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I've decided to buy Casio GP400, I've tested it first at the beginning of this year and I was instantly impressed with both sound and mostly keyboard. For those who don't know GP is the new series of hybrid pianos developed by Casio along with C.Bechstein. What they did together is keyboard(full wooden long keys) and Bechstein piano sound from D282 grand piano and the result is really good There are some people that reject them altogether because of lack of escapement in action so I'm gonna explain that thing a bit. You can see how the Casio action looks here: https://andertons.scdn2.secure.raxcdn.com/2/1/images/catalog/i/xl_110780-Hammer-Action---Bullet.JPG
Anyway they didn't want to do escapement because... it is basicaly not needed in digital piano, yes the simulation would be a bit better BUT the piano itself would need maintenance which is what most people avoid also it is really not big of the deal. While you play acoustic piano normally you don't even feel escapement that much. If the piano is well regulated you feel it mostly if you try to press the key the slowest possible way. Most importantly even without escapement feature this Casio action is still best from all I've tested(after Avant Grand) in terms of feel and responsiveness, Sometimes I can really forget it is digital.piano.
As for sound there are 3 concert grand piano sounds in Casio GP: Berlin(Bechstein), Hamburg(Steinway), Vienna(Boesendorfer) I definitely liked Berlin and Hamburg most. In some recordings sound sometimes seems a bit flat/digital but via piano speakers it's really, really good. Especially Berlin grand has depth throughout whole piano range. You can listen to samples of all 3 sounds here: http://music.casio.com/en/products/digital_pianos/ghs/sound/
and in many videos on youtube if anyone becomes more interested.
Resonances in GP pianos are very well done, in 400 and 500 models there are all wanted resonance features like open string resonance, aliquot resonance etc. Previously I had Roland HP605 which is basically the king of resonances in digital piano world but GP pianos hold out nicely and for me they win with their sound color which feels more natural overall.
Those pianos also have a thing called "Concert Play" feature" which are basicaly symphonic recordings of a lot of easy arranged pieces for both piano and orchestra and we can play our piano part along with those recordings. It's pretty nice but don't expect full concertos(unfortunatelly).
That's all I can think of for a short review. I'm gonna make video review in the upcoming weeks and some piano recordings later.
For now I urge you to test those pianos yourself and ask me any questions you want

I was playing once GP400 and next to it CA97. While due to brighte sounds, Casio sounds more emotional, but it is dead compared to Kawai. And it sounds good only with the lid open. If you will close the lid, than the sound is horridly dead and muddy. If you can have it always open that good, but I can't and couldn't find my piano voice there.

Nevertheless, its most important that you are happy with it.

Well Ca97 with it's soundboard system has amazing, one of the kind sound and I won't argue with that. I was able to try them side by side as well. What do you mean sound is dead? All of them?

I was looking at these myself and ended up getting the Roland HP603.

So perfect opportunity to ask some questions:

1. Coming from the Roland, you still think the Casio has a noticeably better key action? I heard the reverse from a dealer of both Casios and Rolands, so am surprised. What, in your opinion, is the biggest difference in the key action?
2. I read that one of the differences in the GP400 vs the 300 is that it includes some kind of finger vibration, something like a rumble kit for your finger. Do you notice that at all?
3. Completely gauche, but how much did you end up paying for it? One of the reasons we ended up going for the Roland was that the Casio, here in the US, cost much more, but looking at European prices and the Casio is more reasonable.

I've played a GP500 (same as GP400 but with posher case - which is ironic seeing as how flimsily they are made).

I found the piano tones lacking sustain; they all seem to die off rather quickly. The casing is a bit el-cheapo, like inexpensive flat-pack furniture. The action is okay; very fast feeling but to me doesn't quite have the finely engineered and fluid feel of a Kawai with wooden keys. The onboard speakers were just about okay. Better than the Yamaha CLP575 in my opinion, which was in the same room, but very inferior to the Kawai CS11 (which was the one I bought in the end).

Despite my negative opinions expressed above I thought it was a good start. I came away feeling like the next generation will be proper contenders.

If the deal on the GP400 is really fantastic I could fully understand someone choosing it. But only if the deal was stellar.

This is still good choice considering prices.
1. Unfortunatelly dealers tend to say things they need to say to sell what they want to sell In most cases dealer has 1 or 2 main piano brands, at least that's how it is in my city so they try and convince you to what they are selling, which is natural but not always conveying truth. I'm trying to be objective here and so I'd say on the one hand Roland is more like a real acoustic action because of the "escapement" but on the other hand all other factors are better on Casio, which is weight, feel, return time etc. Roland's action is still one of the best atm.
2. Never heard of it. The differences between 300 and 400 models are:
-sound resonances(more on GP400)
-more additional sounds
-scene creation option
-bigger cabinet
Keyboard, action and main sounds are THE SAME in all GP models.
3. You mean how much? It costs the same amount of money in my country as it is in all Europe which is around 3500 euro. So I had to pay additional money after I sold my Roland. Yes it is much more expensive even than HP605 but I think the action is worth it and it is at least worth testing.

I haven't played the GP400, but I did test the GP300 for a while. I can understand why some people will like it, but I personally found the Kawai GF2 action to be substantially better. The sound on the GP300 was quite poor, but I understand the GP400/500 have much better sound. Worth testing, definitely, and to be considered a contender, but I think it's still a work in progress. The next iteration could be really interesting.

Maybe the settings were a bit off? I love this GP300 demo: https://youtu.be/DSf3g66sH0c

I tried both the GP300 and GP500 recently. Even turning the volume up to max hardly gave any sort of decent sound. Very disappointed.

It's entirely possible, although I did play around with the settings quite a bit during my tests (and did other things like listening through the builtin speakers and through headphones). I would caution against paying too much attention to sound demonstrations of anything in videos. They are the fraught with all sorts of issues, including the technology that made the recording, the technology through which it's being played back, and in many cases, audio production to manipulate the sound, including the very common use of compressors. Collectively these have the effect of making the sound in the video not reliably representative of the sound you actually get when you play the thing itself. There is, for example, a Youtube video showing how great the sound of the Ivory II ACD, and a whole thread on here of people who were completely unable to reproduce that sound themselves, because the guy clearly did some audio post-processing on the video.

I agree that it might sometimes be the case but I don't think any of the GP demos are like that because I was able to reproduce the sound and dynamics overall by myself. Although I'd love to try this piece and compare it to demo: https://soundcloud.com/casio_official/berlin-grand
Anyone knows the title for this?

If you like the keyboard, that's good for you. I wrote about it vs. AvantGrand and GFII in a thread called "High performance digital pianos (GP300 vs N1)". I believe that the hammer geometry on the Casio makes it so that it feels closer to a real piano than the GFII, but the squishy feeling at the bottom of the key due to the thick felt block that the hammer compresses makes it very unpleasant to play. That doesn't mean it's not a good instrument; I think a squishy keybed probably makes it a really good practice instrument. However because the price was so high (I was quoted ~2900 for a GP300) I didn't think it was worth it.

I believe most digital actions I've tried have noticeably squishier key-down stops than acoustics, mainly due to the greater requirement for noise damping. I've thought this of the GF1 and RM3 Grand actions too. I've never tried a Casio GP so it'd be interesting to see if it's even more squishy...

Interesting, I've never noticed that squishyiness thing at all but now that I try it yeah those keys are a bit squishy at the end press phase. I'm gonna look into that and try to find the differences, Casio claims it is keyboard is the same as in Bechstein acoustic pianos so maybe they have such thick felt at the bottom in them? Honestly I've never played acoustic Bechstein so I don't know.
I've read on this forum though that on Kawai CA on the other hand there is sometimes problem with to thin felt. I guess better for it to be thicker? Hopefully Casio's GP keyboard will not be noisy in time thanks to that and overall construction.

Sorry but that is completely untrue. It isn't the same and in fact they don't claim it is the same. They claim it was developed in conjunction with Bechstein.

I would bet that what that means in reality is that they (Casio) have designed the action along the lines of the Kawai wooden digital piano action. They have then put a bit of plastic on the end of it that in shape resembles the hammer in a grand piano to make it look more impressive. They have then paid some money to Bechstein in order to use their name and had some tacky little plates made up to stick on the front saying Bechstein to impress potential customers, hoping that said customers assume it's got a real Bechstein action in it - which it emphatically does not.

I would say the squishiness is unique to the Casio GP series. I had a Yamaha GT2, Roland FP-7F, and have played numerous other instruments including a CA67, etc. None of them have significant squishiness, only the Casio does. There was a Bechstein sitting right next to the GP-400 in the shop and obviously the keybed felt very different. I played the CA67 the same day and felt that the keybed was not any squishier than an acoustic.

Again, think of it as a feature. You will need to try much harder to play arpeggios accurately for example, but switching to a real piano should be easy after.

Keyboard, not action, those are two different things. Whole action was developed in conjunction with Bechstein- yes but in that case it means that Bechstein did keyboard(keys, keybed etc.) and Casio did upper part of action if you understand what I mean.
http://hallpiano.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Screen-Shot-2017-02-17-at-5.41.51-PM.png
Here's good comparison.So yeah whole action was NOT made by Bechstein but bottom part of it seems like it was.



Interesting, what Bechstein model did you compare it to? Also why harder to play arpeggios? Honestly if we are at this subject for me it seems even easier to play on Casio than other digital/acoustic pianos but obviously this may be really subjective thing. One thing I can say for certain that switching to acoustic from GP is not hard.

British cynicism is THE best in the world!

It's unbelievable that Bechstein would give their name to a squishy action. a clashy brashy sound, yes. But not a squishy action.

One has to congratulate Casio's marketing team regarding their achievement of putting the idea into customers' brains, that the GP500/400/300 action (or keyboard) is actually, at least somewhat/in part, a Bechstein action. If you read their material closely, you can see that they never actually claim this. I think in the past the wording was even more suggestive, but these days, the only reference to "Bechstein" that you can find (or at least that I could find) on the related Casio webpages is:

That's it. No longer any mentioning of "designed by Bechstein" or "designed by Casio in cooperation with Bechstein" or even "manufactured (partially) by Bechstein". Only "using same materials and processes". Well, using spruce wood and processeses like sawing, sanding, drilling, planing, glueing, drying... That's probably true for all wooden DP actions.

I would bet that I remember that initially the marketing material did lay on the Bechstein cooperation much more strongly (I think I remember reading something like "designed by Casio with the assistance of Bechstein" or something similar). I wonder where these claims have gone and why the website no longer has them?

My guess is that this was indeed a simple "We give you money, you allow us to use your name" deal, and Casio initially went a bit too far, and Bechstein (or a competitor) complained behind the scenes, so they had to dial it back a bit.

Ha! But as JoBert ably proves we don't have a monopoly on it! I'd take being called cynical as a compliment (but it's not always a desirable trait...).