Yamaha YPG-635

This keyboard is an 88 key weighted action digital piano. Beautiful action, which is a big reason I bought it. It also comes with stereo two way ported speakers that sound good. Not great, but good. Headphones enable a better judgement of the sounds this keyboard can make. Display is good and readable and constuction seems solid with weight clocking in at around 40 pounds. Comes with an adaptor for power, no battery option. I use this as a standalone keyboard to practice and write with. It also comes with a 6 track sequencer. Not a lot of sequencer options for playback or bouncing, but it does work well as a quick setup for songwriting and trying out different sounds together.

If you want a good piano action digital piano that'll double as a midi controller, this seems like a competitive choice at a little shy of a grand of dough.

The 635 comes with a nice pitch bend wheel, with software adjustments for the range, which is at least an octave, or back to a half step if you're so inclined. There's no midi in, but you do have a USB midi out to host and a USB midi out to device for hot stick data storage. I ordered this with the optional 3 pedal unit, which I'd recommend. It's mount to the keyboard stand, so you always know where the sustain pedal is. Also, the soft pedal works rather nice for premixing levels in the sequencer. Playback mix is not an option in the sequencer.

I'm a little weak on the midi functions for this unit, I'm not experienced in this department. I did install the drivers, and that went smoothly. I will be adding sequencing software in the future and will attempt to modify my review in a few months.

The 635 is midi and pc compatible with USB midi out and USB to storage device.

Comes with a built in sequencer, 6 track, 5 songs. Plus you can stor additional sequenced songs on a data stick. Software has functions for transposing the whole keyboard 2 octaves up or down. Will do splits and 2 sound layers. The split point is adjustable. There's also a bunch of software variables for how the split sound and how the second sound in the layer sounds. I'm not experienced with the connectivity functions, so I'm not sure about adding new sounds from a library or off the web. I didn't buy this keyboard for that anyway, I bought it mostly for the piano action and the simplicity of just turning it on and playing. The action is really nice. After 5 minutes you'd think you're playing an acoustic grand. And the digital grand voice is off the chart. It's like you can hear the wood. Uncanny how good the digital grand voice is.
And if you want to juice that up a little, that's easily accomplished with the built in effects.

Another nice thing about this is there's 2 buttons for instantly recalling two pre - programmed sounds. There's a total of 8 sound banks with two buttons totalling 16 recallable programmable sound.

I love the action and the sounds, they're incredible. Touch sensitivity is good, piano action is excellent, and built in sounds are excellent. Breathy flute and sax. Synth and string sounds are very good. Add in midi capable. Pony up a little shy of a grand, and you have yourself a helluva keyboad to start off a little midi studio.