My humble review of the PX-5S after six months of use.

[central616]

Hi everyone.

I own a XW-P1 for 4 years now, and since early 2018 I was Looking for a 88 key digital piano, because acoustic and electric piano sounds are maybe the weakest point of the XW.

I was close to purchase a Kawai ES8 and later an Artis 88, but due to high inflation rates in my country, prices jumped 50% from one day to another. After this episodes, my frustration growed and my bank account shrinked. So during 2019 I abandoned the idea of a DP and I started looking for used upright. None were of my liking. The only one that sounds very good has a terrible paint job.

But then, magic occurred. In ealy march I found a new PX-5S for the equivalent of 680 dollars. In my country this is cheaper than a PX-160, a Yamaha P-45 and half the price of a PX560.

Without any dubt I brought it and a week later, I was unboxing it.

 

First look: It's damn beautiful. I really love the design, and that pearled white colour is stunning. I don't understand at all the critics. I mean, why you would want another boring all matte black instrument?. The piano is also very well packaged and protected.

 

Build quality: being all plastic, it's not on the same league as other keyboards, but that said, the materials used seems to be excellent, and that's great for transporting because of the lower weight. The power supply is small but also well constructed. The pedal is very light and springy, I don't like at all. The panel buttons are nice. The four knobs do the job but they look and feel cheap. The sliders have a very short travel. That's good on some situations when you are using them with you left hand while also playing a note, but you loose a lot of fine control.

 

Interface: In an era of deep menus for editing, the PX-5S is rather accesible. The synth engine is rather simple (but very powerful) so programming a custom sound is not a nighmare. However, the screen es TINY. Why they put such a small and devoid of information screen?. Nonsense really. And things are worse considering the lack of continuous wheel for navigation and the arrow buttons being in a line instead of a cross pattern. The pc editor is nice., but I really hate to use the computer for creating music. Well, I have no choice. I'm getting used to it.

 

Sounds: A thing that Casio does since ancient times is selling excellent instruments with underwhelming presets. At first, the PX-5S sounds rather sterile, but once you start tweaking a little, this instrument comes to life. The pianos are of great quality and detail. EP's are very good. Factory strings and synths are lackluster, but the potential is so big that you could create extremely beautiful ones. On the other hand organs are third rate, which I don't care since this instrument is not meant to be an organ clone. Same with guitars, violins, brass instruments and acoustic drums. They are old and low quality samples. Still you can get some usable ones due to the powerful DSP this piano has.

Speaking of pianos, they have damper noise, string resonance and damper resonance (I think that's the name). I've found them rather annoying and fake sounding, specially the damper noise, so I disable it. The strings and damper resonance work well at a low level.

There are a bunch of sounds not represented such as Mellotron, 12 string guitar, and Electric Grand.

 

Controls: With 6 sliders, 4 knobs, and 2 foot pedals all assignable you can control most parameters you need in a live situation. I still miss a foot volume control (happily Casio  included this in newer models) and the half pedaling support. I had a Yamaha P120 from 2002 and it already supported that feature. I suppose that keyboard's technology doesn't improve at the same rate as computers or cell phones...

 

Extras: It has USB audio recorder, which is very helpful for doing demos. This really is a feature that most keyboards should have but is not the case. It can record external audio but I never used that because the audio inputs have a noise gate (the XW-P1 too) which cut the sound when it is at a not so low volume.  A shame really.

 

In conclusion: is not a all in one workstation, but it doesn't pretend to be that. It's a wonderful piano and a powerful syntesizer. Just that. If that is what you're looking for, this instrument is perfect. I'm very happy with this purchase which happily I did right before the quarantine!

 

PROS

• Design
• Price
• Editing capabilities
• Use as a controller
• Weight

 

CONS

• Small screen
• No half pedaling and Foot volume support
• No mono synth mode
• The biggest disappointment for me was the lack of a CP70 sound. Why Casio?... Why?

 

Thanks for reading, and I really want to know your experience with the PX-5S.

[Brad Saucier]

Thanks for sharing.  Once you spend even more time with the PX-5S, you'll probably love it even more.  PX-5S easier and more powerful than one might think once you dive deeper, even without touching the data editor.  The small screen is never really an issue, plus it saves on energy usage for running on batteries.

 

9 hours ago, central616 said:

The synth engine is rather simple

 

I think you're editing standard preset tones rather than hex layer tones.  Hex layer tones have deeper editing.  I would call hex layer tone editing, powerful, rather than simple.

 

9 hours ago, central616 said:

And things are worse considering the lack of continuous wheel for navigation

 

Knob 2 is the wheel.  

 

9 hours ago, central616 said:

There are a bunch of sounds not represented such as Mellotron, 12 string guitar, and Electric Grand

 

I highly recommend exploring our downloads section for such sounds and more.  A (CP-70) Electric Grand is actually in the preset tones, as a general MIDI tone, but it's a general MIDI tone, so it's not the highest quality.  You'll find some great sounds in our downloads, because the synth engine is better than you think. 

 

[central616]

2 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

I think you're editing standard preset tones rather than hex layer tones.  Hex layer tones have deeper editing.  I would call hex layer tone editing, powerful, rather than simple.

The concept of Hex layer ir rather simple. It's not as intrincated as an 8 operator FM or Kurzweil V.A.S.T.. But simple doesn't imply lack of power. The PX-5S is a beast on its own.

2 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

Knob 2 is the wheel

Yeah, it makes things easier. Is not continuous though.

3 hours ago, Brad Saucier said:

I highly recommend exploring our downloads section for such sounds and more.  A (CP-70) Electric Grand is actually in the preset tones, as a general MIDI tone, but it's a general MIDI tone, so it's not the highest quality.  You'll find some great sounds in our downloads, because the synth engine is better than you think. 

 

A huge part of the understanding of the instrument is to know how to deal with it's limitations. There's no way to satisfy everyone. I would give away the whole guitar and bass section in exchange of a good CP sound. But probably I'm in the minority.

Nevertheless, the capabilities of this piano greatly surpass it's drawbacks, which at this price point is a little unfair to say it has "drawbacks".

 

P.S.: Any suggestions on how to solve the "issue" of the noise gate on the audio inputs?