REVIEW - Kawai KDP90 Digital Piano - Impressive & Recommended

REVIEW - Kawai KDP90 furniture style digital piano ($1149US internet discount price) with 88-key hammer weighted action - Recommended - The Kawai piano company of Japan has been producing digital pianos (and acoustic pianos) for many years and is well known & respected world-wide for building high quality instruments that piano teachers, professional pianists, universities/colleges, and recording studios recommend. I personally know many people who own Kawai acoustic & digital pianos, but Kawai has not offered a full furniture cabinet digital piano priced under $1500US in this country before. Kawai had a previous furniture cabinet model KDP80 available in Canada and other countries (not in the US) for under $1500, but it was a basic model in terms of its piano sound & pedaling technology. So the new KDP90 is a big step forward for Kawai in my opinion when it comes to competing with Yamaha & Casio who have up until this point have consistently dominated the lower price range with their nice furniture cabinet digital pianos under $1500. 

Based on my personal playing experience with the new (just released) 2014 model KDP90, it really looks like Kawai brought out a digital piano which can definitely take business away its competitors, especially Yamaha in my opinion. Both Yamaha & Kawai headquarters are in the same city in Japan (so they know each other well) and both companies not only produce high quality digital pianos (as do other digital manufacturers), but Kawai & Yamaha are quite famous and very competitive with their acoustic upright & grand pianos. The new KDP90 cabinet comes in one color which is an attractive dark brown rosewood with matching padded bench, stylish brass triple pedals, and sliding built-in key cover... similar to the newer Yamaha Arius YDP162 ($1499 internet price) and Roland RP301 ($1699 internet price). Some brands of digital pianos offer their models in two colors with black being one of them, but the dark rosewood color of the KDP90 (the only color it comes in) is probably dark enough for people who might prefer black, especially in a darker or shadier room which causes dark brown/rosewood colors to look almost black (I have personally seen this). The piano is also fairly compact and measures approx 54" wide and 16" deep.

What really makes the KDP90 stand out to me is its impressive graded hammer weighted key action, beautiful stereo acoustic piano sound, and pedaling realism called "Grand Feel Pedal System" with 3 full size pedals...it's all simply amazing for the $1149US price it sells for, and I don't make those kinds of statements lightly. When I first played the KDP90 I said "wow!," because I really did not expect it to be as good as it was and in fact, I thought it would not compare very well to the popular Yamaha Arius series pianos (and other top brands). But the KDP90 not only was surprisingly realistic in recreating the acoustic piano playing & listening experience, it was noticeably better in that way in my opinion than any of the competing Yamaha, Roland, and Korg cabinet pianos under $2000.

KDP90 hammer key action

The KDP90 was obviously designed to do a few things extremely well in its price range and that includes having a noticeably quiet and sturdy graded hammer key action movement (Kawai calls it AHAIV-F Advanced Hammer Action), beautiful acoustic stereo piano sound reproduction with  smooth velocity response and resonance, natural tonal dynamics, and a fairly even volume balance & depth across the entire keyboard including the middle keys (which is not easy to do), as well as solid piano pedaling performance which Kawai calls "Grand Feel Pedal System". It is worth noting that each note of all 88 keys was individually sampled from a Kawai acoustic grand piano as opposed to being sampled (recorded) from an acoustic piano in groups of notes. Sampling groups of notes at one time, like many other brands do, is a less expensive way of getting a piano sound reproduction and not nearly as good as individual note sampling. The Kawai KDP90 had every note sampled from a grand piano one at a time...and the resulting piano sound in this piano is outstanding for the price.

The KDP90 also has some interesting additional functions built in which give the acoustic piano sound an even more realistic tone than it already has. One of the functions is called pedal resonance which means that which you press the pedal down you can hear the sound of the "virtual strings" echo or resonate just like in a real piano when the pedal is held down. This is not the normal sustain you find on most digital pianos when depressing the pedal (which the KDP90 does have), but also a natural organic string resonation that is in additional to sustain. You can control the amount of resonation of the strings from a control function on the keyboard, so that it is not too much or too little, something that the competitive brands in this price range cannot do.

Left side panel controls

The KDP90 does not have hundreds of instrument sounds, USB flash drive input or USB output, automatic accompaniment styles, multi-track recording, user display screen, etc, which may or may not be important to you. It the piano obviously not meant for that because it is focused primarily on piano playing and having a simple, easy to use control panel. All of the control buttons are on the left side of the piano keyboard and the KDP90 has 4 different acoustic piano tones including full stereo reproduction, along with a variety of (total 15) real sounding stereo strings, organs, electric pianos, choirs/pads, harpsichord, and a few other tones. All of these instrument tones are exceptional at this price and better in my opinion than the competition for those specific tones. Based on the fact that Kawai produces some very expensive Concert Grand pianos that sound great, they do have experience creating exceptionally good piano sound and the lower priced KDP90 is no exception.

A feature of the KDP90 which also impresses me is the 192-notes of piano polyphony memory, which is far greater than any of the competitors including Yamaha & Roland, except for the Casio PX850 ($1099 retail price) which has 256 note polyphony. Polyphony (pol-i-fony) allows for greater range of sound and pedal sustain in playing more difficult (advanced) music or when combining two sounds together at the same time. Having close to 200 notes of polyphony is generally plenty even for demanding musicians and the better you play the more piano computer memory (polyphony) you'll want to have.

Power switch & volume slider

The internal speaker system of the piano (at this price) is surprisingly full and loud with a total of 26 watts going through two higher quality speakers which are positioned underneath the keyboard, and the power consumption of this model is only 15 watts so it's quite low (especially compared to other brands) in terms of eating up your electric power. I put the piano speaker system through its paces playing a variety of music at different volumes and the sound was clean, did not distort even at loud volume, and was full from left to right across the stereo field. The overall volume and fullness from the internal sound system is good for a small to medium size room and it's got fairly good bass response for a small furniture cabinet piano. However for a much larger area or room, even though you can definitely hear the piano OK, a
more powerful and fuller sounding internal speaker system would probably be better. In that case you could consider another brand or model with higher audio power between 40-80 watts instead of the 26 watts in the KDP90 such as the Kawai CE220, CN24 or Yamaha YDP162, and YDP181 at 40 watts each. However those pianos do cost more money but I believe the volume of the KDP90 will be enough for most situations. If you ever wanted to connect an external sound system (or stereo monitors) to the KDP90 for a bigger sound experience, you could do that. However, the Kawai KDP90 does not have audio outputs to connect to external speakers, but instead you could connect external speakers to one of the two stereo headphone jacks to hear the external sound which can make the KDP90 sound HUGE (I have done personally that). But in this price range the KDP90 is very competitive and the internal speaker system and fullness of sound is really quite good, so it's hard to complain, especially when the Roland RP301 digital piano ($1699 internet price) is just 24 watts of power and the newer 2013 model Yamaha YDP142 digital piano ($1099 internet price) has only 12 watts of total power. That makes the Kawai look big at 26 watts of total power:). If you think you would really need a more powerful digital piano in terms of internal speaker speaker system but want to stay in this lower price range and still get a very nice piano playing experience, the Casio PX850 (above left pic) would be a good choice at just $1099 internet discount price. It has 40 watts of internal audio power going through four speakers and also has 256 notes of piano polyphony memory which is a lot. It's a pretty powerful piano for the price and has some cool functions on it as well. Go to the following link to read my blog review on the Casio PX850: Casio PX850 Review

Another impressive feature is the exclusive Kawai educational features that are built into the computer software in the KDP90 piano. None of the other big manufacturers have anything like this in this price range and it's a pretty cool thing to have, assuming you would use it. One of the educational fun features on this piano is called Concert Magic, an intelligent interactive rhythm training feature with built-in perfect song playback. Concert Magic can be very useful if you are a beginner of any age including being 2 years old or 92 years old. Imagine if you wanted to play a full song on the piano with both left hand and right hand together and you could push/tap any key on the piano and it would play the correct note or notes of the song...well that's what Concert Magic does. There are 40 complete built-in popular songs in the Concert Magic piano memory which you can choose from. Once you make you song selection, then you can play it. But playing it means you

Concert Magic for any age

would put a finger on any key and push or tap the key down and as you do that you would get the full left and right hand notes (chords) playing the song as you pressed the keys. In other words, you can never make a mistake! The point of that exercise is to help you understand rhythm, timing, and tonal dynamics while listening to the correct notes of the song. You don't have to know anything about reading music or using the correct fingers on the correct keys to hear a song (a nice concept). There are Christmas songs, standard songs, folk tunes, classical music, and others tunes offered with Concert Magic that you may recognize. The goal of Concert Magic is to allow anyone to press the any key down to hear the correct notes coming out and then try to keep the correct timing & rhythm using the built-in metronome which you can set for nearly any time signature and speed. It's so much fun watching a 2 year old press keys down and have the song notes sound perfect and moving along to the next notes every time they press any white or black key! If you are a beginner of any age and want to be able to press the keys and have perfect music come out instantly, then you'll really have fun with the Concert Magic feature while you are learning. Take a look at the video demo at the bottom of this page of a live impromptu recital using the Kawai KDP90 Concert Magic feature (the little girl in the video is my granddaughter Emmalyn:)

Another educational feature of the KDP90 is the built-in music lesson library consisting of Alfred's basic piano library of songs books 1A and 1B (a very popular lesson book series) along with Burgmuller 25 Etudes. With the built-in music library in the piano you can purchase the appropriate music books and then play along with the built-in songs at any tempo you wish (slower or faster) and also separate out the left hand and right hand parts for playback with controls in the piano accessed by the function button and keys. The Alfred piano leaning series of lesson books library is very popular with pianos teachers and is especially useful if you are a beginner or novice player so you can listen to left and right hand
parts separately on the KDP90 (before you play the song yourself) to understand how each part sounds and to then play each part one at a time along with the song playing back. It's a pretty cool feature and Kawai is the only digital piano company with this kind of built-in lesson song library. There are many other Alfred piano and music books beyond level two but the KDP90 does not have those songs built in. You would need to get a digital piano that is General MIDI compatible along with a built-in USB flash drive (such as the popular Casio PX780 - $999 internet price) to play other Alfred lesson book songs (including other lesson book publishers such as Faber). If you are taking lessons with a piano teacher you can use the Alfred curriculum in your lessons to correspond with the built-in Alfred instructional songs in the piano. But even if you never use this function, it's OK because this instrument is really all about the acoustic piano experience being recreated on a digital piano and having it be the one of the best you can get for a furniture cabinet digital piano under $1500.

Recorder button controls

The KDP90 does have a nice built-in digital recorder which offers one track of full piano (left & right hand) recording and a 3-song memory to save your recorded songs. This is generally sufficient for most people although some of the Kawai competitors have a 2-track recorder with separate left & right hand recording. Two separate tracks of recording is a nice feature and I would have wanted to see that in the KDP90, but it is not absolutely essential. Most people just want to hear what they sound like regardless of whether the left & right hand are recorded altogether or individually. The KDP90 also allows for electronically splitting the 88 piano keys into two equal 44-key pianos so that two people can play at the same time playing the same notes. The left hand part of the 88 keys is electronically changed to sound like the right hand part of the keys which is helpful if there is teacher-student practice or brother-sister, parent-child, etc. This can be a useful tool depending on your situation.

MIDI to USB cable connector

The KDP90 is equipped with MIDI connectors to computer/iPad or external MIDI instruments but I would have preferred the KDP90 having a USB output to iPad/computer as well as an audio input which would have been useful. But some people do ask for traditional MIDI connectors (to connect to other sound modules, etc) which it does have, and you can always purchase a low cost adapter cable to convert the MIDI plug on the piano to a USB cable connector so that you can connect the piano to an iPad/computer (with iPad adapter kit) and use some fun interactive iPad apps for creative visual learning and music playing. I use iPad apps in my studio quite a bit so I would definitely suggest that if you have an iPad. Another feature the KDP90 does not have is ivory feel key tops which Casio, Yamaha, and Roland do have under $1500. Although some people like the ivory feel keytops and it can be nice, it is not absolutely necessary and in reality, real acoustic pianos these days (and have for many years) use regular white hard plastic keytops and not ivory, so that material (simulated or organic) is not something you would see on a regular piano anyway. Besides that, I have had some people tell me they do not personally like the feel of some synthetic ivory key tops, so it's definitely personal opinion.

KDP90 with closed key cover

But all the drum rhythms in the world, automatic chord arrangements, extra sounds, synthetic ivory keys, or the latest USB technology are useless in my opinion if you do not have a realistic piano playing experience with a solid key action, good smooth dynamic acoustic piano tone, and realistic pedaling movement. Although piano touch and tone is ultimately a subjective thing, when you compare a digital piano to a real acoustic piano there needs to be some close similarities which is proper key weighting (not too much weight or too little weight), and excellent piano tone with good dynamic range from mellow to bright as you are playing softer or harder. Dynamic sound from mellow to bright as the hammers hit the strings in a real acoustic piano are typically difficult to recreate on a digital piano in this price range. But Kawai KDP90 does a very good job of this and noticeably better than any new Yamaha digital piano I have played under $1500, and the Yamaha pianos are generally quite good. 

Then there is the damper sustain pedal (along with the middle pedal sostenuto function and left soft pedal) which is sometimes overlooked as being important when shopping for a piano. The pedals themselves are made of a durable metal material (not plastic) and when using the right sustain/damper pedal it activates what's known as "half-pedaling." Half-pedaling is the ability to have a medium amount of sustain-decay time when pressing the pedal down about half way instead of just on or off sustain, which is more like a keyboard. It also has a smooth a smooth pedal movement using the Grand Feel Pedaling as Kawai calls it. The sustain decay time (amount of time the sustained note is heard before fading away when you let go of a key when holding down the pedal and playing the piano keys) is quite long and holds up well as you play keys across the keyboard, which was impressive to me. The longer decay times and larger 192-note piano polyphony memory helps when playing more legato passages of music especially in classical pieces, so even more advanced students and players will appreciate that.

KDP90 with matching padded bench

The Advanced Hammer Action of the KDP90 (key action is the heart of any acoustic or digital piano) is noticeably smoother and more realistic than many other brands and models in my opinion including the Yamaha GHS and GH key action found in the lower and higher priced Yamaha DGX and Arius models (including Clavinova CLP430/440 GH3), Roland ivory-G action, and other brands and models including Suzuki, Adagio, and Kurzweil. Key action movement, static touch weight (how much force it takes to initially press a resting key downward), and realism is the number one feature to focus on in a piano. Another digital piano which offers a fairly realistic key action in this low price range is the Casio PX850 (which I mentioned earlier), and I have done reviews of those pianos which you can read about on my blog. When you put it all together, the Kawai KDP90 is an excellent low price choice for its good quality realistic hammer key action, large amount piano polyphony memory, smooth touch, resonate piano tone, and fairly compact furniture cabinet weighing in at only 84lbs. 

It is worth noting that I consistently have people asking me about 88-key furniture style digital pianos (without a lot of "bells & whistles") for around the $1500 or less (approx) price range. There is a variety of choices out there but I would suggest that you consider this new Kawai KDP90 ($1149 internet discount price) if you intend on keeping the piano for awhile and want a very good investment in a high quality instrument that you (and/or your children) will likely not out-grow for a long time, if ever. The Kawai KDP90 is a piano even an advanced player can appreciate if they are on a budget, want limited but useful amount of features, and are focused on realistic acoustic piano sound and key action in a lower price range. But no matter what brand or model you may chose, it's all about the music and having an enjoyable playing experience and ultimately you can get that on some (but not all) brands and models in this price range. The Kawai KDP90 isn't the only digital piano brand to get under $1500, and in fact if you have the budget to spend even more money, Kawai has some very nice digital pianos selling for over $1500 as do other digital piano manufacturers. But there's simply not much to complain about on this one and there is a lot to like, so it is definitely a winner for what it offers...especially with a prestigious name like Kawai attached to it.

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.

*Go to the following link to hear actual song recordings on the Kawai web site taken directly from the KDP90: Kawai KDP90 song recordings
 
Click on the video below to see a short demonstration of the KDP90 Concert Magic feature