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