Kawai ES100 88 Key Digital Piano Review:
Playing the piano has always fascinated individuals in profusion. However, mastering this instrument is not as easy as it seems and requires a lot of hard work and determination.
Playing several different piano styles will help you become a better overall piano player. Thus, one needs to infuse many styles to become a piano prodigy.
Classical pianos, Jazz pianos, Musical Theatre piano, Cocktail piano, Liturgical piano, Pop piano, and whatnot. The piano market has always witnessed a lot of innovation.
The newest and the most strapping technological advancement in the piano world is the Digital Pianos.
Digital Pianos have every cleverly topped every chart list and are a hot potato for quite a long time. A lot of brands producing digital pianos are crammed in the market. But a few amongst them are worth the mention and appreciation.
One of them is Kawai. Let’s gape at it.
About the Brand
The moment one hears Kawai, what apprehends in mind is perplexing quality. The Kawai piano company of Japan has been producing digital pianos & acoustic pianos for decades and is well known and respected worldwide for building high-quality instruments that are appreciated by all.
Their presence in 80+ countries today is a testament to their growth and undeniable presence in the musical instrument market.
Kawai as a brand has come a long way and has garnered the position of one of the renowned brands in musical instruments.
Every piano of Kawai is crafted with meticulous skill and care, and it reflects in the quality of its products. Therefore, its products are usually high priced.
Their products are recommended by piano teachers, professional pianists, universities/colleges, and recording studios.
You can buy kawai es100 on Amazon:
Let’s have a glance at one such fantastic product by them:
Kawai ES100 Digital Piano Review:
Kawai ES series is one of the best and is known for its quality disposing of digital pianos. The Kawai ES100 is part of the “ES Series” of digital pianos, but unlike other models in the series that are higher priced, Kawai ES100 comes at a much lower price point.
At such a price range that is under $1000, it is the first-ever 88-key weighted hammer action digital piano by Kawai.
Come, let’s gape at some of its features:
ES100 Kawai Design:
The best part about this piano is that it is relatively small and lightweight, thus can be moved easily. It is only 52″ wide and 11″ deep, so it doesn’t take up too much space. It comes in satin black color and has a minimalistic design.
The design is simple and elegant and is not oppressed by confusing buttons and options.
This model has eight small round push buttons and one volume slider control on the top above the keys near the left side. There is enough space between the buttons, so they are not all jammed together.
Kawai even offers an optional furniture-style HML-1 stand, which matches with Kawai ES-100 and offers three-pedal functionality.
On both sides of the rest are the two integrated speakers, and the music rest can be attached to the top of the digital piano. Also, there is a large height adjustment screw under the pedals to adjust for carpet or hard floors. This is kawai es100 for sale on amazon:
Kawai Piano ES100 Keyboard Action:
This 88-key digital portable piano offers the excellent AHA IV-F, a graded hammer action keyboard that simulates the same feel of playing on a grand piano. The key action is more realistic ES100.
The sturdy graded hammer key action movement is simply amazing. The two 7W integrated speakers are positioned underneath the keyboard.
If you need a fuller sound, you can always connect an external speaker system by way of a stereo output on the piano in one of the two headphone connectors.
Piano Kawai ES100 Sound Quality:
One thing which is worth mentioning is its piano sound. It is truly mesmerizing. It encapsulates the Harmonic Imaging sound engine, which is the soul of this piano.
It includes 192-notes of piano polyphony memory which is the highest in this price range for a portable digital piano.
It has eight acoustic piano tones, along with a variety of impressive-sounding strings, organs, electric pianos, harpsichord, and a few other tones.
One feature that grabs eyeballs is its ‘Drum Rhythm Section,’ i.e., playing piano with the drummer.
The ES100 offers 100 different drum rhythms in nearly every rhythmic style, and these percussive drum sounds are awe-inspiring.
It possesses a feature called “half-damper pedaling.” It allows you to edit the built-in piano sounds in various ways and create your custom piano tones.
Then, you can save these new sounds five memories, i.e., 4-panel memories plus a power-on user memory.
It has a built-in digital recorder and even features a library of songbooks based on Alfred’s songbook series and Burgmuller 25 Etudes.
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Bonus Features:
These additional features equipped in ES100 make the sound more soothing to the ears. Pedal resonance lets you hear the strings echo and resonation while pressing the sustain pedal.
The next one is mechanical fallback hammer noise and damper rail noise. These sounds give you the feel of playing on an acoustic grand piano. All three of them are digitally adjustable.
It has a MIDI I/O, the damper jack, and the input for the AC adaptor. There are also two Phones outputs, which can be used for practicing in silence. [kawai es100 manual: PDF]
Kawai ES100 Bag:
Kawai ES100 vs Roland FP30:
I was able to play the FP-30 today, and I thoroughly enjoyed the sound and action. Compared to the Kawai ES100, I found the Kawai action to be less abrasive and smoother than the FP-30.
It’s not to claim you should think that the FP-30 action isn’t good. I liked it better than my current Casio PX-5S.
However, of the three, it is the Kawai. Kawai has IMO an action that’s more refined when you use the keys, rather than or Roland and the Casio.
Regarding the sound, the Roland was awe-inspiring to me. The initial piano sound you heard as you switched it on was loud and had energy.
Also, it had great sustain. Roland did an excellent job with the SuperNatural piano sound. Kawai didn’t have a significant presence. After trying both, my opinion is that I’d go with the Roland due to its the price and the sound. You can check the lastest kawai es100 price on amazon.
Although not as good as Kawai, the action was pleasant and played well. I would highly recommend the Roland to anyone looking to learn a piano for the first time.
Kawai ES100 vs ES110:
Kawai has announced their latest ES series of pianos at the NAAM Show of 2017. There are a few changes from the model before ES100: Bluetooth, new action, lighter weight, and effect control while still maintaining the distinctive tone of Kawai.
One of the unique features of Kawai’s The ES110 model is that its key sensors are situated in on the mid-section of the keys instead of being located under the tip of the keyboard.
This permits Kawai ES110 to react quicker than other digital pianos of similar price. They played their Kawai 9 grand piano and played every key. (you can search to compare to P155: kawai es100 vs yamaha p 155)
Kawai ES100 vs ES8
As soon as I saw this, I informed the lady that I needed to return to my home and consider it because the es8 appears to be a bargain in this price range to the es100. You’re buying es100 for a higher cost or es8 for a lower cost.
I did play with the piano’s key action, and my goodness, the es100 is excellent, and the es8 is fantastic too, of course. It just felt a little different from the es100.
However, as an inexperienced user, I can’t be sure what the difference is over the es100 apart from being aware that it comes with three sensors, compared to the es100’s two.
Kawai ES100 vs ES7
Although the ES7 comes with more functions, including more IOs, better keys (Responsive Hammer II), and claims to have better sound, I’d prefer the ES100 due to the weight difference(15kg against 22kg) and the fact that I may not require as too much “power” in the ES7. The 100 will meet all of my needs.
Conclusion
The best part is that Kawai individually sampled each note of Kawai ES100 to deliver the ultimate piano tone, and undoubtedly you can feel the difference.
The drawback would be that it lacks a duet four-hand mode and an LCD screen. But then it is justified as it is focussed primarily on piano playing.
A brand rarely comes with exceptionally unique products at such a price range. It is arguably the best digital piano in the market and is worth a hit.
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