Yamaha YPG-535 Digital Piano – 2022 Review

While some digital pianos verge on being electronic keyboards, with their wide variety of voices and digital effects along with their multi-track recording features, others seek to recreate as authentically as possible the feel, sound, and even the look of acoustic grand pianos. The Yamaha YPG-535, with its variety of high-tech abilities, definitely falls on the electronic-keyboard side of the equation, making it a fun, versatile digital piano for beginning and novice learners, as well as experienced home musicians who don't feel like breaking the bank on a digital piano.

The Yamaha YPG-535 is a mid-level offering from one of the most renowned names in pianos, digital or acoustic. While the Yamaha YPG-535 lacks the hefty price tag of some other digital pianos, it does manage to take advantage of some key hand-me-downs from its professional-level siblings, such as its incredibly authentic grand piano sounds.

The Yamaha YPG-535 features a wide variety of different options and settings that will appeal to amateur musicians who like to experiment, from Yamaha's Live! Cool! Sweet! Voices and Performance Assistant Technology (PAT) to the Easy Song Arranger.

Additionally, the Yamaha YPG-535 features a full 88-key graded soft-toch keyboard, a back-lit monochrome LCD display, 32-note maximum polyphony, and a pitch-bend controller. It also comes with 160 preset accompaniment styles and 30 preset songs.

With the musician-in-training in mind, the Yamaha YPG-535 is packaged with the Yamaha Education Suite (YES), which includes educational programs like Waiting, Your Tempo, Minus One, Repeat & Learn, and Chord Dictionary to provide interactive self-learning possibilities.

In order to see how the Yamaha YPG-135 measures up against other digital pianos, we decided to compare to the following models, which represent a wide variety of prices and available features.

The Yamaha YPG-535 is a mid-level offering from one of the most renowned names in pianos, digital or acoustic. While the Yamaha YPG-535 lacks the hefty price tag of some other digital pianos, it does manage to take advantage of some key hand-me-downs from its professional-level siblings, such as its incredibly authentic grand piano sounds.

With the KDP90, Kawai has focused primarily on delivering the most authentic recreation possible of an acoustic grand's sound, feel, and control, which it accomplishes superbly. However, musicians looking for more digital effects and voices may want to look elsewhere.

Like the Kawai, the Roland F-140R is designed to bring authentic, acoustic-grand-piano sound and feel into smaller homes, including tiny apartments. Also like the Kawai, it boasts a simple design reminiscent of an acoustic grand piano. Though lacking in features, this is because all of the attention has been placed on recreating an experience as similar to an acoustic grand piano as possible.

Along the lines of our other comparison models from Roland and Kawai, the Casio Privia PX-160 seeks to recreate the sound, feel, and even aesthetics of an acoustic grand piano. This means that the face of the Privia PX-160 isn't going to feature a lot of distracting flashing lights and illuminated displays. But it will blow you away with its amazingly authentic acoustic-piano sound.

In the end, we decided to give the Yamaha YPG-535 digital piano an overall score of 4 stars for its combination of affordability, features, and quality sound. This digital piano is likely to fulfill the needs of most amateur home musicians, including their need to experiment with different sounds, instruments, and effects.

Presently available for about $500, the Yamaha YPG-535 is a great digital piano for beginner or novice users who enjoy experimenting with a variety of sounds and styles beyond simply the grand piano. It's graded soft-touch keyboard realistically replicates the feel of an acoustic piano, making it a great learner's tool for those who also are learning to play on acoustic pianos but do not have one in the home. Similarly, Yamaha's Performance Assistant Technology (P.A.T.) will help struggling beginner's overcome those early doldrums, as it automatically plays the right note as long as the user hits the key at the correct time.

While it does not feature the full array of features, voices, and digital effects we've seen on other digital pianos, the Yamaha YPG-535 is a solid performer across the board, available at a reasonable price. 

For this review, we decided to compare the Yamaha YPG-535, which is more on the electronic keyboard side of the spectrum, to three digital pianos more focused on authentically recreating the acoustic-piano experience. While these models offer outstanding grand-piano sound, they lack the variety of voices, digital effects, and other options available on more keyboard-like models.

If you are a budget conscious musician of beginner- or novice-level proficiency on the piano, you most-likely will be satisfied with either the Yamaha YPG-535 or the Casio Privia PX-160 without having to spend twice as much on the Roland or Kawai. While those models feature superior sound quality and keyboards with more authentic weighting, they likely are not worth the added expense except for experienced or particularly discerning users.

While there are a great number of factors to consider when purchasing a digital piano, the best thing you can do is gather as much information as possible and make an informed decision. Should you decide to go with any of the digital piano's included in today's review, we don't think you will be disappointed.

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