The Yamaha EZ-220 Digital Piano aims to make learning how to play a piano keyboard easy—or EZ—and a lot of fun. We will examine the Yamaha EZ-220 to see how it holds up as a good value, and we will also compare this product to similar digital pianos and see which one offers the better overall value for prospective buyers
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What Is Yamaha EZ-220 Digital Piano?
- Premium bundle includes the Yamaha EZ220 keyboard, Samson HP30 closed-back stereo headphones, World Tour PA-130 power...
- 61 touch-sensitive, lighted keys; Transpose: -12 to 0, 0 to +12
- Total of 392 high-quality instrument voices and 100 accompaniment styles
The Yamaha EZ-220 is a 61-Key digital piano. Before we look at a few more specifics of the EZ-220, let’s look at the basic difference between a digital piano and MIDI keyboards.
Pianos and MIDI Keyboards
In the real world there are three basic kinds of musical instruments that have keyboards:
Most buyers of musical instruments are familiar with the first two groups of instruments and will not have much trouble distinguishing them. However, beginners especially can get confused when it comes to telling the difference between a digital piano and a MIDI keyboard.
Digital pianos and MIDI keyboards both have black and white keys on a linear keyboard, they both have additional buttons and bits that light up, they both can have display screens that will show various kinds of digital data, and they both have connections (usually in the back) to power supplies and various other sorts of accessories or devices.
The main difference between a digital piano and a MIDI keyboard is that a digital or electronic piano can actually generate audio signals and send them—usually to onboard speakers—for real-time performance, while a MIDI keyboard sends digital information (not audio signals) to a device (such as a computer with a digital audio workstation or DAW) that can translate the digital or MIDI data into an audio signal.
The bottom line is that when you press a key on a digital piano, you hear a note associated with that key. When you press a key on a MIDI keyboard, unless the MIDI is connected to a compatible MIDI interpreter which can output to speakers or headphones, you won’t hear anything.
The Customer Experience
However, you'll definitely hear something and have fun doing it with the Yamaha EZ-200 Digital Piano.
Yamaha has a corporate philosophy (represented in a diamond-shaped diagram). The part of the diagram that represents “customer experience” is expressed by four words: joy, beauty, confidence, discovery. That really sums up Yamaha’s approach to the EZ-200 Digital Piano.
Watching online as kids learn to play this instrument showed the delight a child has in following the bouncing lights of the keys as they guide little fingers to learn to play a song. The machine slows down to accommodate the skills of even tiny beginners. When the child looks up beaming with joy and confidence at her success, you can see how the Yamaha philosophy actually expresses itself in a product like the EZ-220.
Product Specs
- Premium bundle includes the Yamaha EZ220 keyboard, Samson HP30 closed-back stereo headphones, World Tour PA-130 power...
- 61 touch-sensitive, lighted keys; Transpose: -12 to 0, 0 to +12
- Total of 392 high-quality instrument voices and 100 accompaniment styles
The EZ-220 provides much more than a basic keyboard learning tool, although that is the product’s main focus. Most digital pianos aimed at beginners will provide some combination of basic learning functions plus additional features to keep things fun and to be useful to those players who might be more advanced in their skills.
The EZ-220 has 61 full-sized keys and a feature called a “lighted keyboard” (that can be turned on or off), which enables any pressed key, or any key that should be pressed when in the Song Lesson function, to light up.
This provides guided instruction and is especially useful for beginners seeking to build an intuitive feel for a song, even without having learned much (or anything) about reading music.
In addition, the EZ-220 provides a visual fingering guide that is accessible in the view screen while playing/learning one of the 100 preset lesson songs.
The EZ-220 comes with ready integration with the Apple iPad, and an available app for the iPad includes a function called the “Page Turner,” which automatically syncs up digital sheet music for the preset song being practiced. On longer pieces, it detects when the song has come to a point where the “page” of music needs to be turned and does so automatically. This keeps the student playing and paying attention to the keyboard instead of turning over a piece of paper.
Pricing
The retail price on the Yamaha EZ-220 is $$$, but generally the price will be around $$ online, with $$ a price-point for most of the big outlets.
How It Compares
We picked a few similar products available on the market to see how they compare.
Yamaha EZ-220 Digital Piano
- Premium bundle includes the Yamaha EZ220 keyboard, Samson HP30 closed-back stereo headphones, World Tour PA-130 power...
- 61 touch-sensitive, lighted keys; Transpose: -12 to 0, 0 to +12
- Total of 392 high-quality instrument voices and 100 accompaniment styles
Ease of Use
The EZ-220 is after all called the “EZ” for a reason. In its basic aim, to help absolute beginners at the keyboard more easily learn to play songs, the learning curve for that part of the feature-set is pretty small. Because the EZ-220 does come with more advanced features, including the ability to connect to basic MIDI signals from a computer and play along with MIDI songs, obviously these features will take a little bit more time to learn. It's all for the good cause of having more fun.
Performance
The Yamaha EZ-220 comes equipped to be a learning tool for keyboard beginners, but that wouldn’t stop a person who already knows how to play from having a good time too. The EZ-220 comes with 392 high-quality instrument voices and this is just one thing that makes this keyboard a useful tool for experienced musicians as well. In addition, the default grand piano instrument voice sounds just fine for a relatively inexpensive keyboard.
Design Quality
Most inexpensive entry-level keyboards, whether digital pianos or MIDI controllers, are not really built to be rugged gig tools. After all, the keyboards are made of plastic. That said, the keys on the Yamaha EZ-220 have a nice responsiveness and feel, the display screen is easy to read, and the lighted keys—which you can turn off—can be a useful learning tool or even a performance guide in a darker venue.
Warranty
Limited one-year warranty.
Pros
Cons
Casio CTK-2550 61 Key
- Dance music Mode w/50 built-in dance music rhythms
- Chordata play app integration
- 48 note polyphony
This Casio beginner's keyboard is inexpensive and offers an easy, fun learning interface and experience. The sound is not as thin and Casio-like as the CTK-2400 (reviewed below), but it is a similar issue with this keyboard.
Ease of Use
As with the EZ-220, the CTK-2550 is mainly aimed at beginning keyboardists. The tools that are provided with the CTK-2550 are not quite as flexible or fun as the Yamaha model, but the CTK-2550 is still very easy to set up and use, and the price of this Casio keyboard is about 1/2 that of the EZ-220, so that alone can make this the correct choice for a lot of people.
Performance
Again recalling that this is a beginning keyboard for people (and truthfully mainly kids) trying to learn to play, the price reflects this. Still, the sound of the keyboard is, not surprisingly, a little thin and electronic sounding (in a bad way). Obviously, you are not going to get a big or truly layered sound from budget speakers and output.
Design Quality
When you are talking about design quality for the cheapest product you’re comparing, you have to recall that for a lot of beginners, “cheap” is a good quality, so long as it mainly refers to the price you pay to get the keyboard and not the price you pay for owning it. Casio makes no claims about the CTK-2550 being an advanced performance keyboard. It’s for students. For a lot of students, the lack of a USB or MIDI connection makes it less than ideal for that as well.
Warranty
One-year limited warranty.
Pros
Cons
Alesis Recital 88-Key
- An Electric Piano That’s Tailored to You - Feature-packed Electric keyboard with 88 premium full-sized semi weighted...
- Premium Sounds - 5 voices (Acoustic Piano, Electric Piano, Organ, Synth, and Bass), built-in FX: Chorus, Reverb, and two...
- All The Right Connections - ¼” sustain pedal input (pedal not included), ¼” stereo headphone output for private...
The Alesis Recital 88, which comes in student and pro models—we’re reviewing the student version here—provides a full-featured learning tool for keyboard students while still providing a big and realistic enough sound to be a practice or even a gig tool for professionals.
Ease of Use
The keyboard is very simple to set up and use and the features are easy to access. Since the Recital emphasizes playing and not “playing around,” there are only five built-in voices versus hundreds on the more colorful keyboards. The Recital has fewer features but they are more obviously useful in a student-teacher experience—for example in Lesson Mode the keyboard is split into two areas with the same pitch/voice so teacher and student can play together on the same keyboard.
Performance
The other keyboards we are reviewing here have small, low-power speakers, that are just fine for playing and learning to play at home. The Recital 88 comes with two 20-watt speakers that produce plenty of sounds to create the big acoustic instruments (such as a piano) it is voicing. And there are outputs to send to auxiliary speakers if necessary. The main thing about this keyboard is that its big sound will give students and professionals looking for a good practice or backup gig tool all they’ll need.
Design Quality
While this digital piano lacks the cute factor we see in the other keyboards being reviewed, it more than makes up for this with solid, real-world features that can strengthen a student at any level of play. From the 88 full-sized semi-weighted keys that give a realistic feel to playing, to the great learning features, including lesson mode, plus USB/MIDI for instant access to plugins, educational software, and DAWs.
Warranty
One-year limited warranty.
Pros
Cons
Casio Inc. CTK-3500 EPA 61-Key
- This compact and lightweight, yet rugged and reliable keyboard lets you make music anywhere with battery power or the...
- 400 Tones and 150 Rhythms deliver a huge variety of musical exploration
- Listen to your playing via the built-in speakers, or connect headphones for quiet playing
This is an earlier (as in older) version of the CTK-2550 (reviewed above). This Casio keyboard actually had some advantages, like USB and MIDI connection, that the CTK-2550 dispensed with. The CTK-3500 is a basic beginner’s keyboard with a fun sampling function.
Ease of Use
This is a Casio beginner’s keyboard so ease of use is kind of the idea. The display screen offers a slightly different, simpler version of the song monitor available on the CTK 2550, which shows a beginner which note on the keyboard is being played. The sampler is a fun and straightforward tool.
Performance
When this keyboard came out one of the main attractions of it was the sampling capability, which includes the ability of sampling from inputs through the USB connection. The speakers on this keyboard are too small and too low-power for any big sound to be produced, but playing with sounds (and there are hundreds available for this keyboard) and learning how to play a keyboard are the main ideas. Basically, the performance isn’t too bad for an inexpensive keyboard, but this is a basic, very electronic-sounding (again in a bad way) digital piano.
Design Quality
This keyboard definitely has an inferior sound quality—even on the preset songs they sound thin and a bit cheap. There is certainly nothing particularly wrong with the lesson functions, but this keyboard guides a player with voice corrections in a simulated human voice, which maybe was still fun back in 2014, but is increasingly kind of creepy in 2018. The keyboard guide lights on the EZ-220 seem a lot more fun and intuitive.
Warranty
One-year limited warranty.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
GIF via Giphy
The Yamaha EZ-220 is definitely an all-around fun training keyboard for beginning players. In terms of DIY learning, the Yamaha is a good, moderately-priced option.
However, when it comes to offering the most options to the largest range of players (understanding that not everybody who wants to learn to play a keyboard is ten years old), and just in terms of overall quality, the winner of our digital piano comparison was the Alesis Recital 88-Key, with an average star rating of 4.5.
Featured Image via Amazon
Last update on 2022-11-07 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API
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