Yamaha DGX505-AD DGX505 88-key Electronic Piano Keyboard Review

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(More customer reviews)So I'm 19 living in a dorm room on campus. I figured the Clavinova was way too steep on my pockets. I played piano once upon a time, but never took lesssons really. I was attracted to the price of this keyboard and the fact that it was actually full-size. Being sick and tired of my 61-key keyboard, I figured I'd go seek out shopping for a better one and one that is full size.
I don't know digital pianos too well but from experience I've noticed that Yamaha and Roland were pretty formidable with their products. I wouldn't have given a second look to the other brands. I've tried this product out at a store some time ago several times before actually thinking about buying it. I thought it was very nice for a consumer based instrument.
After reading reviews and what not, I was determined then that I would put serious thought into buying it. One minute later I was already pulling out my card to pay for this online. After receiving the product, I was faced with an even bigger burden... carrying it back across campus to my dorm room.
So the package was pretty big. Makes for a good workout if you plan on carrying it back to your home. The contents were packed nicely. The stand was very easy to setup too. Being a computer freak, I have the keyboard sitting next to my computer. The whole USB interface was another thing that turned me on about the keyboard. Little did i know how great it would become when I actually connected it to my computer. The software was easy to use. I can transfer MIDI files to the keyboard via USB and store them on little memory cards.
The thing boasts about how you can take midi files and have them display the sheet music on the LCD screen. I thought that was nifty and all, but I would never use that feature. I'd rather have a software included that'll put the midi file on sheet music ready to be printed.
The "Digital Music Notebook" is a very awesome utility in my opinion. I found it to be so good that I'd place my computer monitor on where my sheet music would go on the keyboard whenever I'm using it with my keyboard (thank goodness it isn't CRT!). So you can use this notebook software to buy/download sheet music digitally. I thought it was pretty lame that you can only print it once (I understand a good few digital sheet vendors do it this way too). Nonetheless, after buying the sheet music, you can view it through the software and have it blow up on your monitor so you can see it full size. You can also make the software play the sheet music (it'll play through your computer or you can configure it to play through the keyboard). A cool thing about it is that you can turn on the learning mode through that software and it'll control your keyboard for it (i.e. there's a learning mode where the song'll play and wait for you to hit the right keys before moving on.) It'll display what keys you need to hit through the software and show you what key's you hit. I thought this whole digital notebook software interface thing was very well done. I thought that the USB interface was solely used for transferring MIDI files.
Though I'm not too much of a piano purist, I think the default piano sound is very nice. This thing holds like over 400 different types of sounds (instruments, voices, sound effects). To be honest, I would rather have them spent more time on perfecting the piano sound, eliminate all other preset voices/styles/songs on the keyboard, and just have it play that one piano sound.
Now, some of the gripes I have with the keyboard.
The sustain pedal isn't all too great. It works fine, but it doesn't really have the feel I'd like it to have. I'm not too whiny about it though to make me want to buy a sustain pedal they sell separately that's made to look like a real piano pedal. The pedal that comes with the keyboard serves its purpose though. If I knew this before buying the keyboard, I would've still bought it anyway.
The piano keys are not weighted. Looking at the picture, one can see that the keys are "fully" shaped like a piano rather than have spaces underneath the keys that the low-end keyboards have. I kinda accidently assumed that it was weighted because of the way they looked. This was back before I test drove it at a store. Playing on a keyboard is much different than playing on a piano. It'll be easier to adjust to a keyboard from a piano than vice versa. If anything, this is probably its biggest weakness in my opinion, but I guess to keep a piano at this price with such a feature wouldn't be too possible.
Overall, I think this digital keyboard is great. Travelling with it isn't bad either if you wish to travel with it. The keyboard has inspired me to practice the instrument more versus the 61-key instrumental junk I had before.
If you're a college student who enjoys playing the piano. I'd recommend this keyboard if you have the room in your dorm. This keyboard is worthy enough for enduring hours and hours of practicing songs and worthy enough if you want to seranade to a special someone or perform for a group (travel friendly once you have the keyboard bag, especially since you won't need to necessarily carry an amplifier with you since speakers are built-in or you can plug one in if you wanted to). It has a 32-note polyphony, but I don't think I'd even go that far. It's nice to know that you have that sort of leaway.
If you're a parent who has a kid growing up and you want them to learn piano, I probably wouldn't recommend this keyboard because of a lack of weighted keys. At that point, I think it would be more advantageous to invest in a Yamaha Cavinova, a Roland Digital Keyboard, or simply a real piano.
This has probably been the best consumer based keyboard I've used. If I were to get a new keyboard in the future, It'll be ranged between $1500-2000. I probably wouldn't be one who'd jump to buy the DGX-506 (if it were to hypothetically come out). For the price range, I couldn't imagine another keyboard that can compete with the DGX-505.

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