
Purchasing a new digital piano for you and/or your family can be a tremendous investment in your musical future and you hope that the digital piano you choose will last a long time without any service issues. When purchasing a new digital piano in the US you generally get a manufacturer warranty on it. The length of a warranty is different from one brand to another and also different depending on the model of digital piano within the same brand. Warranty time and coverage can also be different for the parts vs the labor. When buying a digital piano it is always good to know what the warranty time and coverage is and and who is providing the warranty coverage.
Based on my experience of buying and using many digital pianos and keyboards over the years, the length of warranty should be at least 3 year for both parts and labor and the the longer the warranty time is, the better. There are some digital piano brands that only have a 1 year warranty which is pretty short so I would consider staying away from those brands and looking at pianos with longer warranties.
Having a good warranty is fine as long as you can actually get the service your piano needs. It would not matter if you had a huge 100 year warranty if you could not actually get it repaired. Repairing physically or electronically malfunctioning digital pianos requires a good, knowledgeable technician who knows what he/she is doing and who can also get the proper parts from the manufacturer to repair the piano. It is not necessarily easy to repair a digital piano if it becomes defective, and diagnosing the problem does require an experienced technician who has done that kind of work before.
A digital piano that is having “issues” in operating correctly may or may not need parts depending on the problem because it may just need a wire reconnected or a part reinstalled correctly and that requires a technician’s labor and labor time can be expensive. Generally speaking, the top brands of digital pianos these days work well and generally do not need service, which is obviously a good thing. The top manufacturers really don’t want their products to break because it costs them money and time and also can hurt their reputation. The top name manufacturers don’t want that to happen so they work hard at building reliable products. It’s the “off-brands” that you generally have to worry about but sometimes even the best brands can have internal or external issues with their pianos.

Some people think that paying an extra premium price to get these “extended warranties” on new digital pianos sold by music & piano stores can be a good thing. I have seen a few piano/music stores sometimes say to people that the piano manufacturer warranty covers less than it really does or is not as long as it really is. In other words, the store salespeople knowingly or unknowingly lie to you about the quality and length of time of the actual manufacturer warranty just to get you to buy their expensive extra so-called extended warranty for virtually the same coverage.
Be careful of that kind of thing as it does happen in US stores and you could be paying money for something you don’t need. If the piano manufacturer already has at least a 3 year or more factory warranty (which many of them have) and it’s a good brand, in my opinion there is little need to spend extra money on an extended warranty, especially if that warranty costs a lot of money and does not extend the entire warranty time to at least 5 years or more, and that’s a very rare thing.


You would also have to pay any fees, import duties, and deal with any international shipping issues such as shipping damage. Those things can cost you time and money as well. So just do yourself a favor; buy here domestically, get a good US factory warranty on that new digital piano you want, and you will have a much better experience.
If you should ever need to use the manufacturer warranty then there is a process on how that works. Digital piano warranty work is serviced by factory authorized technicians that are normally self employed and don’t work for piano/music dealers. The technicians do the repair work in the their shop or in your home, church, school, or or venue depending on the location of the piano, the warranty coverage, and the technician. Some new digital piano warranties (usually for portable digital pianos) only allow for carry-in service where you take it (or ship it) to a technician to get the piano serviced. Other digital piano warranties (usually on furniture cabinet style pianos) allow the technician to come to you and service the piano there at no extra charge if the warranty includes “in-home service.”.

So in reality, when it comes to digital piano service, the local store does not provide anything more than you can do for yourself with a phone call and/or email. Internet on-line stores scan do the same thing for you when buying a new digital piano from them. The authorized service tech actually works directly with the US manufacturer headquarters to get parts and service advice they need, and then they do the warranty work on your piano.

In that case you may need to bring the piano to where the service tech is and drop it off for service repair. Depending what the piano needs to be repaired, your piano may need to stay with that tech for a week to two weeks or more before it can be fully repaired assuming the needed parts are available (if parts are required).
So am I scaring you now about digital piano repairs and buying digital pianos!? I hope not because in reality the top name brands produce well made reliable digital pianos that should last for years without breakdown. If something does go wrong on a new top name digital piano, then it usually occurs within the first 1-3 months and a couple of these top brands will likely replace the piano for you during that time if getting service or parts becomes problematic instead of you needing to find a repair tech for it.
It’s not the price range that will make the piano more reliable but it’s the quality of the brand and their ability to make good digital pianos that will last a long time. Casio, for instance, has some very reliable digital pianos under $1000 and Kawai has some very reliable pianos over $5000 but those different price ranges are fairly equal in terms of reliability one way or the other. Again, stick with the better brands and you will be overall more satisfied with your purchase.
Based on my experience with them, the best digital piano brands to buy with a good track for handling any service issues in the US would be Kawai, Roland, Casio, Korg, and Yamaha. They have good experienced service departments at their US service facility, handle service issues pretty quickly, and are generally responsive to the piano owner. However, when it comes to buying used digital pianos with no factory warranty, I recommend you think twice before buying one hoping that you’ll save money doing it that way. Saving money is a relative thing. So even though you may save a few bucks on a used digital piano (or something from another country) in the long term it could easily cost you a lot more money if that digital piano needs repair and requires service. Go to my review on used digital pianos at the following link to find out more about buying used digital pianos. Used Digital Pianos.
If you want more info on new digital pianos and LOWER PRICES than internet discounts, please email me at tim@azpianowholesale.com or call direct at 602-571-1864.
Really helpful advice and information, thank you so much for writing this review! I’m considering getting a new digital piano myself and luckily saw this when researching about warranty.