Kawai CL-20

Not easy if you want to do something more than jnly playing piano. In some case you need to use three or four fingers to change function. It is too hard for children for example switch mode to dual voice piano+chorus.

Keys are perfect: no difference with a real piano. Pretty good for beginers and for children.

Very heavy weight. Only for indoor static use for my oppinion. But looks hard, strong and elegance.

No need yet.

If it were lost or stolen I'm probably try to find something like this. I think that for this price Kawai is more and more beter than Casio.

Not simple if you want to do something more than piano sound.

Simply piano. With no tricks as you can find in some synths or Casio PX300 for example. Cool look, great sound, very solid. Recomended for all.

The CL20 is a really simple digital piano, with one decent piano sound plus a few other tones, a few settings, and some demo songs. All the CL20's functions are accessed through four buttons, and there is no display. The only other control is a combined on/off/volume knob.

If, like me, you intend to use the CL20 as a piano, you will probably want to adjust the touch sensitivity and the reverb, and you might want to use the metronome. But these three things are hard to get at - not a good start. For example, to turn the reverb off, you've got to (a) hold down two buttons while (b) pressing two keys in sequence. Horrible, and even at this price I expected better.

To make things worse, the CL20 doesn't remember your settings when you turn it off. Instead, it returns to the default settings (piano sound, reverb on, touch sensitivity 'normal') every time you turn it on, which gets very annoying.

Despite these shortcomings, the manual does explain things quite well.

If you buy the CL20, you'll probably buy it either for its amazingly small size (less than 30cm deep!) or for its action.

The action is hammer-weighted to simulate a piano keyboard, and is graded so that the upper notes are lighter than the lower ones. To me, the CL20 feels just like a small and expensive upright piano I once played (sorry I can't remember the manufacturer). Press a key slowly, and you can feel the hammer 'pick up'; there is just the right amount of key travel; and there is (what feels like) felt underneath. Piano actions are matters of personal preference, so always try before you buy - but I think the CL20's action is as good as many digital pianos costing twice as much. Brand-name digital pianos at this price from Yamaha and Roland feel quite plasticky in comparison.

My only criticism of the action is that the keys don't bounce back quite quickly enough to play very fast repeated notes. However, this is true of almost all simulated-action digital pianos.

Polyphony is 32 notes, which is not enough for serious performance. However, it is not so bad as to take the fun out of practising, and at this price I'm not complaining. The CL20 seems to have a clever mechanism where, if it runs out of polyphony, the quietest notes are cut off first. Certainly, dropped notes are less noticeable than with some other 32-note-polyphonic instruments.

Other features:
The reverb is reasonable, and is useful when playing with headphones. I have not tested the MIDI in and out ports. Only a sustain pedal is supplied as standard, but for general practise work I (surprisingly!) find I don't miss the other two. To make it easier to bypass the not-great speaker system, a line-out socket would have been nice. The music rest is very useable.

Overall the CL20 is fairly expressive for a digital piano. First of all, it sounds much better with the reverb turned off (unless you are listening through headphones). Secondly, you might find the tone is a bit bright - but you can fix this by changing the touch sensitivity to 'heavy'.

As a classically-trained pianist, I much prefer a reasonable real piano to any digital one I've ever played. Here is a small list of nitpicks: the higher notes die out too quickly; the bass is a bit weak (probably due to the small built-in speaker system); there is no aftertouch; the tone step-changes slightly from one keyboard region to the next; and the sustain pedal is a simple on-off switch, so half-pedalling is not possible.

However, in comparison to many other digital pianos, the CL20 actually sounds quite good. Most importantly, it responds in a mostly piano-like manner, and is a lot of fun to play.

Has not broken yet! At nearly 30kg this is a very heavy instrument, with no protection other than a dust sheet for the keys, and definitely shouldn't be gigged. However, it seems quite sturdy.

Kawai don't appear to have a customer support department in the UK.

After not having the space or money for a piano for four years, I've been playing my CL20 almost constantly for a week now. When I chose it, I had three requirements: it should be cheap; it should take up as little as possible of my already-cramped bedroom; and it should have a keyboard suitable for tackling some of the toughest works in the classical repertoire. The CL20 meets those requirements, where nothing else came close; and it even sounds quite good too.

I often struggle to see why people buy digital pianos, especially when they are the same size and price as a real piano, but this has been the best thing I've bought in a very long time.