7 Best Digital Pianos Under 1000 Dollars — Discover an Orchestra in One Instrument!

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Last updatedLast updated: August 22, 2024
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Looking for the best digital piano under $1000 is tough. The problem isn’t a lack of options – the trouble begins when you realize just how many choices there are.

Trawling through the vast numbers of products takes a lot of time, some of the features available can be tricky to decipher. And how will you know what you need, and you don’t need? As is often the case, the battle can be in narrowing down the options and figuring out what features to look for when searching.

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Pianos are one of the most versatile instruments, spanning all musical genres. From classical music to rock music – pianos are everywhere. They’re a timeless part of composition and performance and can do almost anything.

Manufacturers have applied modern technology to the principles of old-school piano making, and that means the piano is now just as comfortable in the contemporary music studio, and indeed, within electronic music, as it ever was acoustically. It looks like the keyboard is here to stay.

This article will help you find the set digital piano for you. First, we’ll delve into a list of the seven best pianos for under $1000, looking at the specifications and features of each one and examining the pros and cons of the best examples we could find.

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After that, we’ll get to the buying guide. That will give you a better idea of what to look out for when you’re trying to choose your own keyboard. We’ll be looking at specific features common to most digital pianos, such as polyphony, key types, key numbers, and interfaces.

If you’re currently looking to find the best digital piano under $1000 for your personal use, the in-depth reviews below will get you closer to being successful.

Top 7 Digital Pianos Under 1000 Dollars Review 2024

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1.

Casio Privia PX-160 Digital PianoEditor’s Choice

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 128
  • Type of keys: hammer action
  • Number of timbres: 18 Built-in tones( from Grand Piano presets to strings)
  • Pedal: Casio SP-3 included (other options available)
  • Warranty: 1 year

The first thing to say about the Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano is that this comes in a package – which can be fantastic for beginners and save many costs starting out.

It’s important to remember that accessories will be required to get a pianist off the mark. The Casio bundle here has many of the things a budding pianist will need, including the proper stand for this model, the triple-pedal system for this keyboard, a dedicated piano bench, instructional DVD and book, and even an all-important polishing cloth. That’s a great start.

This is a full-size 88-key digital piano, and the look of it is simple, yet attractive. The Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano features hammer-action keys which are fully weighted to provide a realistic playing experience.

You get 128 tone polyphony with the Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano, and although that’s not excellence, for a piano at this price point it’s a high level, and you won’t be searching for the texture of tone any time soon. There is also a good number of presets on this instrument, which range between authentic grand piano sound and string instruments, so you’ll really be able to have fun with this.

All in all, the Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano offers much value to buyers that need to go out and buy the complete digital piano package. What is provided here will get you playing or learning without the need to look for costly accessories.

What are our favorite features?

  • Great package deal
  • Decent level of polyphony

What could be better?

  • Poor customer service reported

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 120
  • Type of keys: hammer action
  • Number of timbres: 8 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: sustain/sostenuto/soft pedal board
  • Warranty: 1 year

The first thing you will notice upon examining the Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano is that it’s simple, understated design has the potential to look attractive in almost any home or setting.

Korg instruments generally ooze quality, and this piano is no exception to that. Korg have been at the forefront of the electronic keyboard industry since the beginning, and it looks as though they are not going away any time soon.

The Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano offers a full 88-keys, and Korg’s naturally weighted hammer-action keyboard provides a very near-acoustic playing experience.

That beautiful playing action gets combined with an impressive set of eight preset tones, which give further depth and variety to the capabilities of this machine.

The Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano doesn’t want when it comes to the critical element of polyphony. You get 120 simultaneous tones on this instrument, and even though that isn’t the best possible level, it will enable some pretty advanced composition or play.

Where Korg also hit the right notes with the Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano is in the bundle provided. The two top offerings on our list were almost impossible to separate – and both offer similar packages which will attract fresh players.

You get everything here that you’ll need to begin learning or playing – including a bench, pedals, the stand, and a sheet music stand.

What stands out?

  • Lovely weighted keyboard
  • Full 88-key piano
  • Adequate polyphony
  • Nice accessory package

What cons did we manage to find?

  • No MIDI-USB
  • Some packaging/damage issues

3.

Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console PianoBest with Graded Hammer Standard Keys

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 64
  • Type of keys: Graded Hammer Standard
  • Number of timbres: 10 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: sustain/sostenuto/soft pedals
  • Warranty: 1 year

With our third choice piano we’re into another heavyweight electronic instrument manufacturer. One thing out top three here does have is pedigree, and Yamaha is known to produce excellent instruments.

The most notable feature on this particular Yamaha is the grand hammer standard keyboard, it’s quite remarkable to see this on a keyboard which costs less than $1000 – and the fact that Yamaha are offering it is impressive. This piano will provide an incredibly realistic playing experience, and the action of the keys is varied to take that realism even further.

You get ten presets on the Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console Piano, and this comes with a full-size 88-key keyboard, so you’ll be able to play relatively advanced material on the piano, and you get seven octaves of range.

There are, however, some failings with the Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console Piano, and it falls behind our top two pianos here because of that fact.

You don’t get the bundle that the Casio and Korg versions offer, but also, polyphony on the Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console Piano is extremely poor. It will do a job, but you’d expect more depth in a piano at this price point, and 64 simultaneous tones simply aren’t adequate.

What makes it special?

  • Full-size keyboard
  • Gand hammer standard keys

What cons did we find?

  • Warranty issues when bought from a non-Yamaha-authorized dealer
  • Poor polyphony

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 64
  • Type of keys: Graded Hammer Standard
  • Number of timbres: 10 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: sustain pedal with half-pedaling available
  • Warranty: 1 year

The Yamaha P45 strikes you primarily as being an elementary digital piano. Beyond what the name states, you get very little else with the Yamaha P45 88-Key Weighted Digital Piano, and that’s disappointing because Yamaha is capable of producing so much more.

What you get is a full-size keyboard – it’s 88 keys, making this piano a versatile choice. Many user levels can be accommodated on this piano, which is a plus for this keyboard.

The Yamaha P45 88-Key Weighted Digital Piano has ten preset sounds, which is enough to provide some variation. However, this piano will not set any music recital rooms or concert halls alight.

One of the most disappointing aspects of the Yamaha P45 88-Key Weighted Digital Piano is that the polyphony capability is minimal. All we get is a paltry 64 simultaneous tones.

This is a Yamaha, and it does come with variably weighted keys – but, overall, this piano is an inferior version of a Yamaha keyboard, and it offers very little that will excite buyers. It’s disappointing and inadequate – period.

What makes it special?

  • It’s a cheap Yamaha piano option

What cons did we find?

  • Limited features
  • Poor polyphony

Features
  • Number of keys: 73
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 256
  • Type of keys: GH3 (like GHS, but swings back faster)
  • Number of timbres: 24 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: sustain/sostenuto/soft pedals
  • Warranty: 1 year

Let’s forget the technical specifications and features for a second here. The very first thing to say about the Yamaha YDP-S34 Arius Series Slim Digital Console Piano is that if you’ve always wanted to get your John and Yoko Ono, this brilliant-white digital keyboard is the one for you.

All you need to do is grow that hair and don’t wash it, don a white suit, take off your shoes and socks, buy this piano and you’re set.

Aside from its potential for emulating your musical heroes in the comfort of your own home, the Yamaha YDP-S34 Arius Series Slim Digital Console Piano also offers some features that might make you feel like a Rockstar too.

Polyphony is almost off the scale at 256 simultaneous tones, and you’ll be able to achieve richness in sound here that is unrivaled by most, if not all other digital pianos on the market. It’s a remarkable feature in this price bracket.

This keyboard also offers GH3 keys, which is a version of graded hammer standard with a faster recoil. Again, it’s impressive to see that level of performance on a digital piano for this price.

One drawback with the Yamaha YDP-S34 Arius Series Slim Digital Console Piano is its reduced key count, at 73. However, there is so much good stuff going for this piano that you might want to forsake an octave and just buy it.

Why are we impressed?

  • Unbelievably great polyphony
  • Great GH3 keyboard

What negatives must you be aware of?

  • Only 73 keys

6.

LAGRIMA Digital PianoBudget Pick

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 128
  • Type of keys: weighted
  • Number of timbres: 24 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: sustain/sostenuto/soft pedals
  • Warranty: 1 year

The sixth piano on our list of the seven best digital pianos under $1000 we could find is our budget pick – and that’s why it’s included. This is a very poorly built instrument, and there have been many reported instances of it failing extremely quickly – with the manufacturer only offering an inadequate 3-month warranty.

The LAGRIMA Digital Piano offers a full-size 88-key keyboard and claims to have 128 tone polyphony. It has built-in speakers, and you can record and play back your efforts on the LAGRIMA Digital Piano without the need for software or additional equipment – which is a feature that will help students a lot.

The LAGRIMA Digital Piano is well and truly in the budget bracket, but customer experiences with the product tend to point toward the fact that any savings made might well turn out to be false economy.

Three months simply isn’t an adequate period for a musical instrument warranty, and this piano seems to fail extremely quickly, on far too many occasions.

Why is it special?

  • Cheap and cheerful

What are the flaws?

  • Poor build quality
  • Extremely unreliable

7.

Casio PX770 BK Privia Digital PianoBest Budget Casio

Features
  • Number of keys: 88
  • Number of polyphony (Max.): 192
  • Type of keys: hammer action
  • Number of timbres: 19 preset piano voices
  • Pedal: 3 built-in pedals (damper, soft, sostenuto)
  • Warranty: 1 year

The Casio Privia PX-770 is a difficult one to review because although it offers something in features, it suffers from the usual problems that exist around Casio currently when it comes to packaging, quality and customer service. That’s a shame, considering Casio were a significant player in electronic keyboards for many years.

The PX-770 does, however, come with an adequate 19 preset instrument sounds, which gives scope for versatility and performance which is missing with many other digital pianos. The polyphony here is also good, with the piano able to produce 128 simultaneous tones.

What you get with the Casio Privia-770 is a relatively ill-equipped piano which often arrives with missing or broken parts. That’s just not good enough from a major manufacturer, and Casio simply has to improve its customer service, quality control, and general approach to doing business. There are too many alternatives around.

All in all, bad reviews and poor customer experiences are going to put most buyers off this, and indeed, most Casio digital pianos. If Casio could change that, the specifications of this instrument wouldn’t be a bad customer draw.

What are its best features?

  • Adequate polyphony
  • Good number of presets

What could be improved?

  • Bad customer service
  • Missing parts and broken items

Things to Consider

Now that you know our picks for the best digital piano under $1000, it’s time to talk about some specific features you need to consider and what to look for in general. We hope that this buying guide will help you with that. Read on to get a better understanding of each feature.

Features to consider while choosing digital piano

7 Best Digital Pianos Under 1000 Dollars — Discover an Orchestra in One Instrument!Finding the ideal digital piano under 1000 dollars means having a good basic understanding of what to expect regarding features and technical capabilities. The following sections are designed to give you exactly that.

Number of keys

Digital pianos are available with different key counts, ranging from 25 keys to 88 in number. Many beginner digital keyboards will have 61 keys – which offers a good balance between simplicity and ease of movement and a decent octave range.

Depending on your ability level, you’ll want your piano to have various capabilities, and matching yourself to a keyboard is your first step to making a great choice. Remembering that a digital piano doesn’t necessarily need to be for life is important.

These instruments are intricate and finely-manufactured pieces of musical equipment. That means they’ll have a good resale value if you want to upgrade a little later down the line as your playing ability expands. It’s tempting to go for all the features of full-size keyboards and put too much weight on connectivity when you’re just starting.

Don’t forget that buying a more straightforward piano when you’re still learning the ropes will mean you’ll save some cash and likely be able to afford something that sounds better and replicates playing an acoustic piano more accurately. Don’t worry too much about needing 88 keys if you’re a beginner on a budget.

Type of keys

7 Best Digital Pianos Under 1000 Dollars — Discover an Orchestra in One Instrument!Weighted

There isn’t anything too mysterious to the concept of a weighted keyboard. The principle is perhaps what you would expect from the name. Weighted keys get manufactured with a weight inside, making them play more like a traditional piano key – which is set up to strike a chord via a hammer mechanism, producing a certain amount of resistance to the touch.

When playing an acoustic piano, you get some feedback from the instrument. Weighted keys are designed to give a pianist the feel of playing a traditional piano, with all the benefits and portability of an electronic keyboard.

Some weighted piano keyboards go even further and vary the weighting of each key in relation to where it sits on the keyboard. The best weighted key digital piano under 1000 dollars will often have this feature, but sometimes not.

If you’re a more advanced player and you plan to gig your new piano, remember that weighted keys will undoubtedly add to the overall weight of your instrument.

Semi-weighted

Most examples of digital pianos will use one method or another to replicate the feel of playing a traditional piano. Not all will incorporate weighted keys into the design, however, and it’s essential to understand that today’s digital pianos don’t need weighted keys in any form to give a realistic playing experience.

The feel on an unweighted keyboard won’t replicate the experience of playing an acoustic piano very well – but sensor within some keyboards can tell how hard you’re hitting keys and output tone and sound volume accordingly.

More often than not, if you want to compromise between portability and a realistic keyboard feel, you’ll find great satisfaction in a semi-weighted version. Keyboards like this don’t go as far as fully weighted versions but offer some of the feel of a traditional instrument.

When looking for the best digital piano for a home under 1000 dollars, you’ll likely find some pianos of this type in that class and for that price.

Hammer action

Hammer action keyboards take the concept of acoustic piano replication even further than weighted keys can. These keyboards go as far as physically reproducing some of the mechanical aspects of an acoustic piano to make it more realistic.

There’s a modern version of the hammer action contained in old-school pianos. Playing keyboards like this is extremely close to playing the real thing in terms of user experience. In the price range we’re examining in this review, you’ll unlikely see many keyboards of this type.

Grand Hammer Standard

Grand Hammer Standard is perhaps the pinnacle of traditional piano feel replication on digital pianos. That is as close as it gets to playing an old grand piano in electronic form, and it’s a feature usually only found on premium keyboards.

Buying a piano is like buying many things – if you’re looking for the best digital stage piano keyboard under 1000 bucks, you’ll need to compromise on features such as grand hammer standard. For the record, grand hammer standard keyboards use finely spring-loaded keys to mimic the feel and feedback of traditional pianos eerily well.

Number of polyphony (Max.)

7 Best Digital Pianos Under 1000 Dollars — Discover an Orchestra in One Instrument!Polyphony sounds extremely technical, but what you need to know about polyphony to choose keyboard isn’t technical at all. That’s the good news. Polyphony is related to how many notes a digital piano can produce simultaneously. That’s all the term means.

The not so good news is that polyphony will generally correlate with price. It’s possible to get some great sounding pianos in the price range we’re looking at, however.

A higher polyphony will produce a vibrant tone due to the number of notes delivered simultaneously. Polyphony gives great depth to an instrument, so if you’re seeking out the best sounding digital piano under 1000 bucks, and that quality is a priority for you – focus strongly on polyphony when conducting your search.

Sound Presets

Sound presets present the possibility of adjusting the tone output of a piano to produce different sounding notes. You’re playing with the style of the instrument when you do this, and it’s equivalent to switching to a completely different acoustic piano when you can do this on a digital keyboard.

Presets mean that you don’t have to adjust the individual aspects of the tone to replicate a specific type of piano. They’re essentially set values you can switch between when you want a different set of sound characteristics.

Keyboard Panel Interface

Different digital pianos have differing levels of connectivity. You’ll need to be especially aware of what a keyboard offers if you want to compose music via a home computer or laptop. You’ll also need to carefully consider the connectivity level of a keyboard if you’re a novice pianist and you’re planning to use software to aid your learning experience.

Another reason to examine what ports and options to connect a piano offers will be if you want to use an external speaker or amplifier – perhaps for gigging. All products are different, and connectivity will cost money, so only prioritize it if you need the capability.

Accessory

You’ll find that pianos come in different overall packages, like with buying any item. Some keyboards come with starter packages and include things like stools or benches, metronomes built into the piano, carry cases, and many other products designed to enhance the enjoyment of the keyboard. If you’re a beginner, looking for an excellent accessory package can save you a bunch of cash.

Size and Weight

Lower weight plus compact size equals portability with most products. Electronic keyboards are no different in that sense. Professional musicians who still have to haul their own gear to performances will almost always have portability high up the list of their priorities when selecting a new instrument.

If you’re a piano student and you consistently practice and learn at home, portability won’t matter to you – unless you buy a keyboard at the outset that’s going to stay with you for many years. In that case, you might want to give some thought to how lightweight and compact your new keyboard needs to be.

Like most things on this list, portability will matter to different people in varying degrees. Another time you might want to think about the size of a piano is when you have limited space in the place you want to use it – as you’ll need to feel comfortable when you play.

FAQ

 
 

There is no correct answer to this question. Nowadays, electronic pianos are so advanced that they can often play and feel just like an acoustic version. For some musicians and students, a digital piano will be the only choice – because they offer pretty much every advantage of an acoustic piano while providing the added factor of being extremely portable.

Some digital pianos will require essential maintenance and cleaning – according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

61 absolutely is enough keys. With this many keys on your piano, you’ll still have a broad range of octaves at your disposal, and the keyboard will be enough to get you to a very advanced level. A good musician can work wonders with a limited instrument, and 61 keys isn’t very limited at all.

Our Verdict

Well, there we have it – we’ve taken a comprehensive look at digital pianos in the sub-$1000 bracket and examined the digital piano’s attributes and abilities in the buyer’s guide. There was a clear winner in our list of the top ten digital pianos we could find at this price point.

The Casio Privia PX-160 Digital Piano is deservedly on our list because it offers a great range of features for a piano you can purchase for less than $1000. That piano will stand out for a lot of potential buyers.

The Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano deserved its place in the second spot. Looking for a digital piano under $1000 doesn’t necessarily mean compromising on features – and the Korg B1SP 88 Weighted Key Digital Piano really drives that fact home.

It comes with a fantastic range of capabilities, and it will attract many buyers for that reason.

Last, but certainly not least in the top three places of our rundown of seven examples of the best digital piano under $1000 was the excellent Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console Piano. If you want a quality instrument but you don’t have a fortune to spend, this piano could well be right up your street.

All of the top three pianos here were impressive, and sitting well and truly within the ‘best budget digital piano under 1000 bucks’ bracket, the Yamaha YDP103 Arius Series Digital Console Piano was no exception to that.

1 Comment
  1. I’ve been looking for a digital piano and this article has been so helpful in narrowing down my choices. The information on the different features like the number of keys and types of keys is really informative and will definitely help me make a decision. The Yamaha P-45 looks promising.

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