Kawai ES110 vs Yamaha P125: The Two Best $600-700 Digital Pianos!

welcome to milan recording studios my name is james pavel chakras and in today's video what i have here is a comparison between two

digital

pianos

. These fall into the price category of around 600 to 700 dollars, I think the

es110

is priced a little higher than the

yamaha

p125

but different sites may offer different prices online again, at the bottom we have the

es110

, the top is the

p125

and in today's video I will compare them and see the positive and negative things of both

digital

pianos

. Before I start, I want to say that I feel that, in my research so far, they are both probably equal and are probably two of the

best

digital pianos within this price that money can buy.

Both are absolutely stunning. For the money you pay, you really do get a fantastic instrument with both digital pianos, but they each have their little weaknesses and their little advantages over each other, so in this video I'm going to compare them and show you. Guys, what are those little differences? Like I said, let's dive into it and take a look at the two instruments, as you can see, the Kauai es110 and the p125 look pretty similar, they have pretty similar aesthetics, they both have this kind of thickness. black body for them, they are both very deep digital pianos, as you can see there, and they both have a similar style.

One thing I want to mention is different between these two. One of the small drawbacks of the es110 is the speaker configuration. on the p125 you can see here the speakers are exposed, they have a speaker grille here and there is also a hole under the piano here also for the es110, as you can see there are actually no big exposed speaker grilles, there is a small indentation here. on the back of the keyboard there is a small grille and on the bottom there is also a small grille, although this is not the worst speaker setup you can find on a digital piano of this price, it is not the

best

either, it is not that loud and as clear as the p125 only one small negative point for the es110: it is not as loud and powerful as the p125 but, in the same way, the p125 when you play it as loud as possible there is a very slight distortion in the right speaker that I notice when you play here in the treble, so it's a little negative on the p125, it's a little louder, but the speakers are a little more distorted and on the es110 it's a little quieter, but it has a warmer sound and cushioned which may be more pleasant for some of you.

Let's try the piano sample here on these two pianos and I'll go over basically all the different sounds here with these two digital pianos because there's only a handful, there's about 20 for each of these, so I'll go over a good portion of the sounds and the I'll review and then we'll do some fun stuff in a moment. Let's start here with the cash leak, the first leak. from the well-tempered harpsichord book, what I'm going to do here is play the first half of the piece on one of these instruments. I think I'll start on the p125 and then play the second half of the piece on the es110 and we'll see how it goes, it was a good test for the two digital pianos of the action and the dynamic response of these two instruments.

What's interesting is that the action is quite similar on both instruments. They have almost identical weight, it feels almost the same when you start pressing the keys down for both instruments, but they still have a different feel, the feel of the

yamaha

is kind of artificially heavy, it feels a little springy and has a bit more resistive than the es110 the es110 feels a bit more like a keyboard while the p125 feels a bit more like a piano neither of them feel very close to the feel of a real acoustic piano but I think the p125 comes a little bit closer, however, one thing about the es110 is that the dynamic response I find is better on the es110 than the p125, so although it feels a little more like a piano, it is a little responsive more like a piano, which I find very interesting and is a very strange phenomenon, it is a very light feeling action and normally I would recommend a heavier feeling action, but the dynamic response of this instrument is so excellent that it makes playing it a pleasure.

Really wonderful. Listen to how quietly I can play on the es110. Compared to the yamaha p125 it can also be played very quietly, but I think it's a little easier with the es110. Both instruments would be great for a first piano practice for someone who is just starting out in the world of piano and can't. I can't really say that one of these stocks is completely better than the other. Both have their advantages. The p125 is a little heavier, but the es110 is a little more responsive, so take or take whatever you prefer for yourself. the one I would recommend if I knew how to advise you on the purchase of an instrument, for example, the stock um.

Another thing I wanted to mention here about the instrument is the pedal with that particular piece, it doesn't really use too much pedal there, but one thing you may have noticed is that when I transitioned to the instrument I messed up with the pedaling and that's because I was just using the

kawai

i pedal using two different damper pedals, it's a little strange for these setups when I'm playing two. different pianos at the same time, but let me grab the damper petals and in this case there is a clear winner as to which instrument has the best damper pedal.

This is the pedal that comes with the yamaha p125, as you can see it's this simple little plastic foot. pedal that you can put your foot on and make the pedal rotate. The big problem with this is that while it works, it also tends to wander around the floor. Yamaha has an optional triple pedal unit that you can buy with this instrument, but of course it doesn't come included for this price and as a result this is the pedal you get, it works well and gets the job done, but it likes to move around, which which can be quite annoying for a little more money. includes this, it comes with the es110 but as i mentioned i think it's a little more expensive than the p125, but as you can see this is much better than this, it doesn't move on the floor, it's a real physical damper pedal and also supports half pedaling.

This is Kawhi's f10h, so it's a really great pedal. It has really amazing build quality and is a really fantastic pedal. Clearly,

kawai

i wins with the damper pedal. Let me try the treble on both. these instruments now and play my treble test piece on both the p125 and es110. Let's check that out and see how it sounds so you can hear that the piano sound on both instruments is also different and the one on the yamaha is a It sounds a little brighter and crisper, the one on the kawaii has a little bit warmer and richer sound and they also have a little bit of difference here in the treble.

Both have sympathetic resonance. The kawaii has it here in the treble if I keep pressing the pedal and playing some high notes versus with the pedal off, you can definitely hear a difference with the yamaha with the pedal off and with the pedal on, but I think the kawaii has a little else, especially in the higher registers, I'm not sure, maybe not. It's hard to say, but they both have sympathetic resonance here in the treble and overall have a nice sound. If you're looking for an instrument that you can theoretically use on live gig locations, the Yamaha might be the best choice because it has a brighter piano sound that might be better for playing the band and being heard, but the kawaii might be a little better to use at home because it is softer and a little more pleasant at least in my opinion, both digital pianos have a few different variants of the acoustic piano sound, but they all sound more or less the same, one is brighter, the other is softer and the other one is bright again, and this is the default one that we've heard before.

It has a few that are soft, a little brighter, a little brighter, even still very soft, and then it's the default again, I'm not sure it was like that, they both have a few different variants of the acoustic piano sound, but when it comes to the electric piano. The sound is where things start to get pretty fun. They both have a Fender Rhodes patch as the default sound in the electric piano category and the Yamaha one is better than the Kawaii one in my opinion. The biggest problem with the Kawaii is Not so much the tone, which is not the best I've heard but it's not the worst either, but I think the biggest flaw of the Rhodes sound of the kawaii is the dynamic response that I mentioned before, which The Kawai action it has a more dynamic response, but the road sound eliminates that if I play quietly at the base here and then slowly increase the volume, you'll hear a strange phenomenon that plays very quietly right now, I'm going to increase my volume and then, all of a sudden, it's going to get louder, so there's like two different volumes on the base end and three or four on the treble end, but as you can see, there's a mid volume and a high volume. and there is nothing in the middle that can make playing this instrument a bit annoying and not cause the notes to not come out the way you want, it also makes the action feel giving the illusion of feeling very heavy on the bass end , the treble is a and the midrange is a little more responsive, but it still has that effect to some extent, but there are like three different steps instead of just two.

If I do the same on the base end of the yamaha you will hear something. Although there is a wider dynamic response, the sound will change subtly as you play it harder and while it is possible to make a note sound much louder, there is also some variation between those two steps with the kauai, really. there's no kind of a little flaw with the kawaii, but the road sound here is very fun, it doesn't really compete with a real fender rhodes, but it's still fun to play the next sound here, the sound is in a bit of order different.

The next one on the kawaii is a reality sound, but the next one on the Yamaha is not a religious sound and is a dx type of sound. um, there's the Kawhi dx sound, as you can hear, obviously the Yamaha dx sound is a little bit better as well. Kawis is Not bad, but the Yamaha one is better, that sounds much cooler to me. Also, the basement is really cool, but the bottom end of the kawaii is down here. It sounds really cool. However, one of my favorite things to do with both is to combine them.

I use them and I use them both. I like the midrange of this and I like the base of this, so I'm going to combine them to make two different sounds blend together as one and sound really cool and I'll do that a little bit. Later in the video also, obviously, if you wanted to do something that's really fun, of course, you could always buy a more expensive keyboard that could do all of this in one, but it's also really fun to have two of these. i can use it as an upper manual and a lower manual and that's a lot of fun for me and i had a lot of fun off camera playing with these the wurlitzer sound of the kawaii this is the wurlitzer sound no, no wait there it is this is the world of the sound of the kawaii and this is the yamaha pulitzer sound now the effect is reversed the kawhi sound is actually better than the yamaha sound i think yamaha is trying to imitate a wurlitzer 200 while kawhi is trying to imitate a 200a the warmer , softer, gentler, later model wurlitzer 200 piano, but still, the kawaii has a very very nice tone, the yamaha doesn't sound as good, the religious sound of the kawaii is really amazing and I love it, another cool combination What I found with the kawaii and with the yamaha is to take the default sound of the road and use it as a melody about the roads, I mean the sound of the world here in the kawaii and I could literally just sit here and play with these two all day Because I Can Come creates all kinds of fun combinations and is really awesome, so one thing you can always do is if you already have one of these, you can get the other version; if you already have the yamaha, you get the kawaii and vice versa and you combine them and do all kinds of cool things that I found, I thought it was really fun, um, let's see what we should do here.

Do it for me, it's a really cool combination and while you can split and layer sounds on both instruments, we're not going to be able to get the kawaii Yamaha road sound on the kawaii, so that's something you can only do with both . I think it's very, very fun, let's move through the electric piano category here on kawaii now. we have the dx sound that we already heard but we also have the organ sounds um here on the kawai. One thing I want to mention about both of them is really cool is that the sounds of the electric piano, the acoustic piano, the organs do not change volume from one to the other which is surprising, it may seem like a small thing but on many digital pianos you will find that the sounds actually change between the different groups and patches which is a bit strange but none of these are that so here is the sound of the Yamaha organ why does the tone wheel sound again like before?

We could also use them together which I think is really cool and a lot of fun now there is also a church organ sound on both instruments also yamaha has two kawaii has one andhere's where yamaha comes out better than kawhi here's yamaha's church organ sound which sounds pretty impressive here's kawhi's organ sound the otherThe strange thing about kawhi isn't really a bad thing, but something strange to note about it, let's get back to it to the toenail organ is that the kawaii are actually the organs, what is the word I'm looking for here? They respond to how strong they are. you play the key whose real organs don't do something very strange that the yamaha doesn't do, let's go back to the default pitch wheel, that's how we're going to answer, kawaii is a little different than that, it's not really a bad thing, which is a little strange thing I notice here in the others category, for both of us we have some strings, they also have a faster string pad and Yamaha has it too, although in the case of Yamaha it's actually the other way around. the fastest is first and the slowest is second and that's the other way around with kawhi we also have a chorus and a synth pad on the yamaha and here we also have a couple of other sounds where they are different categories and all mixed together, but we have a base and we have four variants of the base up here so we have four variants on the base up here and only one on the kawaii and then I think we have I also have what is this oh it's a guitar so it's a cool sound, kind of weird but cool, and then we also have a vibraphone, this should be the sound of the vibraphone, no, it's a hard drive, okay, so we have harpsichord.

In both, I think the yamaha is better than the kauai, but the kawaii is not bad. We also have a different uh version of the parts record uh and I also think next we should have yeah, Cleveland, which the kawhi doesn't have. i have and the final sound here is a vibraphone the kawaii has the kawaii has a little bit stronger tremolo there but overall they sound pretty similar the yamaha one is once again a little brighter let's go back to the default piano sound of both and let me mention very quickly another small flaw that I find with the kawaii and that is the way you select the sounds on the yamaha p125; you can simply press the button a few times and it will actually indicate which variation of the sound is on if none of these lights are on that means you are on the default and then you can have variation one, two and three and then go back to the default .

The kawaii can do the same if you press the button. and again it will loop, go through the sounds and then eventually return to the default, but there's no indicator light that can tell you what sound you're on, so I'm a little confused sometimes. what sound am I going to get with the kawaii you can also select different sounds down here on the instrument here we have the dx and here we have the electrical panel the paths and then here is the acoustic piano and here is a variant of the The acoustic piano goes back to the defaults, but this is not my favorite feature on digital pianos these days.

Why do they hide the sounds on the keys. It is a bit disgusting. Another thing you want to know about the Kawai is that there are a number of features that are hidden. within the keys for both, for example you can enter the metronome beat on the p125, you can change the tempo of the metronome via the p125 keys and increase and decrease the volume of things here on the keys as well and there are other features like well hidden in the keys, sound amplifier, speaker on and off and other things too that you can activate through the keys of the p125, the kawaii also has several of these features, but they are not actually labeled here on the part front of the piano as is. they are with the p125 so if you want to make any adjustments on the kawaii via the keys you will have to pull out the owners manual and look at it, at least some of these things on the kawaii, i mean on the yamaha, are labeled .

So to increase and decrease the speed of the metronome or change the time signature you won't have to look at the menu to do it, so I wanted to mention that there are functions hidden in the keys that are not my favorite functionality on modern Yamaha and digital pianos. He has tagged them better than Kawhi. He did something I wanted to point out. Let's take a look at the dynamic response of these two digital pianos and play something a little louder. This time, what I'm going to do is play an excerpt from the third movement to see if these two digital pianos can really handle music of that complexity which will help us prove that these two digital pianos or disprove if one of them can't do it, which These two digital pianos will be great practice pianos for the beginning pianist and even a little further down the line of progressing through the piano skill level they do as you can see that both the Kawaii S110 and the Yamaha P125 could play that piece of music.

Now what I discovered is that the dynamic control on the es110, as I think I mentioned earlier in the video, is actually a little bit more piano-like than the one on the p125. These four sounds at the end of those passages were very, very strong and it was very easy to play very softly at the beginning and make a nice soft crescendo until those four sounds which sounded a little clumsier on the p125 to me, it wasn't bad, I was still able to get a general idea of ​​that effect, but es110 I was able to do it a little better.

Trails are also easier to do on the es110 than the p125 just because the action is a little lighter, but overall both can be done well and for a practice instrument. These would be absolutely wonderful in most of my videos, most of the time when I compare two digital pianos, I can usually say that x the digital piano is good x the digital piano is not that good, but in this case I'm not really able to do that because while certain elements of these instruments are definitely different, like the road sound on the yamaha is better than the road sound on the kawaii, but kawhi's um damper pedal is much better than the kawhi's damper pedal. the yamaha, while each one has little things that are better or worse, I can't really pick one as a whole that is better or worse, it's really interesting, they are actually basically neck and neck, they are very very close and in my opinion, if you were looking. on a digital piano in this price range, although I could happily recommend the es110 or the yamaha p125, I'm not sure I could recommend one over the other if you were looking for something specific, maybe I can recommend but as a general purpose digital piano In this price range, both work well and both are really wonderful.

Between these two you really can't go wrong with the yamaha and you really can't go wrong with the kawaii, I think they are both fantastic instruments and I really enjoy playing them for the price and amount of money you pay for this instrument. Either of them you get a very good quality instrument that is much better than some of the other instruments in this same price range I really hope you enjoyed this in depth review of the es110 and the yamaha p125 from a pianist's perspective of how they are If you compare these instruments to, say, an acoustic piano, how close they are and of course how they compare to each other, I think they've both done very, very well.

They are both my favorite digital piano. I know it's weird to have two favorites, but honestly, these are my two favorites. I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did, if you did. Maybe you already want to see my channel. I have a lot of great videos of digital pianos, acoustic pianos, organs, keyboards and all kinds of cool stuff if you want to see many more digital piano videos like these and much more to come. You might want to think about subscribing and keep an eye out for interesting videos coming out in the future, so if any of that sounds interesting and you want to subscribe, thank you very much and I'll see you in the next video, bye.