REVIEW - Williams Brioso Digital Piano - NOT Recommended

REVIEW - Williams BRIOSO Digital Piano - NOT Recommended - The Willams digital piano brand is exclusively sold by Guitar Center stores and its affiliates (which Guitar Center owns) including Music & Arts, Woodwind-Brasswind, and other affiliate stores. In fact the Williams brand is made in China and the Chinese company makes digital pianos under other names as well. However the new Williams Brioso is not really new at all because what Williams did is take a prior older model called the Overture 2, which is still sold in Guitar Center stores, and then simply renamed it Brioso ($699US internet discount price) and is offering it for sale at the Guitar Center affiliate stores but not actually in the Guitar Center stores themselves. Pretty tricky they are but it certainly can give a model a longer life if they just rename it and sell it in other places. Unfortunately and in my opinion, this model should have been killed off rather than given a longer life because it is so bad. By "bad" I mean it has not changed in any way from the previous (and still current) Overture 2 model which is a very disappointing digital piano that looks good on the outside but not good on the inside. I call that kind of piano a PSO aka: Piano Shaped Object. It may look like a piano and have a nice cabinet, but the piano playing experience you will get out of it is just plain bad as compared to most digital pianos in this price range and especially as compared to any real acoustic piano. *click on pics for larger views -

There is an old saying that goes "you can try to put lipstick on a pig but at the end of the day it is still a pig." The Brioso is definitely not a pig but in terms of thinking this model comes close at all to a piano is wishful thinking. The name "Brioso" is actually a Spanish name that means "lively or bright" but this model is as far from lively and bright as a piano can get and still be a PSO. The key action is clunky, noisy, and made poorly. The pedals are very noisy when pressing down on them or releasing them after pressing down and the pedal sound does not have the standard half-damper pedaling which simulates what a real damper pedal can do with the piano sound. But the actual piano sound is worst of all. It is muddy, muted, with no tonal dynamics and the piano sound from one key to the next changes character in some parts of the keyboard like the piano sound was taken from different pianos with different tonal characters and placed in one keyboard. Also the volume of the piano sound when pressing the keys is very inconsistent and jumpy and just not even and smooth at all from one key to the next and even within the same note when pressing a key. So if you are learning to play the piano you will learn bad habits because you will either have to compensate in the way you play or you will be limited to what this piano can do. If you play piano pretty well then you will highly disappointed because there is no expression out of the piano sound no matter how you play it. When you do try to play it correctly the key action and piano sound will work against you instead of with you and that is no fun at all.

The Brioso has some nice non-piano instrument sounds such as strings, organ, choir, etc, recording functions, song library, and other functions and features that can be nice to have. There is also a LCD display screen which helps you see what functions you are using which many digital pianos in this price range do not have. But none of this matters if the instrument cannot allow you to play the piano correctly and have it sound like a piano, even at bare minimum standards. Below is a list of piano features on the Brioso and as you will notice, it seems to offer a lot of things. But a piano??...it is definitely not. I am not trying to be mean to this instrument for no reason or because I don't like the Williams company. But as a long time piano instructor and pro musician having taught on and played hundreds of different acoustic and digital pianos, I am just telling you what you need to know...I do not recommend the Williams Brioso or its twin brother the Overture 2. There are so many better choices in this same price range. Yes, the Brioso/Overture 2 has that attractive polished ebony finish which most other digital pianos do not have in this price range and that's what gets most people's attention, but that finish is also thin and scratches easily from my experience with it. You will just need to decide if you are willing to sacrifice a good piano playing experience in another digital piano to gain the nice looking shiny black finish on the Brioso?

You definitely cannot judge a book by its cover, especially in a digital piano. Looks can be deceiving especially when it would appear the listed features of the piano seem to be nice like this list below as taken from the Williams web site. But do not believe everything you read and the hype some web sites give their products. What really matters is if this model can play at all like a real piano or like some good digital pianos in this price range, and the answer for the Brioso is definitely NO. I know that there are shoppers out there who assume that if the cabinet design and finish is attractive then the piano must be good. But please do not be deceived because you are mostly paying for cabinet in my opinion and in fact a basic, but nice Casio portable digital piano that Guitar Center sells for around $300 runs circles around the Brioso in terms of piano playing realism. I do like the Guitar Center company and their affiliate stores but they just need another, much better digital piano to offer at the same price so they don't have this PSO anymore. If you want to read my review of the Brioso's twin brother the Overture 2, go to following review I did on the Overture 2 a couple years ago because then you will also learn more about the Brioso since they are both identical in every way: Williams Overture 2 Review

Brioso specs (notice how exciting the Williams company make the specs sound such as when they say "4-speaker stereo system provides rich, immersive sound.") I think not...

• ebony gloss finish on piano and padded bench for an elegant look
• 88 hammer-action fully weighted keys provides outstanding feel and response
• 147 total sounds, including 15 high-definition custom sounds; 64Mbyte sample ROM for higher-sampled sounds: Grand Piano, Electric Pianos, Organs, Pipe Organ, Clavinet, Harpsichord, Upright Bass, Electric Bass, Strings
• General MIDI set for accompaniment, total 128 playable sounds
• Sustain, Soft, and Sostenuto pedals for realistic playability
• 64-voice polyphony for deep, layered orchestrations
• Modulation/FX control offers realistic rotary and vibrato effects on select instruments
• 4-speaker stereo system provides rich, immersive sound
• Intuitive control panel with easy-to-read blue LCD display
• Front panel USB Host Port for thumb-drive MIDI playback
• USB/MIDI connection, MP3 input, stereo outputs with 1Ž4” and RCA jacks
• Headphone output for private practice
• Music rest

*A very good and highly upgraded alternative to this Brioso is the new Casio PX770 digital home piano furniture cabinet model at just $699. On a 1-10 scale in terms of realistic piano playing, the Brioso would be a 1 and Casio would be a 10. Check out my review of this new Casio model at the following link: Casio PX770 Review

If you want more info on new digital pianos and LOWER PRICES than internet discounts, please email me at tim@azpianowholesale.com or call direct at 602-571-1864.