk in your dorm without making your roommate call you a space hogger.

And despite all this, this keyboard still weighs a mere 25 pounds. So, carrying this will never be a problem.

And it’s not just about weight, the depth of a keyboard, is also very important in determining, whether it will be awkward to carry a piano or not. This measures at just 5 inches. So, it’s going to feel like carrying a textbook, except for the length of course.

Yamaha Piano

And, of course, we’re not going to forget that this piano does look good and you’ll be proud to own it.

Control Panel And Interface – Intuitive

We like how Casio makes the interface of this keyboard very intuitive and easy to navigate. And that’s because there are quite a number of features and functions on the PX-130.

So, it’s only right that navigating is easy. Interacting with a digital piano should never be difficult.

Casio Cdp-100 Digital Piano Review

Anyhow, the control panel resides just above the keybed. And you can even use the keys as a shortcut to select the functions you want every time.

This seems to be a trend with piano makers these days. And we are loving it because it just makes things a whole lot more convenient for all involved.

In all, the layout of this piano looks clean, well thought out, intuitive, and easy on the eyes. And this is important because you don’t want to scare beginners off with too cluttered a layout.

60 Demo Songs, Duet Mode – Features For The Beginning Pianist

We did tell you that this is for the beginners, right? Now, here are a few of the ways Casio looks out for beginners on this keyboard.

First off, the Casio PX-130 comes with 60 demo songs. And why are demo songs important? Well, for two reasons actually.

Demo songs are there for entertainment. You know, after a long day of practice, you can just kick back and enjoy some demo songs.

Well, to be honest, we know you’d rather just listen to your own playlist on your phone. But hey, if you ever develop the hankering for some beautiful demo music, they will be there for you. lol.

Next, and far more importantly, demo songs are very important in improving how well you play. They give you something to practice with on your own, even when your tutor is not around.

Now, unlike Yamaha, the Casio PX-130 does not come with a learning suite. So, you’d either have to take online piano lessons or get a tutor. But, at least, you can use these demo songs to enhance your playing and have productive lessons.

It also features a duet mode. This means that you and someone else can play side by side on the same keyboard. So, that someone else can be your tutor.

Sound Quality – Good Enough, Great Transitions

Being straight up with you. There’s only so much an entry-level piano can do in terms of delivering a sound close to that of an acoustic piano. And, whenever you see a company making an effort, you’ve got to commend it.

So, fair play to Casio, for an entry-level piano, this does a pretty decent job. It might not be a Korg but you can’t deny the quality at work here.

Casio uses a Linear Morphing System as the sound engine and it works well. It sourced the samples used for this piano from its concert grand under four different key pressures.

And to smoothen it all for beautiful continuity, Casio uses what it calls morphing technology.

In the end, you get smooth transitions from soft pianissimos to powerful fortissimos. We must add here that it is quite difficult to achieve such a smooth transition on a digital piano. But it seems Casio has worked a miracle here. It’s amazing!

Built-In Tones And Sound Effects – Decent

There are only 16 tones on the PX-130 which is understandably not mind-blowing. But at this price point, who are we to complain? Here are the built-in tones in the Casio PX-130:

• 3 Electric Pianos.
• 3 Grand Pianos: Classic, Modern, and Variation.
• 1 Vibraphone.
• 1 Harpsichord.
• 2 strings.
• 4 organs: 1 Pipe, 1 Jazz, 2 Electric.
• 2 Basses.

Now to the sound effects, you’ll find the chorus, reverb and the Acoustic Resonance DSP which should help you dress up your tones and give them a bit of oomph!

Keys – Great Action, Great Feel

Casio 870 Piano Review

All digital piano makers know that, if you’re going to make a digital keyboard feel, even remotely close to an acoustic piano, then you need hammer action. Yep, you’re going to have to put some tiny hammers into your digital keyboard.

And yes, it will make your piano somewhat heavier but it seems they’ve found a way around that because many lightweight portable keyboards now come with hammer action. Just ask Yamaha.

And you also have to make the action graded. This gives you a heavier feel on the low end and the lighter feel on the higher end just like what you have on an acoustic piano.

Does the PX-130 deliver on both? Of course, it does. But here’s the icing on the cake – the ivory and ebony keytops. It’s what makes this keyboard feel great to the touch without feeling plasticky.

Now, in all honesty, they might not feel as good as those found on the Casio PX-160, as those who have played it will know. But they are by no means bad either. They actually feel really nice.

Best Casio Digital Piano

And here’s something else. Because of the ivory/ebony keytops, even if your hands get moist from a prolonged practice, they won’t start to slip off from the keyboard.

Good news, init?

Pros

• Great sound.
• Can connect to an MIDI controller or computer thanks to the USB port.
• Keys feel good to the touch with a nice response.
• Compact, lightweight, and portable.

Cons

• Does not come with any on-board learning programs.
• Features only one USB port.

Now for the techies among us who need more detail, here are the specs of the Casio PX-130.

Casio PX-130 Specs

• 88 keys with Tri-Sensor Scaled Hammer action.
• Keys come with 3 level touch sensitivity.
• Max Polyphony: 128 notes.
• Sound engine: Linear Morphing AIF.
• Modes: Split, layer, and duet.
• Built-in tones: 16.
• Sound Effects: 4 Reverbs, 4 Choruses, Brilliance, DSP Acoustic Resonance System.
• Metronome and Transpose functions.
• 60 demo songs.
• Connectivity: 2 headphone jacks, 1 damper pedal jack, 3-pedal unit connector, Type B USB port.
• 2 speakers: 13 x 6 centimeters, 8W + 8W.
• Dimensions: 52 x 11.3 x 29.9 inches (with stand), 52 x 11.3 x 5.3 inches (without a stand).
• Weight: 46.7 pounds (with stand), 24.7 pounds (without stand).

Also see: Casio SA76 Review

Conclusion

This is a great piano for the beginner looking for something that feels close enough to the real thing. It works in any space and you can even play this on a bus or a train, if you fancy, because of its size.

Plus, it’s definitely good to know that it’s kind on the pocket as well.

Altogether, not a pro-level piano, but great job for an entry-level piano all the same.