Korg B2 Digital Piano / REVIEW / Under $500 / for 2020 / Yes!

Korg B2 Digital Piano / UPDATED REVIEW / Jan 2020 -  First time "Portable" Grand Piano under $500 (piano only). The Korg B2 ($499 price) and Korg B2SP portable digital piano (with matching furniture stand & triple pedal) at $599 recently came out on the market for 2020 and not many people know about this new digital piano yet or have actually played it. In our opinion this is a very low price for this new model considering what it does and how realistic it is. I have played it many times already and know a lot about it and here's what I have discovered...it is the very first portable digital piano under $500 (piano only) that I have ever played in my 40 years of doing this that I can truly say sounds like an actual grand piano. Normally any digital piano under $500 sounds like a toy in comparison to any acoustic piano, much less a grand piano. They all sound somewhat artificial for their piano sound, have little expression or dynamic range on many of them, and have weak frequency range, especially in the bass frequencies. Beyond that the pedal sustain/decay time on all digital pianos under $500 is typically normally very short and weak because the piano technology in those digital pianos simply is not up to the task of reproducing the piano sound elements that you may otherwise get if you spent a lot more money (over $1000) on a more expensive digital piano. Beyond that, the internal speaker systems on most of these other digital pianos under $500 are usually very weak (10-12 watts of total power) and they just can't handle a big piano sound coming through those small speakers and amplifiers.


The Korg B2 at $499 just about left me speechless (and that's really hard to do:) after I got through playing it for the very first time. The rich, full tone and long, deep sustained resonances when using the damper pedal system was more than I ever expected from an instrument in this price range, especially from Korg. Korg has never been known for good digital pianos under $500 in terms of something that sounds realistic and plays great. They have had stuff out before in this price range but I have never liked them, especially compared to the other top brands under $500 including Yamaha, Casio, and Roland. I have liked other Korg home digital pianos around or above $1000 and they have some great models in that price range out now which I have reviewed here on this blog.  Korg is also famous in having incredible digital piano technology in their pro stage pianos which can easily cost in excess of $2000 to $3000 or more and this is the secret of the B2...the digital piano technology in this new model comes directly from their pro stage digital piano called the "Grandstage" which sells for $2199 on-line price. The Grandstage has a brand new "super chip" that has some absolutely amazing piano sound technology in it that comes from 5 distinct famous 9' acoustic concert grand pianos including an American Steinway, Austrian Bosendorfer, Japanese Yamaha, German Bechstein, and Italian Fazioli. These grand pianos are not only sampled in a very sophisticated way, but there are no discernible sample loop points which typically would make the piano sound fake and processed. This technology is being used in the new Korg B2 and the way it sounds is absolutely amazing. You would never guess that the B2 only costs $499 by the way it plays and sounds.  The tonal dynamic range and expression is so wide from very soft tone to bright and everything in between that it's the first piano under $500 I have played that sounds so expressive which is something that has been otherwise impossible to find in this price range. The sound is also even and resonate across all 88-keys and balanced nicely so that all the octaves resonate evenly unlike other digital pianos with very uneven volumes and piano sounds in different parts of the keyboard in different octaves. In other words, this sounds like a real piano, the others don't. With 120 note polyphony sound chip there is plenty of polyphony piano power and there was no note dropout even when I was playing complex pieces of music because Korg has a proprietary way of handling their polyphony chip which then causes no note drop-out at all even with the stereo grand piano sounds....very impressive.

The key action in the B2 is also impressive in that it is responsive, quick, has nice even weighted, graded touch, and is noticeably quiet whereas some of these key action make a lot of noise as the keys are moving up and down. It is a proprietary key action designed by Korg and they also use it in some of their popular stage digital pianos. I didn't think I would necessarily like the key action in this model because some of the past Korg key actions were unimpressive to me but in this case the key action really matches the stereo grand piano sound chip in how they respond together in a seamless way. One of the more surprising things about this piano sound is the sustain time (aka:decay time) and how long it holds out along with how powerful it is in terms of volume. It's really like playing an actual acoustic grand piano in that way because acoustic grands have that same characteristic because you hear long, lush tone when the notes are being held while using your sustain/damper pedal. A single pedal comes with the B2 but you can also get the triple pedal unit which then provides the more advanced half-damper pedal which gives you a variable amount of sustain control rather than just having it be on or off.


Basically, if all this piano had were these 5 different grand piano sounds and it only played piano that would be enough for me at the low $499 price. There are a lot of people who just want great piano sound and nothing else, but the B2 does have more features and functions in it too. It has a number of other instrument tones (12 total including the acoustic piano sounds) with some excellent vintage electric pianos, organs, strings, and baroque harpsichord. One thing this model is not able to do is layer/mix or split the instrument sounds which most other digital pianos can do. This is a disappointment to me because I personally enjoy doing those kind of things to the sounds but I do understand Korg's thinking here which is in an effort to keep down cost to $499, they had to make some decisions on what their focus was in designing and producing this piano and it was obviously focused on the piano playing experience and not really for much else. So even though you cannot mix 2 sounds together on this model nor is there a recording feature on this model, there are ways around it like connecting an iPad by the USB/MIDI connection and then using Garage Band or some other sound app which you can send (stream) that extra additional through the piano and then overlay that sound on top of any Korg sound in the piano and have those two sounds playing together every time you play the B2 keys. The USB/MID connection in the B2 takes care of the B2 triggering the sounds in the app while that connection also takes care of automatic audio streaming from the external device into the Korg speaker system so that you can hear your iPad sound come directly through the B2. Few other digital pianos can do "audio streaming" through a USB MIDI connection so this is a very cool feature in the B2 and enables you to do some musical things many other digital pianos cannot do. 

One of the other things I really like about this digital piano is the internal speaker system. In all the other digital pianos under $500 the internal speaker systems are OK, but very basic and can make the piano sound weak, tinny, anemic, and/or very artificial with little resonance or richness. But that's what people have come to expect with digital pianos in this price range...except in the new B2. The B2 has a huge internal 30 watt stereo sound system housed in a built-in sound chamber which really makes the entire spectrum of frequency range come through from the low bass tones, to the mid-range tones, and also generating clear higher frequency tones without being tinny, weak, or shrill. Putting Korg's upscale grand piano sound-chip through this massive internal speaker system in this compact $499 portable digital piano was something I really did not expect and this was also a surprise to me and way beyond what any other digital piano company has done in their products in this price range.

Korg B2SP (with stand & triple pedal

The Korg B2 does have a few useful digital features like a digital metronome for rhythm & timing training which is nice, a digital transpose function so that you can instantly electronically change the key you are in so that when you play you can play the song in the key it's written but you can hear it come out in a different key to perhaps get it into your vocal range better. The piano also has digital reverb & chorus effects which helps some of the instruments sound even more realistic as well as touch sensitivity control for your finger touch depending if you want the piano sound to come in quicker or less quickly with a hard, medium, or easy touch. So Korg does offer some basic but useful features that rounds out the B2 with just enough things in it to serve most music needs. The B2 also has a stereo headphone jack output and a stereo mini jack audio input so you can run external audio devices through the B2 30-watt stereo speaker system and this a very cool feature with most other digital pianos do not have in this price range.

The control panel on the B2 is easy to use, the buttons have very nice tactile feel to them and you access the basic features of the piano through these buttons. A few of the features have to be accessed through the function button and then pressing a specific white or black key to trigger that function so you need to find that feature and the way to access it out of a chart in the owners manual so it's really no evident on the piano itself. There is no LED or LCD user display screen so it's less intuitive that way. However, as I mentioned earlier, Korg is obviously trying to keep the costs down on this model so they could include this awesome piano playing experience and so to that end...this definitely did that. The B2 only weighs a mere 26 lbs so it is super lightweight but appears to be well built and well designed in terms of cabinet, elegant looks, the large music rack included, and just the fit and finish of body parts and components. You get your choice of either a matte black finish or matte white finish and for another $100 more you can get the entire piano-furniture stand-triple pedal combo package which is a cheap price for all those extras in our opinion.

The bottom line is...when you play and hear this new portable digital piano with its extremely impressive grand piano sound with all those resonances and natural sounding string vibrations and other organic grand piano content and you feel how quick and responsive this Korg key action is along with that key action being very quiet in key movement (no clicking, clacking, or noisy keys), what most people are saying who have had an opportunity to play and/or hear this new Korg B2 piano is..."sign me up!" By the way, we are not suggesting the B2 is as good as some of the digital pianos in the higher price ranges near or above $1000, because those pianos offer a more upgraded, more natural piano playing experience. But what we are saying is there is no good reason I can think of why anyone would want to buy any other brand or model digital piano under $500 unless they want a "toy" or they just cannot afford the $500 bucks. But if you're going to spend $300 or $400, then we advise you "stretch yourself" financially or save your pennies until you can get a new Korg B2 rather than spending it on something inferior and then wishing you would have spent the extra money.