Casio MZ-X500 Review

This keyboard sounds surprisingly good and offers a lot of features for the price including slider controls and assignable pads which is unmatched by other manufacturers. The MZ-X500 is indeed a feature-packed for a keyboard that costs below Php50,000.

I haven't tested the full potential of the assignable pads and the sliders but I can imagine, if given enough time, that these will come in handy to augment your performances.

Another interesting feature that I felt like didn't meet my expectation was the hex layers. It's essentially a bunch of instruments layered, splitted, and velocity-switched on the entire keyboard. I haven't figured out if it's fully programmable but playing one of the presets did not quite impress me.

There's going to be a corner cut somewhere and it is in the sound quality. Don't get me wrong. The piano is very playable and responsive with its multiple velocity samples but it's not the most realistic piano I've heard. The decay feels unnaturally short. It might work well other genre of music but for slow church songs, it's obvious.

The styles too are not as intricate as the ones in Yamaha. Coupled with the lower quality sounds, it sounds kinda synthetic and cheap.

Thankfully, they didn't skimp on the build quality and it feels sturdy enough to survive the usual bumps and drops when taking this keyboard on the go.

As a spoiled Yamaha user, I do not see myself switching to this unless I'm really on limited budget and wanted the large amount of controls this keyboard offers.

If you can stretch your budget a bit more and if you don't need the pads, sliders, sound editing, and extra outputs, consider the Yamaha PSR S670. Another interesting offering from Casio is their PX-350 or PX-360 from their Privia line.

I've inquired a bunch of Crescendo stores if they have a stock of the PX-350 or PX-360 but they always seem to have no stock. That keyboard has 88 weighted keys, relatively good piano sounds, registration memory, line out, lightweight and other useful features for church musicians.

Available at: Crescendo Music Stores
Cost: 35k for straight cash

Roland FP60 Review

 
If you're looking for a portable weighted keyboard with line out for your church, it's hard to recommend the FP90.

For around Php100,000, you get a nicely textured 88 weighted keys with bluetooth capability and a 3 sliders for controlling the equalizer and volume sliders for individual parts which I found useful for controlling the volume of the layered voice or sound.

There's also the piano designer buried in the function menu where you can change the parameters of the piano sound to your liking including the brightness and if the lid is open or not.

However during my play test, I found the piano sound surprisingly underwhelming. It sounds muffled or lifeless. No amount of tinkering with the equalizer and piano designer made it sound perfect in my ear.

It could be because of the speakers. Either way, you might find a need to buy a separate amplifier or good headphones to do the piano sound justice which is unthinkable for a piano costing this much. The Yamaha P-125 and DGX-660 is much cheaper and sounds subjectively better.

The other sounds are okay. The strings sound rich and very playable. The pipe organ is passable.

The bluetooth app works for both Android and iOS. However, it's almost useless when trying to use it to control and play along with auto-accompaniment because of the horrible lag (at least on Android). As a live performer, you might as well forget that this feature exists. Beginners who are learning to play piano may find its other features helpful though.

If you are a church pianist looking for just a good weighted keyboard and piano sound, consider the FP30 or FP60 instead. For Yamaha, there's the P-125 if you want portability. The Yamaha DGX-660 trades portability for more features including auto-accompaniment style controls and more voices.

Available at: Yupangco Music Stores