Roland FP-30X vs. Kawai ES110 vs. Yamaha P125: Comparison

welcome to milan recording studios my name is james pavel shakras and in today's video as you can see we have three digital pianos here stacked in front of me at the bottom we have the

roland

fp30x in the middle we have the

yamaha

p125

and Above we have the

kawai

i

es110

and all three fall in the sub 800 price class. The

kawai

i

es110

can be purchased for as low as US$629. I've seen it sold online only with the Google shopping tab and Google es110, and you should see that. um the

yamaha

p125

costs around 640 usd dollars and the

roland

fp30x is the most expensive, it costs around 740 usd dollars or 750. um so there is about a hundred dollar price discrepancy between these two and we will compare the three of them in Today's video is not going to be a very in-depth video because there are three digital pianos, so I probably won't go over every sound, they won't talk about every positive and negative quality of the three, but what I have on my channel is a complete and in-depth review of each one individually, so if you're really interested in learning more about a particular model here, if you really want to know about the fp30x or the 125 or the es110.

I've done very detailed individual reviews on all three, but this is more of a brief summary

comparison

between the three. It probably won't be a very short video, you've already seen its length. the video when you have clicked on it on YouTube. I'm sitting here, I have no idea how long it's going to last yet, but we'll see there will be a lot to talk about, so first of all before we get there. To play them and talk about the sounds and talk about the action and the gameplay, I first wanted to talk about some of the more physical things, the build quality, the peripherals that come with them and things like that, so to start, what am I doing?

What I'm going to do is just turn them off because I wanted to talk about the noise that the action makes, so I'm going to turn them all off real quick. I had them all on and from here let's start the build. Quality, so what is the build quality of all of them, like the quality of the plastic and the construction of the frame? Well, honestly, it's pretty much the same on all three. I think all three have fairly equivalent build quality. They are all quite sturdy and made of plastic, so you won't find wood or metal in an instrument at this price, but you will find a fairly sturdy plastic case which you shouldn't.

I don't really give you any structural problems. In fact, I took the kawai es110 on the road not to perform, but simply to carry around as a practice instrument when I'm out of the studio and it's been pretty reliable and has served the purpose. that purpose is very, very cool and I suppose you could do the same thing perfectly well with the 125 and the fp30x2 um so there's nothing inherently wrong with the build quality of any of these, they're nothing phenomenal, but they're definitely nothing terrible and the The build quality is fine, another thing I wanted to talk about is the noise the action makes.

All digital pianos will have a certain amount of action, rumble and my microphones tend to magnify this so they could all end up sounding the same. but what I do want to say is one positive thing about the fp30x, and this is something I forgot to mention in my full review, is that the noise that the action makes, although I am not at all a fan of the action of the fp30, the amount The noise it makes is actually very quiet and very respectable. The action noise of the p125s and es110s, while still respectable, is definitely a little louder and more noticeable than the fp30x when you press the keys, it's very quiet when you release it, it's a little louder but still pretty quiet my mics may be doing that a little louder but trust me it's pretty quiet in real life so is the p125 when you press the keys, a very nice quiet thud and leave are pretty quiet too, the kauai is110 when you press the keys down, it's a little bit harder hit and we let the keys swing a little bit, but that's typical of kawhi's rh action, this is kawaii compact rh action yamaha uses gh3 action and roland uses action pha4, however, the amount of noise a stock makes is not indicative of its overall quality and we will talk more about the stock later in the video.

Now I think I'm going. Powering up these three instruments one more time so they're up and running when it's time to play them and once I power up the es110 I'll talk about the peripherals they come with, so of course all three. They come with a power supply which is practically a given. I don't think any of them can run on batteries. It was a missed opportunity but they are a little too big to put on your lap and I probably need deceleration batteries so it's understandable why but they all come with a stand and the stand that comes with the kawaii and the yamaha I got it here and I also have one for the roll and I try to grab them with one hand and it's not going very well here we go, so this is the Yamaha music desk, it's a simple slab of black plastic, here is the Yamaha music desk Kawhi, it's also a simple slab of black plastic, they are equally functional and they also have relatively equal widths, um also or lengths, whatever you want to say, they are both quite long and wide, then you have the Roland one, which because I have the fp30x white, you have a white slab of plastic here, the build quality, interestingly, is actually a little more robust than the other one. two um but equally functional and you can also see that if I bring in the Yamaha music desk just for

comparison

, you can see that the Roland music desk is not as wide as the Yamaha or the Kawaii, it's not dramatically short, but I think we all agree that the wider the music desk the better, although many of us use music on our iPads and digital music, many of us also use printed music and I think it is much better to have, for example, a four-page piece of music.

Leave your four pages so you don't have to turn them instead of being forced to put in just one book and having to turn the pages mid-performance. I prefer to be able to place my scores so that those are the desks they all come with. They are all equally functional, I think, and that's what allowed me to keep them. It's a little awkward because they don't really stack that well together, but I think it's good enough and now it's time to talk about the pedals coming. because all three come with a damper pedal and since there are still three awkward ones, I'll be right back to grab them and then we'll talk about them in order from bottom to top for the damper pedals, you'll see here.

The Roland damper pedal is a small, simple square piece of plastic. All three have an optional upgraded higher quality pedal and you can also get a triple pedal version for these three instruments, but the one that comes with the Roland. the box is just a basic flat thing on some floor surfaces, it's pretty good and doesn't move, but on the carpet, as it is now, it wanders all over the place. The Yamaha is also quite similar. You have a very simple way. a bit lighter, a small clicker pedal and again there is an optional higher quality pedal and a triple pedal that you can get for the p125 but one of these is not like the other and this is the pedal that the kawaii comes with es110.

Right out of the box it's a beautiful damper pedal, one of my favorites in the piano industry especially in this price range, the feel of the pedal itself is amazing, you've got these big sticky rubber feet that you can't really stick to. move anywhere. the surface may be smooth, dusty concrete, it may not work, but carpet, any other wood floor like that seems to work very, very well, the bottom of this is solid metal and it's fantastic, it's amazing, and I love it, something I would do. I would like to know that I have a question for all of you: is it possible to chain a damper pedal to work with several different instruments because it is quite annoying to have three different pedals all over the floor that I have to choose and use for each one? of these, so throughout this video you'll probably see me make mistakes when pedaling at one point or another because I'm using the wrong pedal for the instrument.

I tend to gravitate towards this one because it's so charming, so if possible, I've done it. I haven't tried it at all so maybe it's totally possible, but if it's possible to chain a pedal on multiple keyboards at once let me know, it could be cool, there are probably a few reasons why it wouldn't be possible but I'm just I ask everyone because it would make my life so much easier. I think there are a couple more things I wanted to talk about before we get into the playing experience and one of them is the user interface of these instruments which we'll look at more of. this throughout the video, so maybe I could have left it for later, but I'm thinking about it right now, so I thought I'd talk about it.

These three instruments have a fairly minimalist user interface if you look at the es110. You see, there are seven buttons, eight buttons and a volume slider up there for the p125, you have a few more buttons, but they're still pretty simple, and for the roland fp30 down here you have maybe about 10 buttons that are illuminated with LEDs, however, all three. These instruments have many different sounds and many different features to change the sounds on the ES110. There are two ways to do it. One is to hold down the button and press a white key that corresponds to a certain sound, but you can also keep pressing the button over and over again and it will cycle through the bank of tones that I really like and that's the default method I use when selecting sounds. on the es110 on the p125 to change your sounds.

You can simply press the category button and you can see that red LED light that is changing. Hopefully you can see that there's a red LED here that tells you which variation you're on and there are four variations for each sound bank here on the Roland fp30 type. Like the kawaii s110, you can hold the category button and press a key to change the note; However, unlike kawaii, you can't keep pressing the button over and over and have it cycle through the only way to access that sound. The sounds using just the instrument itself are by pressing that button and then pressing a key to change the sound and the kawai es110 only uses the white keys.

Those are the only places the sounds are found on the fp30. The sounds are found in both. black and white keys, so there's quite a few more sounds on the fp30 um than on these other two um, but it's a little more annoying to switch. There is also an app you can use with the fp30x and I've heard mixed results about it. I haven't tried it myself, some people say it's buggy and crashes all the time and it's just not great and it's also not ideal to have a digital panel that is much more convenient to access with an app than the instrument itself because one day , although it may not seem like it, one day apps, ipads and other things will one day become obsolete, who knows how long it will be, but when that day comes, the fp30x will be permanently very annoying to use, what else is there to use?

Talk about yourself, you know, honestly, I can't really think much, I just made the speakers, so what are the speakers like on all three? Well, the design that each company has chosen has been slightly different from Yamaha's. It's a pretty traditional style, they have two little speaker grills up here that direct the sound directly to the performer and I think yeah, I can feel the girls down here. They also have some larger subwoofers that face down toward the floor, so that's a common theme we'll see in all three, all three have floor-firing speakers, but the main difference is that the Yamaha has dedicated speakers.

They shoot little by little, I think these are metal. grills look at how they feel like metal little metal grills that direct the sound directly to the performer the kauai es110 has a similar style you have the speakers underneath at least I think you let me see yes I feel them back there You have some speaker grills under that fire sound and you also have some very thin little indentations on the top that direct the sound a little bit towards the player. If there is something I don't like about es110, it is. it's definitely the speakers, i think they could use some improvement compared to the other two, they actually sound a little thinner and not very present, but we'll talk more about the sounds later in the video, finally down here, we have the roland fp30x which only has downward facing speakers;

However, compared to the Roland FP30, the previous version of this, the FP30x now has larger speakers and they seem to be a little louder and thicker than I remember, but they don't have the same presence. And well, presence is the best word I can use to describe, they don't have the same presence and clarity of sound as the yamaha p125 now, but that said, they are quite strong in the bass and actually sound quitegood for most shades. and overall, the fp30x speakers are a little better than the fp30x. Sorry about the old fp30, but I think if they had upward facing speakers directing the sound directly at the player, the fp30x would sound really, really good.

Well, now I think it's time to talk about the experience of playing and what it's like to play these instruments. , so what I'm going to do here is play Scarletti's keyboard, it's not on k1 and I'm going to look at it a little bit. What I'm going to do is it's usually a binary sonata and you play each half twice. You play the first half. There is an optional repeat. You can play the first half again and then rinse and repeat for the second. Play half of the second half, repeat it and finish the piece, so what I'm going to do is add a third repetition there, so I'm going to play the first half on this instrument, play it again up here and play it again up here. here, then we're going to go back to the bottom, play the second half of the snote down here, then again up here and then again up here, so it's going to be very long, but let's see how this goes and Hopefully everyone Enjoy listening to the difference in sound between these.

It will give you a good example of what each instrument sounds like and also a comparison between the three, so let's see that yes, yes, yes, those were Scarlet's keywords, not on k1 and played on these three instruments again, just a reminder , the first half played on all three, the second half played on all three, so maybe you've noticed a little difference in the quality of the playing on all three instruments, but I think now it's time to talk about the action of all three, as well as a couple of tricks that are often used in the keyboard industry, something that you will often hear people say and talk about when they talk about the fp30x and when they talk about it. of the yamaha p125 is that people often complain that the white keys on the yamaha p125 have a smooth, shiny texture and that it is unrealistic, while the roland fp30x has slightly off-white textured keys that emulate the feel of natural ivory and although The tops of the keys on the fp3x are actually off-white and have a textured top that doesn't really simulate the feel of real ivory and I don't notice much difference tactilely. feedback from the key caps on any of these instruments, the fp30x just feels like a key cap and the p125 just feels like a key cap and the es110 just feels like a key cap uh, the es110 also has a slightly satin touch uh, kind of finish, um, which if I had to pick a key top texture, it would probably be my favorite, but again, it doesn't really make a big difference, um, it just depends on what you like.

Like it because the bright shine will pick up fingerprints. That's a negative of the visual aesthetics, um negative of this instrument, the other two won't really have fingerprints on the keys, however, on a modern acoustic piano, this shiny white plastic is the type of key cap you'll find. You won't find natural ivory or any other type of organic material on the top of the keys of a modern acoustic piano. So off-white textured keys are cute, but at the end of the day they're really beautiful. nothing more than a gimmick if you've personally found out you know the ivory simulation keys on the fp30x are just magical and make you play much better that's wonderful but for me I don't really notice much of a difference and if I was blindfolded I'd probably Just based on the feel of the keys I probably couldn't tell you what keyboard it was, something I wanted to talk about is escapement simulation, also known as release, this is another feature you'll see on some digital pianos The cheapest digital piano you can buy you can find it has a dummy escapement, as far as I know it would be the Roland fp10x, but it uses the same action as the fp3, it's not actually the fp10x, it's just the fp10, but the fp30x also has the same pha4 action.

So what the escapement is is on a real acoustic piano, when you press the key down, the hammer will move up, it hits the string, but if it stays against the string it will mute it, so the escapement allows the Hammer falls back and escapes. the string and then that will allow the hammer to strike again, but the main problem with the statement is that it causes the hammer to separate from the string and not mute or lock the tone, so when you play a real acoustic piano, if you gently push the pressed key, you will feel this kind of little bump, a little notch at the end of the key of the key travel and you will also feel a similar kind of notch in the travel of this instrument, however, when you play an acoustic piano Really, you don't really notice that notch when you're playing and on a digital piano, the way that notch is simulated, that kind of exhaust feeling is by a little rubber bump that's basically rubbed by a component in the action, yeah , that's how Roland I'm sure does it here, that's how I know Kawhi does it in his full scale rh3 action and there's debate about whether that's actually useful or not, something that's interesting thing I always mention when I talk about escape is that when Nord used Kawhi's rh3 action on his new Nord Grand, the only thing they altered in the action was removing the exhaust, because I guess Lord felt that having that exhaust there was not beneficial to the action and when I played the rh3 action in the past i also felt like i didn't like how the exhaust felt now, whether the exhaust on the roland uh pha-4 action is or not.

One of the reasons I don't particularly like the way the action feels, I'm not exactly sure, but that's just an example of why I think the escapement is more of a gimmick than an actual feature you should really pay attention to. a lot of attention, while some people believe that faux ivory keys and simulated escapements will make an action feel more like a piano and therefore more realistic. Interestingly, that case isn't always true, in my personal opinion the two digital pianos here that have the most superior action are the two that don't actually have simulated ivory key caps and the two that don't actually have stimulated escapement either. these three the two instruments that I think have the best action would be the kawaii es110 and the yamaha p125 I really like the action of both and I think they both definitely have their positives.

The roland fp30x also has positive aspects. One thing I like is how the key feels on the way down, although I have said that the simulated exhaust on other instruments seems to be negatively affecting performance. I'm not really sure if it's here or not, it could be, but I'm not convinced it is and the weight of the action when you are. Going down actually feels very nice and mechanical, however in my opinion the problem is when the stock goes back up and you may have also realized that maybe there is a method to my madness as to which instrument It's in what position, something I've done.

In many of my digital piano reviews, when I stack two of them on top of each other, I tilt one of them down for easier access. However, what this does is because the mechanism of both acoustic and digital pianos depend on gravity to reset the mechanism of action. What this does is that it will actually decrease the effectiveness of the action many times over. If you tilt digital pianos down, the action will be much slower to respond and will be felt. really bad, so what I did here was I took the motor that I think has the most bottom action and I put it on the bottom and gave it the fairest playing field, it's in a very slight down position.

Honestly, I'm not sure why I left it there, but it's still not affecting the instrument that much. The p125, which I think has the best action for me personally, I put at the angle so I could play. is better and the kawhi es110 is at an even steeper angle and I think this angle is somehow affecting the way the keys move up, however although the kawaii es110 has the biggest disadvantage I think it may be The best game. digital piano here and again, that's because of the way the keys will come back as a test before setting up the video.

In fact, I had the fp30 up at the same angle as the quai es110 and the keys returned noticeably slower, so in my opinion not only does the action not respond ideally on a flat surface, but when the You put it at an angle like this, it starts to trip and fall apart, so the problem, in my opinion, with the fp30 is that the keys are unresponsive. enough on the way up and down, I think everything feels pretty good. I like the heavier feel of the fp30 which is more similar to what you can find on a real acoustic piano, but maybe it's that heavier weight as well that hinders the fp30 and making the notes rise a little slower than ideal and make them a little slower to respond, it would be interesting to film them with high speed cameras and count how many milliseconds it takes for the keys to return, you might find something interesting, but I don't have a slow motion ghost camera so I can't do that, but anyway that's my take on why the fp30x feels a little slower and a little less responsive than the yamaha p125 and es110.

Now again, nothing is perfect in the digital piano world and both the yamaha p125 and es110 have a couple of very minor flaws that some people might consider a deal breaker. Personally, I don't think they feel very good, but some people, if they want to be as picky as I am about the way the keys respond, I can look at these minor defects of the es1 tane and say I don't want to buy it because the action is a little louder than the fp30x, which has a very quiet action and that is It is true that the es110 has a louder action than the other two.

I've talked about that, but I think the way the es110's action feels and the way it plays is strangely piano, like the down attack of the action is a little lighter than I personally feel. I would prefer most acoustic panels to be heavier than this, but the way the instrument responds to your input is actually very piano-like when you play it softly, when you play it loudly, the way in which the instrument responds when you tell it to sing a higher note. the melody does and although the other two are also capable of doing this, the es110 somehow feels a little better when I play it, the nitpicky little detail about the p125 that I mentioned that some people might not like is that the action on the way down feels a little springier and a little sturdier and in that sense a little less piano-like than the other two, but again, if you remember what I said, despite simulating ivory keys and escape things like that.

Just because it has all those aspects and technically on paper perfectly reproduces a digital piano and acoustic panel doesn't necessarily mean it's the best action and while the action feels a little more springy and a little less realistic in my opinion the way down. on the p125 there's nothing else wrong with it, the keys, um, also the keys get a little heavier and pushed back, that's another thing that some people might not like, the fp30 is actually pretty consistent, front to back, but the action is heavier. and overall it's less responsive and the kawaii s110 also gets a little bit heavier towards the back, but not really that much, let me see, let me turn the volume down and I'll play with it a little bit, so don't look here just a little bit, it becomes just a little bit heavier back, the p125 definitely gets heavier and back and then the fp30, I have to hold this button instead of the sliders, make the volume go all the way down, let's see. here it might get a little bit heavier towards the back, kind of like what the es110 does, the s110 gets a little bit heavier towards the back and the fp30, I think, also has the same amount of weight, but not towards the back, so They all get a little heavier towards the back of the key, which is actually more important than you might think if you're a new pianist wondering why I'd ever be playing the keys back here on the key. back of the key, it actually happens a lot if you play big chords, even then, it's not even a real chord, but you'll notice that my pinky finger is in and out towards the tip of the key, while my middle finger is more towards the center of the key and with certain chords like this, for example in F minor, something chord, uh, you would find here that it is the um, it is an F minor major chord, um, you would find here that your second finger is very very towards the back of the key and your thumb is more towards the tip of the key, so certain big chords, certain things like that, will make you play more towards the back of the key, so let's turn the volume up on these three back. get up again and continue acting with them, I think that's all I wanted to say about the actions of the three, although none of them are 100 perfect.

DefinitelyI prefer the kawaii es110 or p125 action to the roland fp30x because the action of both. he's very responsive and I think I mentioned that earlier in the video. I know I'm talking forever about stocks, but it's very important. You may have remembered that I said earlier in the video that you kind of heard a performance difference in all three and for me, in my opinion, my performance on the fp30x with that sonata scrollati um was clumsier than on the es110, particularly the second movement, I thought was very nice in the es110, while it wasn't as hot here. the fp30x and a lot of that is due to the slowness of the keys and Look again at the es110, although I prefer it, it has every disadvantage against it, it is angled so the action theoretically does not work in its theoretical perfection and it is also way up here, nobody plays the piano up here at all.

All due respect, the fp30x has the best playing field and the es110 has all the disadvantages and yet I still feel that the es110 feels better than the fp30x, so interesting things to note. In fact, I recently got a comment talking about the roland fp30x and the supernatural sound engine, uh, Roland used it and one of the commenters who left the video, I think it was in the original review I did of the fp30x, stated that the modeling Supernatural has a really incredible sympathetic resonance and sounds incredible, and oh, you know, should we compare it?

Let's compare Roland's otherworldly modeling to whatever Kawhi has decided to use on his own instrument. I think one is better than the other and I'll tell you why in a moment, but let's play a few things here on the treble with the pedal depressed and listen to the way the instrument simulates the natural reverb of notes along the strings piano synths that you're trying to emulate, okay, let's do this, let's play it again, we'll do it note by note and we'll hear the differences here. What are your thoughts? Which one do you think sounds more authentic?

Well, I'll tell you which one I think sounds most authentic, but first of all I have to describe it in case some of you don't. I don't know what sympathetic resonance is on a real acoustic piano when you press the damper pedal down all the dampers that prevent the strings from vibrating are raised which then allows all the strings to vibrate when you play any note on the piano the vibration created by that one string will also vibrate sympathetically many of the other strings of the instrument. You can really hear this effect in the treble if you have an acoustic piano, go home, press or if you're at home, walk to your piano, press the damper pedal and even if you don't know how to play the piano, do this, listen to it, press the pedal down and just press any key up here in the treble, just do this and listen to the way the note resonates.

I pressed the wrong pedal so it didn't actually resonate, but do it with the pedal depressed and you'll hear what I mean: you'll not only hear the note you play but also others vibrating in harmony, so that's sympathetic resonance and that's what Many digital piano manufacturers try to emulate the high treble, some manufacturers even go further and stimulate all sorts of other things, for example if you hold down a note that is an octave lower and then play a note you will also hear the echo of that note you played on this note, I don't know if they do that or not, that's also something a real piano does, but what I'm talking about here is just the general sympathetic resonance when you hold down the pedal and everything is free of vibrate, how it sounds, so when you listen to the roland fp30x that has the supernatural sound engine, what you hear is more or less the same type of sound that to me almost sounds like it was copied and pasted over and over again.

Note by note, listen, listen carefully, do you hear that white noise behind every note I'm playing? This time I have the pedal pressed. That white noise simulates sympathetic resonance, but if you listen carefully, it sounds. exactly the same for each note now you will also find that effect on a real acoustic piano, but the difference is that the sympathetic resonance only starts to sound a little woody and the same note for note at the very high ends of the instrument, um, not really we will find that sound in this range of the instrument, which is something interesting.

If we take a look at the kawai es110 and play that same range and listen to the sympathetic resonance, we will hear something totally different. We will hear how once again I hear this white noise for the lack of better terms behind every note I am playing. Here it is compared to without pedal. Here with a pedal, but the difference is that that white noise due to the lack of terms of the voters is almost thrown to that note. It's reflecting the echo of that note as the sound decays It's not just the same static, unchanging sound behind each note It's dynamic It changes with each note Here's an C I ruined the pedal I told you I'd do that Here's an E You can hear It's resonating in the rest of the instrument when you have the pedal down, there's a g here, that's why one of the reasons I love the kawaii s110 so much, um, and if we go up here to the highest register, then you'll start to listen to that. same same same white noise type of woody tone that you would hear here on the uh fp30 here is that type of woody attack sound that is decaying there you can also hear the resonance of each tone, but also hear that type of woody attack tone that we're getting in this record here, how it sounds the same for every note up in that last octave up here, while down here it also sounds the same for every note if we go lower than that. up here on the s110 you can hear the echoes of the other string resonating sympathetically in that pitch, um with some impurities in there too, which sounds really great and that's part of the reason I love the sound of the es110, the roland fv30 just isn't doing a good job so although that's why I'm not super, one of the reasons I'm not very impressed, you know, the Roland thing, the whole modeling engine, I'm still not completely convinced.

I think what Kawhi is doing up here is doing wonders and sounds pretty authentic and what Roland is doing down here sounds good. You wouldn't hear that in a mix, but in a piano performance you're just playing slow, soft classical music. I will definitely listen to that sound like it sounds good, but to me this sounds much more alive, lively, vibrant and authentic. Now, how about the Yamaha? Let's take a look here. I haven't actually looked into it too much, it's just that the kawaii s110 really stands out to me for having a super strong resonance.

Let's take a look at the yamaha and see where it falls between the two. It's kind of a mix between the two. You can hear that kind of white noise between each note. You can also hear it subtly, it's not as obvious and realistic as the kawaii one, but you can definitely hear the sound of the note you play resonating in the rest of the instrument, so as a summary of the resonance problem, the roland fp30x does not . it has very good sympathetic resonance despite what people online in youtube comments have told me the yamaha p125 has a pretty decent sympathetic resonance although it's not as nice as the resonance on the es110 which of these three and in any case, in the sub 800 price class is the es110? crowned king in terms of the realism of the acoustic piano tone, uh, the resonance that you heard in the es110 is just amazing, it's excellent, but now let's move on to talking about some of the other tones, finally now all three work. they have different piano sounds, acoustic piano tones, uh, what you heard before was the default piano tone, but I think I'm going to leave out the other piano tones because, for all intents and purposes, most of them are usually just versions equipped with the original piano sound and we will go to the default electric piano tone, so to achieve that on all three simply press the electric piano button once, equally simple on all three and now we should have a fender rhodes type tone on the three. of them, so what I'm going to do here is start with the kawai es110, we'll see how it goes.

I'm going to try to play a little bit of one of Schubert's improvised opus 90 number two, I think, and we're just going to play and loop a section over and over and go from the top keyboard to the bottom section, from the keyboard center to the bottom keyboard and we'll see how that goes and just compare the sound of rode um, but before we do that I'll play a little song that references a very popular piece of music that was written for Rhodes and we'll do that first before we play Schubert, which doesn't really belong on the roads, but I think it sounds pretty good on the roads, so the fp30x was once again hindering me and my hands were getting really tired after playing that on the fp30x it was fine on the es110 it was fine on the p125 but as soon as i got here to the fp30x the heavier and slower action was really working against me, my right hand was getting quite tired which wouldn't really happen even on an acoustic piano.

It's been a while since I practiced. that piece, so maybe I need to work on my length and what's the word? I'm looking for stamina but however as soon as I got into the fp30x that's really when that stamina drain really kicked in and that's part of the reason I messed up at the end because my arm was starting to hurt a lot so I think the action of the FP30x could improve in my opinion. It might be like that if it were a little more agile and responsive. Something like action. on the p515 there's the yamaha, it's very heavy weight, but it comes back up so quickly that when you play fast, when you play that Schubert piece, it sounds like it's a dream, really wonderful, so I feel like if Roland could emulate it . more of that kind of agility and responsiveness and still maintain that kind of heavier piano like reduced weight that could be quite useful now when it comes to the tone of the Rhodes itself, unfortunately, as much as I like the es110 I think that among these three they have the worst Rhodes sound, honestly a very characteristic part of the Rhodes tone is the bark when you go deeper into the note, he growls and barks like something, and the es110 in certain ranges doesn't really do that. not ideal um the yamaha has more of a bell like tone which is really nice I like the kawaii road sound in this range right here um but other than that I think it's not the best sound of road that I have heard because He is in this range here if you play the note louder, yes, it gets louder but it does not bark and we will really see what that bark sound is like down here, but I think the 125 will also bark and the Roland fb30x too.

The Rhodes Town Rhodes tone of the Roland Fe 30x does the same, although it is a huge improvement over the Road to Rhodes tone of the old fp30x, I think it is not completely perfect. I feel like I might like the yamaha tone better, but neither are bad and I think maybe At this point, it will be more of a personal preference than a real decision on which is possibly better. I will say that I like the base of this better than the Yamaha. Another sound that these three instruments have is the emulation of a 200 um Wurlitzer instrument.

And oddly enough, although the kawaii has the weakest road sound, it surely has the strongest swirl sound of the three, so let's check that to get to the swirl sound, all you have to do is press this button once to reach the whirlpool. sounds here, I think we just have to press it once too, let's see, we have to press it twice, that will give us the swirl sound and then down here we have to press a key combination and I don't have the user manual in the room of iso so we're going to have to poke and search until we get it, it's probably the second one, let's see, it's the second one.

I was lucky so let's compare the sounds of the three which is another electric piano tone that I personally love so the kawaii s110 emulates a rolex 200a and I would say that's also the roland while the yamaha goes for the more sound bright from the original um wurlitzer 200. However, even though I prefer the tone of the 200 to 200a Yamaha's emulation of said instrument is not as strong and I think the roles between the es110 and the yamaha have been reversed here. The Yama Kawhi spin tone is amazing and the Yamaha mundane tone is not that good and the Roland spin tone is not bad.

It's a kind of mix between the two with a very subtle kind of tremolo. Something else I'd like to do here is combine the es110 with the yamaha, which also becomes a lot of fun, which is a lot of fun. I can actually have a lot of fun with the yamaha and the kawaii as110 um there are other electric panotones here too but I feel like maybe we should move on to the organs this video is getting pretty long so for the Oregon tones here we have four of them on the yamaha, we have some of them on the kawaii, I'm actually not sure how many we have, let's see, there should be an organ, it's an organ, look, it's actually pretty easy to remember the sequence of four. press five different buttons and remember what they are, that I can eat my words later andforget, but I made it there, um, whereas with the roland fp30 it's much harder for me to remember hmm, let's see this g is going to be an organ maybe you're right maybe I'm wrong it's g an organ hey, it's an organ , okay, but I can't remember which key gives me which organ tone, so the working tones are all three are actually pretty decent, none of them are.

It's going to rival a real Hammond, although one feature that the Roland has that I really like is that if you press the button on the electric piano while you're in an organ tone, it will raise and lower the Leslie rotary speaker effect, this one already has a tremolo built-in or the Leslie effect kicks in quickly, but either way you'll still get the effect here now, although that probably won't fool anyone into thinking. It's a real Hammond organ, it brings some life to the tone and I actually like it a lot and part of me wishes it had been implemented in the Kawaii and the Yamaha to some extent, just like with the Yamaha and the kawaii, honestly you can also combine two of them with um roland organs.

I don't know what the hell he was doing with the glissando there at the end, but you can still have some fun combining these two instruments. You can have fun combining. the yamaha the es110 the roland and the yamaha and probably also the yamaha and sorry, the roland and the es110 you can have a lot of fun combining these three instruments so although I like it, I have said that the fv30x is not 100 Perfect, it is still possible have fun with these three instruments, which is great. There are a few different organ tones in each one.

I think the fp30 has more organ tones than the others. We'll quickly go over a few. of them I think I'm on e but it might be on f I don't know let's just go through and play a chord on each one so you've got a pretty wide variety of toenail organs here as well as some different ones. pipe organs here on the yamaha you have a few different tone wheel organs and that's not a tone organ, it's a pipe organ and the next one is probably one of my favorite pipe organ sounds, one of my favorite pepperoni sounds on any digital piano you have.

I heard that's just amazing, it's really fun and then here on the kawai we also have some different organ sounds, we have the time and we have that pipe organ sound and I think that's it for the organ tones here. that's a road sound, so we've got two organ sounds here, we've got four of them on the yamaha, we've got quite a few more on the roland fp30x, there's also a miscellaneous category of others, uh, on the yamaha, it's you. you have a clavinet and vibraphone patch or section that also contains a harpsichord sound, then you have your string and synth section here on the kawaii, all of that is pretty much lumped into the other category and it's pretty much the same down here too you have the other category, which features a bunch of different types of sounds, um, so we can go over some of them, but I don't think that's the main reason people buy these instruments;

I think the main reason people buy them is because of the digital format. piano sounds and we'll come back to them in a moment because these three manufacturers have put a lot of effort into making their piano sounds sound good, but some have done it better than others and we'll talk about that in a little bit, so let's go over some of them. these other random sounds and let's see what the heck comes out, so that's been a quick overview of some of the things these instruments can do. I'll get back to the acoustic piano sounds in a moment. but both, let's see here, I think all three, not this one, yes, this one.

All three have very basic recorder functionality so you can make short little recordings if you come up with a cool tune and want to record it or just record yourself playing a performance and then listen to it again and judge it for yourself you can do it on all three all three. They also have a metronome you have a metronome down here let's make them play all at once look what the hell is going on you have a metronome here you have one here and you have one up here why I thought that was a good idea I have no idea um but anyway you have metronomes on all three instruments um you have recording functionality you have demo functionality you can actually set up records on the kawaii it seems to me so I think that's kind of the bottom line and if you're wondering which one of these instruments is the right one for I think a very important thing to keep in mind is that the kawaii es110 is a pianist's instrument.

The action feels like it is very weighted down. I think it's not incredibly pianistic, but the most important thing is the response that you get from the instrument when you play and that response is extremely pianoistic, the action itself is also very responsive, it's very fast and fluid, and it feels really great, and then We have already heard the sympathetic resonance and the acoustic piano tone of the Kawaii is truly glorious and not only that, but if you remember at the beginning of the video when I showed you the damper pedals, the Kawaii without a doubt has the best pedal in this class.

Price. It comes with the best damper pedal. It comes with a rival damper pedal. the ones that come with 3000 instruments, um, that's pretty impressive too, so you can clearly see that Kawhi is really going for a pianist approach. Here you have the piano style damper pedal, which I love, it hasn't moved an inch. flat by the way and I have had to keep constantly removing the other two original pedals that come with these instruments, so right out of the box, the kawaii gives you a high end piano experience, while the yamaha is a little more of a complete instrument not only do you have good piano sounds and a good action, you also have some good electric piano tones, here you have some organ sounds and some other things that give you a little bit of a wider tonal range and the Roland It also falls into that category, although it is a little more annoying to use and the action is not as responsive as the other two, however, I would feel like Roland if they made a few more improvements. especially in the action and in the user interface, they would really have a keyboard that would really be extremely competitive with these;

However, the new FP30x is definitely an improvement over the old FP30, which had a number of flaws that made it very uncompetitive. with the 125 and the es110 and although the new fp30x is still imperfect, it is much more competitive with the 125 and the es110, so if you are a beginning pianist and can only play simple chords and very simple songs, the fp30x certainly works well for you, but the big separator between one of the big separators between the fp30x and either of these two is that if you continued to advance as a pianist and decided to play classical music or maybe even more technical jazz. um, where you can play fast runs and you know intricate solos, that's where the fp30x will start to decline. uh, the fp30x will work fine for pop music and simple jazz, but even in slightly more advanced jazz, some of the things I'm working in a jazz ensemble in college requires some very fast and intricate chord changes and you know, intricate percussive things, like rhythm on the keyboard, and the fp30 won't be able to do that as well as the yamaha. p125 and the kawaii s110 the action just isn't super responsive and super fast.

I have spoken at length about this. I know you're probably sick of hearing about it, but it's very, very important to know what the action feels like. an instrument and since you can't play it yourself I have to do my best to describe it, so if you are a beginner pianist all three will work well for you, but if you are an intermediate or advanced pianist. one of them isn't going to work as well as the other two for you, eh the es110 feels amazing, the yamaha p125 feels amazing to play with and then the whirland fp30 not as much as the eight, the sub 800 price class is kind of where you start to get these more professional level instruments, you know, for under 500, for under 400 dollars, you get instruments that are okay, but they're not really going to be super, what's the word, super? complete, super awesome and really professionally usable, but in this? price class, you are getting into the instruments that are really professionally usable and that actually have some really amazing qualities es110 fantastic yamaha p125 amazing and all around the roland fb30x has some redeeming features for example as I said before the action is an a little quieter than these other two in general.

I wouldn't recommend the fp30x if you are an advanced or intermediate pianist. It will just be limiting. You will find it more difficult to play than this instrument or this one. What I think, those are my comments and I hope everyone enjoyed this review of these instruments. It has been very fun making this video. I've been interested in doing this since the Roland fp30x was released and have been very curious. To see how the added and improved tones on the fp30x would really hold up and compete against these three, another cool feature of the fp30x is that it now has direct line outputs, making it really compatible, compatible and competitive with the other two instruments. here and this is how all three were recorded and throughout this entire video you have been hearing the internal sounds through the direct line outputs so I hope you enjoyed this video.

I have spoken for a long time. I went much deeper. depth than I thought, but I hope everyone enjoyed it. If you did, you might want to check out my channel. I have a lot of cool videos of digital pianos, acoustic pianos, and all kinds of other cool stuff too, if there are any. That sounds great, you might want to think about subscribing if you subscribe, thank you very much and I'll see you in the next video, bye.