Iz MZX 500 price difference over CTX 500 worth it?

[Mayo Vox]

 

In a music store in the neighborhood, I can get:  Casio MZ X 500 – for maybe 800 € and CTX 500 for maybe480€.

 

Is MZ X 500 worth the price difference, in terms of:

-Sounds quality

-Built quality?

 

Mayo

[Just Alex]

I have both.

90% of sounds are exactly same, however, there are some advantages over CT-X:

 

1. Grand Piano and strings sound much, much better on MZ-X.

2. There are more variations of existing instruments on MZ-X 500

3. You get full featured sampler, with up to 256mb (actually, about 170mb usable) memory, where you can load totally new sounds.

4. You have HexLayer engine - it is possible to use up to six samples per single sound, which allows creation of some juicy, Jupiter-80 style sounds from 80s.

5. Color touchscreen, much simpler operation.

6. Audio recorder.

7. More memory for user styles, songs, sounds.

8. Much better speakers, both in terms of sound quality and volume

9. Far better customization options, like assignable knobs, pedals, wheels

10. Pressure sensitive pads with phrases/chords/sounds

 

And now disadvantages:

 

1. Last firmware update was back in 2016 and it has a lot of bugs in it and no one going to do anything.

2. Far weaker DSP (You can simultaneously have only 2 instruments, with 1 DSP effect on each), while on CT-X you can have up to 3 instruments same time, with up to 4 DSP effects on each of them! And DSP effects quality on MZ-X is worse than on CT-X

3. There is no data transfer software, you have to use USB flash drive for sounds and other data transfer

4. No manufacturer provided updates, sound packs and so on - all are done by community and are quite limited (go check MZ-X500 download section here)

5. Very badly written user manual, and latest 1.61 firmware provides many updates, a lot of which is not documented in manual at all.

 

Conclusion: MZ-X500 is more like synthesizer, rather than arranger keyboard. If you need all round device, with better sounds, better updates and just huge amounts (over 50000) free styles available, go for Yamaha PSR-SX600. Same budget as you quoted, Sure, there will be no touchscreen, but on MZ-X500 it is resistive type, so low precision and bad sensitivity anyways...

 

[Brad Saucier]

MZX Firmware download page includes an addendum manual to cover all new features and new instructions.

 

 

Manufacturer provided sound packs and rhythms for MZX are here.