Yamaha YDP141 Digital Portable Piano

I've been playing the acoustic piano for around 10 years, but when I started going to university I became heavily out of practice. When I went home during the holidays I would often find myself drawn back to the piano. For my 21st birthday my parents asked if I wanted a keyboard - something I'd wanted for years, but never quite gotten round to it.

The problem is, most keyboards have two issues:

1. They don't have properly weighted keys - the keys feel 'floppy', cheap and plasticky. Acoustic pianists will know what I mean.

2. They're feature laden and designed for gigging. I'm not a performer, I'll happily play for myself and whoever happens to be in the house while I'm practising, but I've never been into joining bands.

The result is that to buy a keyboard that has a good touch response means you're looking at around £1000. £400 will get you the P90, a reasonable keyboard, but the keys are still not up to par in my opinion. Fine if you're a beginner, but if you're used to heavy keys it just doesn't feel right. The reason you're paying £1000 is because they're designed for either stage work, with extra voices, synths and extra loud speakers; or they're for studio work with lots of recording gizmos and MIDI tools.

It quickly becomes apparent that for the same price as a mid-range keyboard, you can get a low-end digital piano. So enter the YDP-141. £600 gets you a proper wooden cabinet, full size 88 keys, metal pedals and huzzah, properly weighted keys.

It's not a small device. If you're planning to take this to and from somewhere it may not be for you. I'm fortunate in that my room has a good deal of space - you'll need 1.4mx0.5m free - and I don't need to transport it very much. It's also heavy, with the package weighing in at around 60kg. That said, it arrives flat packed and you can unscrew the back and sides for transportation.

Feature wise it's pretty basic, but for me it's more than enough. You have a metronome function, record and playback, midi out, headphone sockets, 3 pedals and various voices (piano/organ/harpsichord/strings/e-piano). It's got a really nice feel, the keys are good quality and the roll top is great. As looks go, it looks very well built and professional.

The 50 demo songs it comes with are a nice touch - you also get a book with the sheet music for them. You can play back either the right or left hand (or default, both) so you can practice the pieces with a virtual accompaniment. The book is actually pretty good, with lots of classic pieces ranging from Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer, to Claire de Lune and Fur Elise. Not necessarily for the beginner, but a good range of show pieces. It's also not spiral bound, as another reviewer mentioned, so it can be tricky to keep it open.

Similarly you can record either the right or left hand of a piece selectively and then play over the top to practice a piece.

Sound wise, the samples are good. That's about it. The lower registers sound a bit electronic, but oh well, it's nothing to cry about. If you want a good sounding piano, buy an acoustic. I think it's perfectly good, the polyphony (number of notes that can be played simultaneously) is large enough and the sustain/damp pedals work as expected.

Headphone sockets mean you can practice at night without waking up everyone, and there are two jacks in case you're duetting. Bear in mind these take the big quarter-inch jacks, not the more familiar 3.5mm you get with MP3 players/computers. Fortunately you can pick up adaptors for under £3 these days so you can use your old headphones.

It also has MIDI out for those into composing and you can send it files from your computer to play along to. I haven't used this so I can't comment, but if you need MIDI out, it's there.

The downsides? The metronome is good, but there's no BPM readout so you have to judge the beat for yourself. A lot of the internal settings are accessed via a frankly weird system of holding a function button and then pressing a key on the keyboard - e.g. selecting a particular demo song involves simultaneously pressing the "DEMO" button and "C-Sharp 2". It's actually a reasonable way of hiding a lot of settings that you never normally need to play with, but still, read the manual!

The stand is fine, though it'd be nice if it had some way of holding books open as some pianos do.

Ultimately, you shouldn't be buying this as a performance piano. Its purpose is to allow people to practice in a small space or where noise is an issue. Those things it does admirably and you won't find a better digital piano at this price point. Personally if I ever do a performance, the venue will likely have an acoustic so sound quality isn't a problem - it's still better than comparatively priced keyboards, though.

Highly recommended.

Yamaha YDP 141
I purchased this Yamaha earlier this year. I had been looking at second hand pianos but as we wanted to keep it in a bedroom we were mainly concerned about the weight problem and getting it upstairs. My husband and I are in our late 70's so portability was paramount, and the Yamaha 141,which is in virtual kit form, our only answer. We ordered it from Amazon and it was delivered by a van a few days later after a telephoned advice of delivery day and time, An enormous well packed box contained everything and we unpacked it downstairs, carried all the bits and pieces up stairs and assembled it using the easy to follow instructions,in less than an hour. I was playing it by lunchtime.
It has a good tone and really not much more expensive than a second hand and heavier piano with the added advantage, apparently, of not needing any maintenance. I use it as a piano, not an organ. The enclosed music book is excellent but I wish this had a spiral back as I find it difficult to keep the pages open when on the piano shelf and have resorted to using a bulldog clip. I am renewing my pleasure in playing the piano after many years.

We recently bought this piano for my daughter to study.She is a begginer so we didn't want to spent a fortune for a 'real piano' for now..We did a lot of reaserch and we decided to go for this one mainly because of the price.I'm really glad with our choice.It does not have a lot of 'buttons' meanning a lot of electronic functions which is total usefull for someone who studies classic piano and it is 'loud' enough to enjoy playing and listening to it.It's like having a real piano and my daughter loves it !!