Casio AP620 Celviano Digital Piano with Bench Review

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Casio AP620 Celviano Digital Piano with Bench ReviewIt seems like there is a conspiracy among the other major digital piano makers. Yamaha, Roland, Kawai, Kurzweil: I'm looking at you. They utterly refuse to market a traditionally styled piano for under two thousand dollars MSRP. They have pianos in that price range that sound nice, but the "modesty panel" that takes the place of the traditional sound board only covers (at best) half the back of the piano. This tells the world, "look everybody, I bought a cheap piano." Fortunately, Casio breaks this cartel and makes the Celviano Casio AP420 Celviano Digital Piano with Bench and AP620, Casio sells them both for well under 2k list. Both are traditionally-styled pianos, with good actions and good sound at a very competitive price. I bought the AP620 because it has more features at only a modest price premium, but the AP420 is a good value as well if you mainly care about the main piano voice.
Style: The AP620 is available in any color you want as long as it is black. My wife wasn't happy I bought a black piano, but I didn't dock it a star for that. The black color does blend in well with black televisions and home electronics, and it looks modern. As you might expect, it is constructed of a laminated material that is far from fine wood, but it appears to be sufficiently stiff and durable for the job. The chrome trim along the keyboard cover is suprisingly unobtrusive and adds a touch of modernity to the design. From a distance, you can't tell this is a digital piano, especially with the key cover down. When the key cover is raised you do see the electronic display, but since the average home piano has been digital for some time now, that's really not a big deal. The modesty panel does have a slight gap between the bottom and top of the piano, but it is designed so that from any angle that you look at it in a typical home, you can't see the gap. The gap is functional, because it allows you to get cords from the front to the back of the piano. All of the connections are on the bottom of the piano. The connections include stereo audio inputs and outputs, USB-midi, and two headphone jacks.
Weight and assembly: The AP620, like most digital pianos, ships unassembled. In this case, the top unit includes the keyboard and all of the electronics, with the stand and the pedal unit broken down to be assembled to the top. The shipping weight of the crate is 194 lbs. The piano itself weighs 94 lbs. I was lucky. I bought a floor model that was already assembled. With the seats of one side of my Chrysler minivan lowered on one side, the Piano slid straight in fully-assembled with no fuss, and with plenty of room for the bench beside it. (Thank you stow-n-go.) If you have the opportunity to buy this or any other piano from a retailer fully assembled I highly recommend it. Loading the 94-lb piano in the house was a reasonably easy two-person job. I also had the opportunity to swap the Casio adjustable bench that comes standard with the piano for a traditional bench with storage space for music. While I appreciate that ergonomics of the Casio adjustable bench, I'm not keen on the looks, I thought I would miss the storage space. All the piano players in my house are close to average size, so the adjustment feature doesn't matter that much.
The Keys: For years Casio has been battling the reputation that it only sounds cheap sounding portable keyboards. This hasn't been true for decades. In recent years, Casio has gained a lot of ground among professional musicians with its Privia line of "gigging" pianos. The Privias are lightweight low-cost pianos with an excellent acoustic piano sound and piano keyboard action. The AP620 home piano shares its keyboard action and sound with the best of the Privias. The 88 note graded hammer "action" is designed to replicate the feel of an acoustic grand piano. The keys are weighted, and the lower keys are weighted more than the upper ones, though the difference isn't major. The keys have quite a "thunk" that you notice when you playing quietly. I did not notice any side-to-side wiggling that a few commentors have complained about in the Pianoworld forums. The keys also have a simulated ivory finish. In short, the key action and key feel is more competitive with the higher line models of Casio's competitors than the entry level models that share the AP620's price point. The key action feels rich and expensive to me, and it is quite a change from the unweighted synthesizer-action keys that I usually play. The three pedals have a quality feel and affect the piano tone in a natural way. Supposedly the pedals are capable of "half-pedaling"; too bad I'm not.
The Sound: Even though the sound of a piano is its most important feature, I didn't lead with my commentary on point because it is subjective. I think all modern digital pianos sound pretty good, at least those from the major brands. The Celviano AP620 is no exception. Casio touts a four level sampling system and 128 voices of polyphony. The sound is smooth across the keyboard and from low to high velocity. The high notes seem to decay a little faster than average, especially the high notes, but I don't find it objectionable. There is also a feature for artificial soundboard resonance. The soundboard resonance is a feature that used to be limited to very expensive digital pianos. The basic sound of the piano is well served by a 30 watt audio system that is more robust than most of the competing models. (The lower line model, the AP420, makes due with 20 watts.)
THE ENSEMBLE FEATURES: The AP620 differs from its lower-line sibling by having a large variety of "ensemble" sounds in addition to basic piano and electronic piano voices. Here's where I dock the AP620 1/2 star. The ensemble sounds are just okay. To my ears they are a notch below my 8-year-old Yamaha XG lite portable keyboard. The drums are especially weak and muffled when played through the built-in speaker system. In addition to the extra tones, the AP620 gives you rhythms, auto-accompaniment, preprogrammed songs and user sequencing. The status of the electronic features are displayed in a small (16 character?) 2-line LCD display that would have been at home on a Yamaha DX7 in 1983. It is underkill in 2011, even though it is backlit. The biggest problem with all these features is the black-on-black buttons are hard to read even in perfect light, and impossible to read in bad light (read that "normal" light). If you plan on using these features, you should memorize the placement and function of each key and plan on using them by feel. The poor visibility of controls is where I dock the other 1/2 star. After a while, I bought a Boston Harbor Piano Desk Lamp, Piano Desk Lamp, Satin Nickel, which helps a lot and pretty much matches the metal trim of the piano. The piano has 1/4 inch (R/L) input and output jacks in addition to the headphone outs. These in/out jacks are under the piano keyboard.
My own personal opinion is that anytime a keyboard comes with general midi voices, it should at least have a pitchbend wheel or similar control. The AP620 has no pitchbend control. It would be spectacular to have other nonpiano controls such as an volume/expression pedal and/or a modulation wheel. To be fair these features are rare on home pianos, much more rare than they should be since most models have a plethora of organ and other nonpiano voices.
If you like the sound of the AP620, but you are looking for something that is cheaper and/or more portable, you should check out Casio's new star, the Casio WK7500 76 Key Touch Sensitive Workstation Keyboard. The WK-7500 shares some of the same sounds, and some of the same performance features as the AP620, but it has more synthesizer and organ features as well as better effects. The WK-7500 is surprisingly affordable, in fact, you could almost buy a WK-7500 for the difference between the Casio AP-420 and AP-620. Of course, the WK-7500 doesn't have the AP620's furniture cabinet, 88-note keyboard, or the three pedal array; and it has a less powerful sound system.
After using the piano for a while I realized that there's another area that could use some improvement. There is very little control over the tone (timbre) of the overall instrument. You especially notice this when playing a general midi sequence off of an SD memory card. The basic tone of the instrument is centered in the midrange. It's plenty loud, but bass drums don't have a low end kick, and there's no high end sparkle in the cymbals and other high instruments. Sequences sound better on headphones than over the built-in speakers. The piano's speakers are aimed at the floor. There are mesh grills on either side of the keyboard that look like they could house speakers, but I've never discerned any sound coming from them.
Connectivity: I haven't used the audio inputs and outputs or the usb-midi connection yet, but I intend to do so soon and update my review. Supposedly Casio's midi implementation works well with the iPad, which is the way the world is going these days. I don't have an iPad to test, but if you want to give me one . . . .
Summary: The AP620 isn't perfect, but I don't know of any better pianos in its price range. It's closest competitor is probably its little brother, the AP420, which has the same basic piano sound but fewer features and a lower price. In fact, given my reservations about the nonpiano sounds of the AP620, if you are satisfied with the color and sound system of the AP-420, an intelligent buying strategy would be to buy the AP420 as a living room instrument,...Read more›Casio AP620 Celviano Digital Piano with Bench Overview

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