Update (Nov 2020): These recommendations also apply to the 2020 holiday season.
Researching a major purchase involves balancing the price and features of the thing you’re looking to buy. When researching the purchase of a digital piano, these features depend on the purpose of the piano. Is this something you will need to travel with? Will you be performing on this piano at a venue? What are you going to use it for?
In this guide, we are going to focus on instruments for people who are looking for a “living room” piano that a beginning or intermediate pianist can learn on and grow with. This means that we are only looking at instruments that have 88 properly weighted keys, built-in speakers, and USB connectivity (for connection to music learning apps.)
I chose a budget of $500 for this guide because $499 is a common price point for budget keyboards, and it’s generally at the top of the price range friends ask me about when they’re looking for advice. I’ll tell you what I tell them: there’s a tradeoff between sound quality, build quality, and feature set at this price point. You’re not going to get an instrument that sounds great, is well-built, and that has a lot of features.
But $500 is your budget. Not a problem! There’s good ones out there. I’ve chosen to recommend based on two different criteria: Most Piano-Like, for the digital piano that performs best overall as an instrument, and Best Features, for the instrument that offers the best collection of features at the price range.
I’ve tested a dozen different models, and am very confident in these recommendations!
🚨Cautionary Note regarding Pianos under $350🚨
Before getting into my recommendations, I want to warn you: if your goal is learning the piano, I would not recommend buying a new digital piano that retails for under $350. Digital pianos at this price level are generally cheaply made, which means they suffer from flimsy construction and/or poor sound quality. This includes the dozens of discount instruments available from places like Walmart.com, but also applies to popular music store brands like the Williams Sonata, as well as the low-cost options by respected instrument companies, like the Yamaha Piaggero or the Roland Go:Piano.
Although the marketing for these instruments includes language like “lush tones with outstanding clarity and volume,” there does not seem to be a way for a company to actually deliver a good-sounding instrument in this price range. In my experience, the speakers in this type of piano are generally not powerful enough to handle even their own medium-loud volume, meaning that these pianos suffer from audio distortion when turned up beyond ¾ the way. And they tend to be flimsy, with keys that do not have the proper weight that I would want for a student. You can do better.
This being said, if you require something that is very portable, or if your budget is significantly less than $500 and you want a new instrument, I know of two choices that are not terrible: the Roland GO:Piano 88 and the Williams Allegro III. I’ve tried both of these; they have enough features that they are fun to use despite not sounding or feeling good enough for my full recommendation as a living room piano.
Instead of a new digital keyboard, at this price point I usually advise people to look to the used marketplace for a decent keyboard that retails for about $500. For example, pianos from the solid Yamaha P-series are very common, so there’s probably someone selling one in your area, and you might be able to negotiate the price down to $400.
Also, if money is the issue, maybe consider getting an actual piano! People are always getting rid of their old pianos, and some are actually in good condition. There’s probably one for free or very cheap on your local Facebook marketplace. The cost of a piano move and a tuning is about the same as a Williams Allegro.
On to the instruments I actually recommend!
Most Piano-Like: Yamaha P-45B
If you are looking for a piano-like instrument for under $500, you cannot beat the Yamaha P-45. This is the entry-level model in Yamaha’s solid and very popular P-series. Although it lacks anything resembling additional features (for example, it does not even have buttons to change between its limited set of sounds,) its sound quality and overall piano-likeness towers over its competition. This has been the trend for years with Yamaha: their low-cost digital pianos do not sacrifice sound quality for lower cost. In fact, you’re getting the same piano sound in the P-45 that you’d get in their higher-end P-series pianos, just with limited features and a slightly less piano-like feel. Good-quality speakers relative to its competitors and a relatively sturdy design round out the reasons why this the best digital piano you can by for under $500, by far. You can usually get a package deal for under $600, and with Black Friday pricing you might even get the whole package for under $500.
Best Features: Roland FP10
Although significantly inferior to the Yamaha P-45 in terms of sound quality and overall piano-ness, the Bluetooth connectivity of the Roland FP10 wins it the award for Best Features in the under $500 category, because this means a piano student can connect to tablet-based learning apps without any additional cables. It’s a Roland, so the built-in sounds are very good, but the middling speaker quality means that you don’t get to fully appreciate them. But this might not bother the beginning pianist, and once you’re used to it, you probably won’t remember the difference.
To clarify: With the Roland FP-series, the sound & build quality gets significantly better as you go up the product range. I own the FP 50 (Black Friday pricing around $1200) and it sounds like a dream and is built like a tank.
Runner Up: Casio PX-160
Casio has come a long way since its days as being primarily known as the company that made the Toy Piano & Tiny Watch You Got For Christmas. The Privia series, in particular, has grown by leaps and bounds over the past two decades. The Privia PX-160 is Casio’s best effort to date at matching the value and sound quality of their more established competitors at the $499 price point. Unfortunately, their latest offering falls a bit short of a full recommendation due to its inferior sound quality as compared with the Yamaha P-45, and its lack of Bluetooth functionality as compared to the Roland FP-10. Although its larger speakers appear to be better than those of the Roland FP-10, this is offset by the fact that its piano samples are relatively stale and tinny, which is an issue even with Casio’s higher-end Privia models. If they could get their samples to sound richer and more natural, this would be an easy instrument to recommend.
This being said, these tend to be “on sale” a lot more often than Yamaha and Roland products, so there’s that.
That’s it for part 1! In part two, I’ll be looking at the best pianos under $800.