Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards first family piano for my 8-10 years old

Good evening to everyone...can someone please help me choose the right piano for our family..the piano will be for all of us. all beginners. I know the answer to this question can be easy to find on the internet but it can be very confusing for a person with no musical experience and especially with too many options on the market..unfortunately, we don't have space for classic piano so we reduced our choice to the digital piano..at the end of summer we stopped in one of the piano shops down in England in Bonner music and tried the sound of a few of them..we did like the Kawai sound. The Kawai piano sound was very sweet and mellow to our ears..maybe this will help a little..our budget is max £1500..must have a Bluetooth connection for the option to connect with learning apps on Ipad.. thank you so much for your opinion..Daniel

Kawai ES520

Are you looking for a slab piano?

Console piano the Roland HP704 is just over your budget at Bonner's but is a nice unit.

I've had a piano for 50 years and I had to Google "slab piano" to see what on earth you are talking about.

In the digital piano section it is a known entity

Yamaha P515 is a slab digital piano as is Roland FP60. Really we need more information from the OP to advise him/her.

you can read this as a starting point https://azpianonews.blogspot.com/2018/10/top-3-best-digital-pianos-usa-reviews-low-price.html

if you liked Kawai mellow sound and do not want to get deep into piano selecting rabbit hole - just go for it - CN39 is a good, modern model, with Bluetooth as you requested.
if you are really tough on space - Kawai ES920 is a portable alternative, but in general it will take almost same amount of space on a stand.

Kawai ES520 (low end of your budget) Kawai ES920 (high end of your budget)

Since you are beginners it would seem the 520 is more appropriate.

thank you for the advice, we consider both options, is it the big difference of the keys action between the portable ones and stand alone ones; I would like best for the money and read that the quality of the keys is very important from the beginning especially for children. Could anyone tell me the pros and cons of the pianos stated above; the market is huge therefore quite confusing, I really appreciate your advice, thank you

All Kawai options mentioned above have very good reputations for the quality of the key action. You cannot go wrong with any of them.

also, if you decide to invest some time for piano selection - for a very informative FAQ about digital pianos I enjoy this reddit post a lot https://www.reddit.com/r/piano/wiki/faq#wiki_choosing_a_keyboard

ES920 and CN39 have same action, the difference between them is mostly a form-factor and speakers. ES520 has inferior action comparing to them, but still OK.

Main thing to know is that if you aim for 1000$ + piano from a known brand - it is hard to go wrong for beginner. We can ramble and be snobbish about weights, feel, sound and so on here - as I do in a topic I created to select a piano for myself, but in the end of the day I understand I will not see the difference from features on paper until I am average level pianist at least. So for beginner with $1k budget it is relatively safe to say - go to shop and buy what you feel better from normal brand.

It's a piano with a built in refrigeration compartment, just big enough to house a slab of beer
Helps prepare the mind when transitioning to a slower movement :-p

Slab pianos are more widely referred to as portable pianos or stage pianos.

Regarding your choice - as others have mentioned, try out the brand new Kawai ES920.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of ES520 vs. ES920 .....

https://www.worldpianonews.com/new-product/new-kawai-digital-pianos-es920-es-520/

I would get an ES920 with dedicated stand and triple pedal as shown here:

https://kawaius.com/product/es920/

before I would get a CN39. The RHIII action was updated to address some reliability issues with key switches. If you get a CN39 you run the risk of getting a piano that has been in inventory in a store and has the previous production version. The ES920 was just released so this issue is not a concern. You also could try to track the production version of a CN39 by serial number to avoid the problem.

Full spec comparison:

https://www.kawai-global.com/product_comparison/detail.php?n=es920,es520&ct=36

Kind regards,
James
x

thank you guys for helping me out...now you narrow my selection just between these 2 models es520 and es920.it is a big help for me because previously I was thinking about at least 5-6 models..es110,es520,es920,p125,p515,ca49.. Need to have a close look at the main differences between them and if it is worth paying an extra £400 on se920..regards Daniel

If the action is better on the ES920, then that alone is worth £400 extra. How big is your family? Probably works out to £100 each.

Be sure to try both of them out yourself - and compare them to an acoustic piano.

No, it is not worth paying extra for the ES-920 when the P-515 is so much better.

Time will prove me right, but for now you simply need to have faith in my gospel,


for I’ve been to the mountain-top
where a bright shining bush spoketh
it spoketh for thy sins a message that I
I, I, I humbly bringeth for thee

“get thy P-515, ye”!

I hear the P-615 is being released soon (NAMM 2021)...
Why would anyone buy a soon-to-be obsolete P-515?!