Ranking the Best Cheap Digital Pianos with Weighted Keys

These days, you can get a great digital piano for under $1,000. But with so many options, how do you determine the best cheap digital piano on the market? 

To help narrow down your options quickly, here’s a breakdown of the best pianos by budget. Whether you’re looking for the most affordable digital piano or something a little more advanced, this table gives you a snapshot of where each model fits price-wise.

PRICE	PIANOS
Under $500	Yamaha P-143, Casio CDP-S360, Donner DEP-20
$500–$700	Yamaha P-125a, Roland FP-30X
$700–$1,000	Kawai ES120, Yamaha DGX-670

PHOTO	PIANO
	Yamaha P-143
	Casio CDP-S360
	Roland FP-30X
	Alesis Prestige Artist
	Casio PX-S3100

Best Cheap Digital Pianos to Buy

The best cheap digital pianos on the market are the following:

• Yamaha P-143 & Yamaha P-45
• Donner DEP-20
• Casio CDP-S360
• Roland FP-30X
• Yamaha P-125a
• Kawai ES120
• Yamaha DGX-670

The Donner DEP-20 is the best piano on this list, as it provides very good value for the money.  With that said, the Yamaha P-143 is also a great portable digital piano with good sound and touch response, and helpful learning features to aid beginners.

If you’re willing to spend more than $500, then the Yamaha DGX 670 is a great piano as well. The DGX-670 offers outstanding sound and top notch key action to make it a wonderful choice for beginners and intermediates.

How to Choose a Cheap Digital Piano (Buyer’s Guide)

Not sure what to look for in a digital piano under $1,000? Here are the key features that make a real difference in your playing experience:

Weighted Keys

Always buy a digital piano with fully weighted hammer action keys for a realistic piano feel. 

Pianos with actions like GHC (Graded Hammer Compact) or GHS (Graded Hammer Standard) for Yamaha, or PHA-4 (Progressive Hammer Action) for Roland, and Scaled Hammer Action for Casio are all entry-level key actions that feel very good for beginners and intermediate players.

Number of Keys

An 88-key piano is best for learning piano properly. Some cheaper keyboards have 61 or 76 keys.  While that’s fine for casual use, serious piano players need an 88-key keyboard. 

Polyphony

Polyphony refers to how many notes can play at once before decay begins. At least 64-note polyphony is recommended, though 128 or 192 is best for playing complex musical pieces. 

Connectivity

Look for USB MIDI output if you want to connect to learning apps like Flowkey or Simply Piano. Some models offer Bluetooth connectivity as well.

Built-In Speakers

Most piano models have built in speakers.  If you plan to play inside a large venue (like a church), then louder speakers or external amplification may be needed.  If you practice the piano at night, then headphones are recommended as well.  

Portability/

Planning to move the piano frequently or you’re a gigging musician? If so, prioritize models under 30 lbs, though 25 lbs is most ideal. A piano model that prioritizes being slimmer and lighter is the Yamaha P-143.

You can learn more about finding the best affordable digital piano here.

BEST SELLERS
1) Yamaha P-71
2) Yamaha P-225
3) Roland FP-30X

Yamaha P-143 (and Yamaha P-45)

For around $500, you can get one of the more popular portable digital pianos: the Yamaha P-143.  The Yamaha P-143 replaces the very popular Yamaha P-45, and manages to be a slimmer and more compact digital piano.

The Yamaha P-143 comes with the Graded Hammer Compact (GHC) key action.  The GHC action is similar to the P-45’s Graded Hammer Standard action, but since the mechanisms in the P-143 are smaller, it allows the P-143 to be a slimmer and more lightweight piano.

The Yamaha P-143 is a great instrument for beginners looking to learn, as well.  It comes with a Duo Mode, allowing you to split the keyboard in half.  A teacher can sit on one side, a student on the other side, and each person gets their own “middle C.”

It’s an excellent way to practice and develop playing skills on the Yamaha P-143.

While the P-143 has 64 note polyphony, the piano only supports a sustain pedal.  Those seeking digital pianos with pedals might want a three pedal unit like the Yamaha FC35.  If so, you’ll have to settle for the older Yamaha P-45, which supports three pedal unit connectivity.

I will point out that the “P” in P-143 means “portable,” meaning it’s a piano you can take on the road if you’re a gigging musician. 

The difference between a portable digital piano and an upright piano, for example, is that a digital upright comes permanently housed in a “furniture” type unit and usually has a better speaker system, whereas a stage or portable piano is basically just the keyboard. 

The L-100 digital piano stand is the dedicated stand designed for the P-143.

Donner DEP-20

The Donner DEP-20 is a cheaper piano that provides excellent value for the money.  Priced at about $400, this is another portable piano that provides immersive sound and good learning features.

The DEP-20 is a fully weighted, 88-key keyboard.  Like the Yamaha P-143, the Donner DEP-20 has learning features like split mode recording functionality.  But it also has Dual Tone mode, a creative feature that combines two voices together. 

With Dual Tone mode, a beginner can experiment with combining the sound of piano and strings, or piano and organ, together into one newly created tone.  This adds both fun and flexibility as a piano player, providing you with numerous sound possibilities. 

While the P-143 comes with only 64 notes of polyphony and has no LCD screen, the Donner has 128 notes of polyphony and does come with a small backlit LCD screen. Even though the P-143 can be used with Yamaha’s Smart Pianist app in order to interact with a bigger screen, I still love that the Donner DEP-20 implements a LCD screen on their piano.

Donner also has a matching wooden stand with three traditional pedals (soft, sostenuto, sustain), giving it a more traditional piano playing experience.  

This is actually better than what the Yamaha P-143 provides players (only sustain pedal support), though the P-45 does work with a three pedal unit.

Overall, the Donner DEP-20 is a very popular piano brand on Amazon, and it provides great value for your money here.

PHOTO	PIANO
	Yamaha P-143
	Casio CDP-S360
	Roland FP-30X
	Alesis Prestige Artist
	Casio PX-S3100

Casio CDP-S360

The Casio CDP-S360 is truly an excellent budget digital piano. It has a lot of great elements on board (and in its size) that will likely satisfy tons of people looking to find a great digital piano at an even greater price.

So what’s to love about the CDP-S360? Well, let’s first talk about its size. The first thing you’re going to notice is that this is a compact, slim piano design. At just 24 lbs, this is a lightweight portable piano that you’re easily able to transfer from room to room, to and from school, and even transport to and from the occasional gig.

But what I love about the Casio CDP-S360 is that, while it is a lightweight piano physically, its not a lightweight instrument internally. In fact, this piano provides you with 700 built in tones. The polyphony is 128 notes, which I think is surprisingly impressive for an instrument at this price point.

With very good sound for the money, and even a backlit LCD display that allows you to navigate the piano with ease, this is probably one of the best cheap digital pianos available on the market.

You can read more about Casio digital pianos here.

Roland FP-30X

The FP-30X is a distinct step up from the Yamaha P45, but has a higher price tag at around $700.

However, for the extra $300 you get a lot of keyboard. If the P45 is a great piano for a learner, then the FP-30X is a great stage piano for the gigging musician and learner alike. With a higher polyphony of 128, this keyboard sounds altogether more realistic, driven by Roland’s fantastic SuperNATURAL sound engine.

The keyboard feel is amazing – Roland really have perfected the weighting of a digital piano keyboard. This superlative weighting, however, does come at a cost – the P45 is 25 lbs in weight, whilst the FP-30X is 31 lbs which is quite the difference for the gigging musician. A stage piano needs to be portable, so weight is always a factor to consider.

The FP-30X has a fantastic 5 dynamic sensors underneath the keys which respond perfectly to your expressive play, so this is an instrument that you can easily fall in love with very quickly indeed. With 6 great piano voices and 7 super funky electric pianos this is a keyboard that is perfect for the live soul band.

With a combination of 22 other voices, including strings and various oddities such as “Thum Voice” (which can only be described as bizarre and useless), this is a digital stage piano that will enthral as much as it will provide years of playing bliss.

The user-interface certainly isn’t the best, but with some practice, you get used to it fairly quickly. I would hardly say it’s a perfect instrument to swap instrumental sounds quickly, but it’s not as bad as some others. With on-board Bluetooth, however, you’ll find plenty of iOS and Android apps to keep your sound-set ever growing.

You can read more on Roland digital pianos here.

Yamaha P-125a

The Yamaha P-125 is the next step up from the P45 and features the more sophisticated CF sampling technology.

The P125 has a great sound-set and will set you back around $600, so it sits in-between the P45 and the FP30 in terms of price. The P125 has an infinitely better user-interface that the FP30, 192 note polyphony and 14 on-board instrumental voices.

The piano sound is really well rounded and crisp. Yamaha sampling feels a little too polished and perfect for me. It feels as though it lacks something of the tonal color of the Roland SuperNATURAL engine which feels like the most realistic representation of the acoustic instrument to me.

However, I’d really recommend that you try both keyboards out for yourself and gauge which of the sound-sets you prefer.

The keyboard of P125 is a little heavy in comparison with the famously lighter touch of Kawai and Roland keyboards.

Again, this is a personal preference – the P125 has a really responsive keyboard that facilitates an impressively expressive palette of play but, for me, the Roland always wins hands-down.

The on-board speakers of the P125 are powerful and deliver a punchy sound that will be perfectly adequate for playing either at home or in the corner of a small restaurant.

For the price, you get a fantastic keyboard for the learner and a great cross-over for the gigging musician.

• You can read our review of the Yamaha P-125 right here.

Kawai ES120

This piano was a real surprise to me. This is quite an unassuming little number – it looks a little plasticky and light-weight at first glance. But then you play it and you fall in love.

For around $900 (yes, the price is creeping up, but there are many pianos that cost far more money), you can take home this beautiful portable digital piano. And taking it home will be fairly easy, because this is a light-as-a-feather at approximately 27.6 lbs.

I keep mentioning weight because, for a stage piano, portability is a must. I’ve got the Roland FP3 (an earlier, now discontinued member of the FP family) and it’s a colossal 40 lbs!

The ES120 is a total surprise to play. I instantly fell in love with its keyboard – so light and responsive, with a great speaker-set delivering super-high quality audio, this really is one of the best cheap digital pianos on the market.

Kawai has nearly 100 years of experience in crafting acoustic grand pianos, so it’s of no surprise that they’ve translated this skill into their great digital pianos. I love their digital uprights – the CN range provide amazing results from (again) fairly modest outer shells – but they are closer to the $2000 range, so we’re not exploring those for the purposes of this article.

The keyboard feels great to play with a wonderfully bouncy key-off action, replicating the feel of a real grand piano. However, the user-interface is clunky as hell. Changing voices is a case of repeated presses of various buttons, so if you’re taking this out live, then it might not be the best interface to whizz from one instrumental sound to another with.

However, I’ve been a gigging musician for many years, and there have been very rare occasions where I’ve needed to change sounds, so whether this is an issue for you is really down to your specific requirements.

This instrument comes as a standard stage piano, but can be customized with a stand and a foot-pedal board, so it can certainly become a more permanent part of the furniture for the home player or learner.

You can read more about Kawai digital pianos here.

Yamaha DGX-670

The DGX-670 doesn’t look like a professional instrument. It has the presentation layout of quite a low-end keyboard, usually intended for the non-piano player. But don’t write it off straight away – it has some great features.

It has a great instrumental voice-set, such as Pure CF grand piano samples, with 192 note polyphony, 151 other instrumental voices and a wide selection of rhythms and accompaniment modes. You can plug a microphone into the instrument which has a pre-amp and a digital effects suite that enhance your vocal performance.

There are a selection of accompaniment modes that are slightly cheesy, but for the home singer-songwriter, or perhaps the soloist wanting to travel light on the road, these will produce good demo versions of your songs.

The sounds are editable via the really expansive LCD user-display, so for the price, this instrument offers the best user interface of them all. There are various recording modes, allowing recordings of up to 6 layered instrumental tracks and you can bounce your recordings (at CD quality) to USB for transferral to a computer or CD.

The keyboard is good – an 88-note, fully weighted, Graded Hammer Standard. This keyboard has a lighter touch than either the P45, the P125 and the Clavinova range, so it’s a good choice unless you’re a particularly heavy-handed player.

The DGX-670 is packed with brilliant features and I’d really urge you to go and try one out. It might not be what you’re looking for, exactly, if you’re just a piano player or a learner, but if you’re a singer wanting to practice at home, this is a fantastic bit of kit.

What’s the Top Choice?

My recommendation for the best cheap digital piano with weighted keys is the Donner DEP-20, with a close second being a tie between the Yamaha P-143 and Yamaha P-45.

All three of these pianos offer excellent learning features, have fully weighted keys, and cost less than $500.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best digital piano under $500?

The Donner DEP-20 and Yamaha P-143 are considered the best overall digital pianos under $500, thanks to their realistic key feel, quality sound engine, and slim designs.

Are weighted keys important for beginners?

Yes, especially if you plan to transition to an acoustic piano in the future. Weighted keys help build proper finger strength and technique.  

What’s the difference between semi-weighted and fully-weighted keys?

Semi-weighted keys use springs and are lighter. Fully-weighted keys simulate the mechanical resistance of real piano hammers, offering better realism.  Ultimately, fully weighted keys on a digital piano best mimic the feel of real piano keys on a traditional piano.

Is a digital piano better than a keyboard?

For learning piano, yes. Digital pianos are designed to replicate an acoustic piano’s feel and sound, while keyboards often prioritize portability, convenience and synth-like features.

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