In recent years Amazon has been flooded with cheap China branded piano keyboards, many at half the price of those from established brands like Yamaha, Kawai, Casio & Korg. These cheap Chinese piano keyboards also pack coveted expensive features such as 88 graded hammer action weighted keys. If you are an absolute beginner on a budget, you may not want to spend thousands on a digital piano only to realize that learning to play the piano isn’t exactly your cup of tea. Are these entry-level, low cost, budget Chinese piano keyboards any good? To find out, I got my hands on 2 digital pianos that costs around $300 from popular China brands on Amazon - Fesley & Starfavor and I’ll review the key action, sound quality, build quality, features, functionality and user interface in order to help you decide if you should consider these cheap keyboards based on your use case.
Key Action
Let’s talk about the key action. It’s pretty amazing that these Chinese keyboards come with 88 full size, touch sensitive, graded hammer action weighted keys that simulate a traditional acoustic piano. This means the keys are heavier on the bass notes while getting progressively lighter towards the treble octaves and you can express loud or soft depending on how hard you hit the keys. The cheapest Yamaha or Roland keyboard with 88 graded hammer action keys costs twice as much at $600 which it’s why at this budget price, it’s not surprising the keys are not as quiet as their premium counterparts and playing near the key pivots on the Fesley is less controlled although these wouldn’t be deal breakers for beginners. I like the red felt accent on the Fesley, which is usually found on traditional acoustic pianos but is absent on the Starfavor. But the Starfavor makes up for it by having 4 touch sensitivity settings whereas the more expensive Fesley has no way to vary the velocity curves. I found the best prices for these cheap Chinese piano keyboards and they can be found here.
Sound Quality
It doesn’t matter how cheap an instrument is if it doesn’t sound good. Both these Chinese pianos have decent stereo multi-sampled grand piano sound which is what most beginners will use almost 99% of the time. Of course you won’t get the fancy sympathetic string resonance found on pianos from established brands that costs many times more, but the piano sound from Fesley and Starfavor sound better than their price suggests. The voices can also be layered for a richer tone or split across the keyboard so you can play different sounds with each hand. With a beefy speaker system, these also sound ridiculously loud for their size. At max volume, it got uncomfortably loud for me. The Starfavor has a bassier speaker EQ while the Fesley opts for a brighter tone. The cheaper Starfavor comes with 237 instrument sounds whereas the Fesley comes with 128 tones. The tones range from acoustic to electric pianos, organ, guitars, orchestral instruments, synth leads & pads as well as world instruments. At this low price, don’t expect Grammy award winning sounds, but the instrument sounds are definitely above average and more than sufficient for beginners trying to learn their Do-Re-Mi. The Starfavor, while cheaper, has chorus and reverb effects to thicken up your sound which the Fesley doesn't have. If you don’t mind paying 2 to 3 times higher for more premium sound quality, check out my recommended digital pianos, keyboards, and music-learning app right here.
Rhythm Accompaniment
To spice up your playing, both piano keyboards come with up to 200 rhythm accompaniments. However, these Chinese keyboards have nowhere near the lush, stylish and realistic accompaniments from Yamaha, Korg & Roland keyboards & digital pianos but these more advanced keyboards also cost many times more. I wouldn’t personally use these rhythms but in a pinch for a family sing-along, having an accompaniment does add more fun. Thankfully, both these keyboards support MP3 audio file playback via a USB stick containing songs which you download from the internet.
Features & Functionality
You would expect cheap Chinese piano keyboards to come with limited features & functionality but on the contrary. The Fesley & Starfavor are chock full of connectivity options and useful features. Both support dual headphones - useful during lessons, a triple pedal system for soft, sostenuto and sustain, a metronome to help you keep in time, USB MIDI - essential for connecting to music-learning apps - the ones I recommend can be found here, audio output - for connecting to external amplifiers and mixing decks, transpose - great when playing with singers or other instruments and a song recorder so you can listen to your own performance. I much prefer the user interface of the Starfavor digital piano as you can quickly select sounds and rhythms whereas for the Fesley, I had to scroll through the entire list to get to the sound I wanted. What I would have loved to see in both these piano keyboards is a way to save user settings. For the full specification of what these affordable piano keyboards can do, check my recommended digital pianos and keyboards.
Build Quality
Both these piano keyboards have different form factors. The Starfavor is meant to be portable where you will most likely use it on a desk or on a keyboard stand. Everything is made of plastic but it doesn’t feel cheap. I personally feel the fake wood accents are a little cheesy, but that’s just me. The Fesley has a wooden cabinet and as such it is heavier and not meant to be portable. The set comes with the 4 wooden legs and a triple pedal unit whereas the Starfavor comes with a single pedal and the triple pedal unit is an option. I have no issues with the build quality of these 2 digital pianos, however only time will tell how the key action will hold up.
Conclusion
For absolute beginners on a tight budget and for those who don’t want to spend too much money because they are not sure if they will enjoy playing the piano, these cheap Chinese piano keyboards give great value. They won’t sound the best and they won’t have the best key action but for an absolute beginner these work really well for what they cost.
You can find out the full specifications and the best price for this together with my recommended digital pianos, keyboards, and music-learning app right here.
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