REVIEW – Kawai ES60 portable digital piano | New low price 88-key model | $499 | The Kawai piano company is well known for producing high quality acoustic and digital pianos. They have been in business nearly 100 years since 1927, which is a very long time. The Kawai company is a family owned business with its corporate offices and facilities headquartered in Japan where its founder was born. There are thousands of professional pianists, stage musicians, piano teachers, schools and universities, churches, recording studios, and individual families around the world who own and use Kawai acoustic and digital pianos.
Also, unlike all the other famous acoustic & digital piano companies, Kawai only produces pianos and not other music and consumer product like Yamaha, Roland, Casio, and Korg do. Kawai focuses on just one thing…digital & acoustic pianos, and trying to make them the best possible pianos at the most reasonable prices out there so that consumers can afford them and get a quality product.
Up until now, the least expensive digital piano that Kawai manufactures has been the ES120 which is priced at $949 on-line discount price. The ES120 has been a popular model for the Kawai piano company and a good seller for them. I also highly recommend that model for a more authentic piano playing experience in a portable digital piano for that price range.
The new ES60 came out on the market recently, and in my opinion, for just $499 it’s extremely impressive in a few notable ways. In fact, in this low price range under $500, I can easily say that this new model has by far the most realistic and responsive fully weighted-key piano key action of any brand or model out there in this price range. This would include Yamaha, Casio, Roland, and Korg. In fact, I was very surprised at how responsive and natural this weighted-key key action felt to me as I was playing the keys.
This new key action is exclusive to the ES60 and Kawai calls this new key movement “RHL” which stands for Responsive Hammer Lite. But don’t be fooled by this key action name. It is definitely not too light and is not too firm or too heavy. On a good acoustic grand piano, the normal average amount of measured down-weight (aka: touch-weight) on middle C is usually around 55 grams (on average) of finger force needed to press down the key from resting position.
On the ES60 the down-weight measurement is approx 57 grams, which is excellent. Many digital pianos in this price range have a key movement that is noticeably too light or more often, is noticeably too heavy and sluggish.
I was pleasantly surprised when I first played the ES60 because even though the Kawai piano company designs and produces impressive pianos, they have never had an 88-note weighted key action model in this lower price range. So I expected the key action to be noticeably artificial and not able to make me musically happy. I was expecting the key action to be too light or too heavy.
When a key action has key-weight that is too heavy or too light, it can throw off your playing technique as well as potentially cause finger, hand, wrist, and forearm fatigue with heavier key actions. In other words, some key actions are just not comfortable to play and can also be sluggish. This is not the case with this new ES60. It moves comfortably when pressing down the keys.
Then there is the up-weight measurement of the key movement. This is when the key “returns” or comes back up and how much force it exerts against your fingers. You don’t want the key to come back up too fast or hard, or too slow and sluggish. On the ES60, the return up-weight force of the middle C key is about 32 grams, which is really good and allows for impressive return key movement without causing issues in your piano playing.
On the middle C# key, the down-weight force is about 54 grams which is very good and the up-weight return force of middle C# is about 38 grams which is also responsive for a black sharp/flat key and close to the specification of the middle C key. Also, as you play closer to the backs of the keys, the disparity between playing at the front of the keys versus the backs of the keys is relatively minimal and that is a good thing as some digital pianos have black keys that get much harder to press down as you play more towards the backs of the keys. So overall I really like this new key action for its playability along with its responsiveness.
One more thing I noticed about this new Kawai piano key action…it’s pretty quiet when the keys are moving up & down. All key actions are mechanical and as the keys move they do make key movement noise. But some digital piano key actions are noticeably noisier than others when the keys are moving up & down. Some are noisier when the keys go down and hit bottom, and some are noisier when the keys come back up to resting position.
If you are playing the digital piano in or near a room where other people are located, then not only you, but those people will hear the key action noise coming from the noisier digital piano key actions in other brands. I a personally sensitive to these kinds of things so when I play a key action that is relatively quiet when the keys are going up & down, then it’s something I can really appreciate.
But in the ES60, even if you have headphones on for private practice and all that is heard is the key movement by other people in nearer proximity, that key noise in the ES60 will be minimal, which is a good thing. Even if you are playing the keys hard or rather aggressively, the key noise is still relatively quiet as compared to many other models in this price range. The key movement is not “silent,” so I am not saying that. But overall I was very impressed with the mechanics of this ES60 key action, especially for this lower price range. Kawai definitely did a good job in its design and construction of this new RHL key action movement and I believe you will be impressed. Also, the surface material of the keys seem comfortable to play, so there’s no issues with that.
OK, now let’s talk about the piano sound itself. The piano “sound engine” as some people call it, is the technology used to create the acoustic piano reproduction. This piano technology is called stereo sampling and the ES60 has 3 acoustic pianos sounds. There is the Kawai “concert grand” which is their most realistic piano sound, the jazz grand, and the mellow grand. Those 3 grand piano sounds are impressive, but the #1 “concert grand” sound is more realistic to my ears and Kawai did a good job with recording and reproducing all of them.
So there are 3 very good acoustic piano choices instead of just one piano sound. The sounds are full and resonant, and have good stereo dynamics and smooth mellow to bright sound transitions when playing the keys at different velocities.
In other words, the piano sound volume is not “jumpy” when increasing or decreasing velocity/volume as you’re pressing down the keys, and the transitions in note volume going from one key to the next are smooth as compared to many other digital pianos I have played in a similar price range. This piano sound response is very important and does make the piano instrument sounds a lot more realistic and controllable.
Also, I noticed that the piano percussive hammer “attack” of each note is quite realistic compared to most of the other digital pianos out there in this price range. Percussive attack is the immediate striking of the note when you first press down the key slowly or quickly, with or without using the sustain pedal. This may seem like a small thing, but it can make a big difference in the authenticity of the piano sound and your music.
So Kawai definitely did a good job in this way and I like it very much. The better you become as a piano player, the more important all these organic sound elements will become to you. You may not necessarily notice these things now if you are a beginner, but you will later when you grow in your piano playing skills.
When it comes to the piano digital polyphony memory in the ES60, which is a very important aspect of digital piano technology the ES60 has 192-notes of polyphony. This is more than sufficient to create a responsive sustained piano sound along with being able to have enough polyphony memory to mix/layer another instrument sound together with the piano sound, or any other two sounds layered together which can really enhance the overall enjoyment of your music.
Some digital pianos have 256-notes of polyphony and some have 128-notes of polyphony memory. I tested this ES60 at maximum note playing capacity and it easily passed the test of being able to handle complex piano music playing lots of notes simultaneously using full sustain and also while having another sound layered on top of the piano sound, such as orchestral strings. So no problem there.
At this point I normally would talk about the pedal response and how closely it can replicate a real acoustic piano. But before I do that I want to mention something concerning the internal speaker system in the ES60. This model has 20 watts total sound amplification which is actually fairly powerful for a lower price portable digital piano like this one. The 20 watts is actually 2×10 watts of stereo power and this power is going through 2 full range internal speakers.
I was surprised at how loud the ES60 can get, it’s really powerful which means this internal speaker system is very efficient at putting out big sound with using just minimal power consumption of just 7 watts. So the sound is huge and that can be a good thing. But I did find something a bit unusual with regard to the internal speakers.
When I was playing the 3 piano sounds in this model, I noticed those sounds came out of the internal speaker system sounding somewhat “boxy,” like they were trapped inside the piano cabinet. In other words, the piano sound had a more mid-range EQ tone to it and was lacking some clarity that I felt should be there.
For the internal speaker system in the ES60 to achieve such a full, louder, and bigger bassier sound that it does have, the internal speakers are mounted inside internally facing up towards the keys rather than facing down with sound coming out of the bottom. This internal speaker position does its job in producing a bigger and bassier piano sound, but that sound feels “closed in” to me without the clarity I felt was needed in the sound.
But fortunately there is a built-in remedy for this shortcoming. Kawai has a separate “user controllable” EQ feature for the piano sound with allows for an adjustment to the sound coming out of the speakers. The ES60 is set by the factory to a default EQ setting that they call “normal.” It is the “normal” EQ default setting that causes this more boxy mid-rangey piano sound. Kawai has two other EQ settings called “table” and “off.”
Normally a factory will preset their speaker and EQ sound system to have their “best piano sound” coming out of the speaker system. But this time Kawai chose to have their speaker system produce the loudest possible volume when you set the master volume control to maximum output.
That’s OK when a person is wanting the loudest possible volume coming out of the speaker system. But realism and clarity is also important, and volume doesn’t always need to take priority. So with that being said, you can still get that more authentic piano realism when changing the EQ setting.
When you set the EQ to “table” using the key setting chart above, then the overall piano sound picks up some noticeable clarity, and is much more realistic and has much less of a boxy or mid-range sound. This EQ setting does reduce the overall maximum volume of the piano sound, but for most people it will still be more than enough volume. In the EQ “off” setting, this is the next best EQ piano sound setting for getting a more realistic piano sound. But I am not in love with the factory default EQ setting of “normal.”
You might find it different for you because we all have different ears and different ways of hearing things. But for me personally, I would change the default EQ setting from normal to the “table” setting (we’re not talking about “dinner table” here:) and those are my personal preferences for getting a more natural piano sound from the ES60 speaker system.
Speaking of getting a good piano sound, one thing I definitely did not expect from the ES60 is how good the piano sound is when using good stereo headphones for private practice. There are many different models of headphones that can plug into the ES60 for private practice so nobody else can hear you play. I have a few different stereo headphones in my studio, but I really like a pair which I have that have been popular for many years with lots of musicians and audio people, and they are not too costly…about $100. You can certainly spend a lot less money on headphones and be OK that way. But when I plugged in my higher quality stereo headphones into the ES60 and played the piano sounds, it was like experiencing an actual grand piano in my head between my ears!
The sound was amazing through my stereo headphones and by far the best, most realistic acoustic grand piano reproduction through headphones I have ever heard from a $500 digital piano, and that is no exaggeration. Great bass response and an abundant amount of clarity and a very balanced piano sound in all octaves. When using headphones, the EQ system on the ES60 does not affect that sound through headphones because the sound is no longer coming through the ES60 speaker system, it’s coming through my headphones into my ears. Also, the headphone amplifier technology in the ES60 produces a big volume through stereo headphones if you need it. and I was definitely impressed.
The next thing I wanted to mention has to do with the pedals. The ES60 comes with one standard plastic sustain pedal. This pedal is actually fairly good and has a reasonable amount of surface area with some texture on it for your foot to press on. It has a rubberized surface on the bottom of the pedal so it grips the floor a little better than other plastic pedals. But that pedal is still lightweight and can move around the floor a bit This included pedal is for on & off sustain only.
If you are a better player and want the upgraded half-damper sustain effect with variable sustain time instead of only on & off sustain, then you would need get the optional upgraded Kawai F10H piano style sustain pedal which sells for about $70. But this upgraded sustain pedal it is definitely worth it for a longer term investment and more realistic pedal response for people who are playing at a higher skill level.
The control panel buttons of the ES60 are on the the top left side of the piano and they consist of a good size power button to power up the ES60, a nice size sound button to access all the instrument sounds, and a good size function button to access the many functions and features of this model. The button feel good and work well, unlike some other digital pianos I have played which are not good in this way .
There is also a master volume control slider to easily increase or decrease the volume of the ES60. When using the sound or function button, you hold down the button and then press specific keys to access the various sounds and features. The instruction map or chart for these sounds and features is in the owners manual. However, the instruments sounds, transpose feature, and metronome & rhythms are accessible directly from the from panel without needing to look in the owners manual or use an app, so that is convenient and good.
Overall I feel that the ES60 has enough “bells & whistles” to keep most people satisfied beyond the piano playing experience in a lower price range like this. There are a total of 17 instrument sounds including the acoustic piano sounds plus vintage electric pianos, organs, strings, harpsichord, vibraphone, bass, etc. Besides the 3 acoustic grand piano sounds that are offered in the ES60 there are 3 electric pianos which includes a Rhodes electric, Wurlitzer electric, and Yamaha DX7 electric.
All 3 of these sounds are quite nice and they respond well to velocity changes and produce good dynamics and percussive attack changes in those sounds depending on the key movement “attack” you give them.
The organ sounds consists of a Hammond B3 jazz/rock tone with a very nice percussive attack tone on the organ sound along with a built-in reproduction of a slow moving Leslie speaker effect and a traditional key click noise you would hear in a real Hammond B3 organ when you play the keys. Kawai did a nice job with this preset organ sound. The other organ sound is a full pipe organ reproduction and that tone is also quite good and I like it.
Next are the 2 string sounds with a slow string orchestra that has a slow attack which makes those string sounds come in slowly and more legato. Great for slower ballads, slower classical, slower church music and other types of music. The other string orchestra sound is a quick/fast attack string tone with quick bowing and great for staccato playing and also sustained strings…they do sound nice! The other instrument sounds I mentioned are also enjoyable to play so Kawai did a good job in covering these primary instrument sounds that most people are looking for.
Some of the other expected basics on any digital piano would be a “transpose” feature to be able to modulate and transpose the key you’re playing in, up or down 1/2 steps. This is great especially when you are wanting to sing and your vocal range does not match the music key you are playing in. This is a very handy and useful function to have and you can access this feature directly from the ES60 control panel and keys with the touch of a couple finger presses.
Another very basic but useful feature that is on most digital pianos is a digital metronome for rhythm and timing. You can set the tempo of this metronome feature as well as the time signature so that you can practice your music more carefully. A metronome is very good to have for rhythm practice, especially for beginners, but it can also sound a bit mechnaical and artificial. Another rhythm and timing feature on the ES60 that is also very useful with your music are the drum rhythm patterns that are included in this model.
There are 30 drum rhythm patterns/styles including rock, jazz, swing, Latin, country, and many more. Using this feature is like playing with a “live” drummer to help keep the beat for you and yet make it more fun that just using a metronome to help you “keep the beat. “This drummer feature is also accessible from the front panel with the touch of a button and a specific key.
All of these features that I just mentioned are fairly intuitive to find directly on the front panel and keyboard of the ES60. However, there are a number of other useful and important features that are available on the ES60 that will require you to learn how to use from the ES60 owners manual and to memorize those instructions to use those features. It’s not difficult to do, but it is definitely not obvious by looking at the ES60 control panel.
This is not the first time I have run into this, where I needed to read the owners manual on different brands and models in the lower price ranges to find out where those extra features are located and how to access them. But at least they are there on the ES60 where some digital pianos in this price range don’t have them at all.
These other features include adding 3 different “reverb effects” to give the sound a bit more “life and echo” which can be very useful. There is a also a “touch adjustment” for setting the digital touch curve in 3 different ways including heavy, light, and normal as well as turning the touch control to “off” if you ever wanted to do that. There is also having the ability to layer/mix 2 different instrument sounds together as well as “split” 2 different sounds with one on the left hand and one on the right hand. But again, you’ll need to look in the owners manual for instructions on how to do that.
OK, with all that being said, here’s something very cool that makes the ES60 so much easier to use and understand than using the ES60 control panel or reading the owners manual. This feature is the special “controller app” that Kawai created called “Piano Remote” so that you can control all of the features and functions in the ES60 from the color touch screen of your external device, and it really works great!
In fact, this is the way I prefer to use the ES60 and be able to control all these functions I have previously mentioned. Plus, there are additional features that you can access from this “Piano Remote” app that are not actually in the piano itself. In other words, you get additional useful features for the ES60 that make it even more enjoyable to play and learn on.
For instance, if you want to access the ES60 library of different instrument sounds, you just use the Piano Remote app and bring up the entire list of instrument sounds in the ES60 sound list. Then you just touch the one you want on your color touch screen of your device and then you instantly get that sound on the ES60. Super simple to do and works great. So if you want one of the acoustic pianos sounds, just touch it on your external device color touch screen from the list on the app. If you want one of the string sounds, then do the same thing as well as when wanting an organ sound, or harpsichord sound, or any other sounds from the ES60 sound library.
Here’s something else that is very cool and very useful the Piano Remote app does. You can much more easily layer/mix and split 2 instrument sounds using the app to do that. Doing it that way is super easy, it is especially intuitive, and works quickly and efficiently. There is nothing to “figure out” no need to read the instruction manual, and accessing this feature is easy enough for a 5 year old to do, let alone an adult. This is true for all the ES60 features I have already mentioned including the transpose function, reverb effects, drum rhythm patterns, metronome, and more. For me, I would prefer to use the Kawai Piano Remote app to access and control the features and functions on the ES60
You can also “split” any 2 sounds quickly and easily with full access to both sounds to easily change them and manipulate them including relative volumes to each other. This is especially useful and intuitive and also allows you to take better advantage of this feature rather than try to figure it out by just using the regular piano control panel. I personally enjoy splitting and also layering different instrument sounds together like piano & string bass, piano and strings, electric piano and acoustic piano, harpsichord & fast orchestral strings, etc. This can be done so easily and correctly through the Piano Remote app. Plus I can add natural reverb effects to those sounds using the reverb selection feature on the app which is also very intuitive.
There are things you can do on the app that you cannot do directly on the ES60, which adds to the playing and learning enjoyment you can have with this new digital piano. As examples of additional features the ES60 gives you through their proprietary Piano Remote app, you can save your favorite instrument sounds that you mostly use in a “favorites user list” and then access them quickly that way rather than search for them individually in factory default lists.
Another big thing the app does is that it can play piano lesson songs from popular teacher approved lesson curriculum. There are hundreds of songs to choose from and the ES60 will play them in their entirety including being able to control the tempo and volume of each song. There is no built-in sheet music for these practice pieces so you would need to purchase the books separately. to to be able to hear them “live” and play along with them is very cool and it is helpful to students to be able to practice these pieces like that.
Not only can you hear these song pieces being played, but you can see the tempo and dynamics of these song pieces through a feature called “Concert Magic.” This fun feature enables “visual cues” that help you play with better rhythm and timing including better dynamics when these lesson songs are playing back to you. It’s a nice visual feature that you can see “in color” on your external device while using the Piano Remote app and playing the built-in lesson songs.
In addition to all these songs, the Piano Remote app lets you record your music as either MIDI song files or even as a wav audio file. Once you are done with your song recording then you can play it back to see how you did and be able to analyze your playing that way. It’s fairly easy to use with this app and otherwise the ES60 by itself cannot do that. So as you can see, the ES60 by itself is very impressive for what it can do at $499. But when you add the flexibility of what the Piano Remote app can musically do for you, it’s a pretty unbeatable combination, especially for just under $500.
As I previously mentioned, up until now Kawai has not had a new digital piano under $950 before. So with the advent of this new model just under $500, I believe the Kawai piano company has hit a “home-run” with this new portable digital piano when it comes to the piano playing experience, along with enough impressive features to keep students and players musically happy without absolutely having to spend more money. However there are definite advantages to the next portable model up at $949 called the ES120 when it comes to an even more realistic piano playing experience. But if you need to be in this lower price range, then we strongly recommend this new ES60 whether you are purchasing for a child or an adult.
There are just a couple more things to talk about on the ES60 which are also important to know. One of those important things on any digital pianos is the hardware connectivity and the ES60 is no exception. We’re talking about a stereo headphone jack, stereo output jacks, USB output port, and sustain pedal jack. The standard 1/4″ stereo headphone jack is on the left front side of the piano just below the keyboard, which is a good position for a headphone jack. The powered headphone jack amplification is excellent and most pairs of headphones will work good.
There are stereo 1/4″ left & right output jacks on the back of the piano so that you can connect to external powered speakers/amplification which can be helpful if needing to amplify the sound in a big room or venue. The ES60 has a USB output port to connect with external devices such as an iPad or other device. Finally, the ES60 has a sustain pedal output jack on the back of the piano so that you can connect the included sustain pedal to control you piano sustain feature. This model does not have Bluetooth wireless technology or an audio input jack. But at this low price point I don’t think that’s an issue at all. What this model does have is impressive at its low $499 internet discount price.
I do like the design and style of the ES60 and it comes with a large music rest to support sheet music and books, so Kawai did a good job with that. Most people will be using the ES60 with the music rest inserted into the piano, so with that in mind the dimension specs are 51″ wide x 13″ deep, x 13″ tall. If you take off the music rest then the depth and height dimensions are reduced. The weight of the ES60 is just 26 pounds with the music rest attached, so this instrument is very easy to carry and move and seems like it will be durable.
As with all Kawai portable digital pianos, Kawai offers a 3 year parts and labor warranty on the model. Kawai has a good reputation for producing reliable product as do the other top name brands like Casio, Yamaha, Roland, and Korg. So when it comes to durability and reliability, Kawai does a very good job at doing that. This piano only has a few buttons on it and if you set up your external device up to use their proprietary “Piano Remote” app, you’ll have a lot of fun playing the ES60. Also, maybe you’ll want to get their optional furniture stand for the ES60 so that the piano is more stable and looks more like a little piano. That stand is normally priced at $119.
My professional opinion is...if you really need to be near or under $500 for a nice new portable digital piano not counting optional full size pedal and full size furniture stand, and you’re looking for a noticeably more realistic piano playing experience in this lower price range, the new ES60 cannot be beat. In fact, in our opinion, when it comes to key action, stereo acoustic piano sound, pedaling sustain response, and internal speaker system, I would put this new ES60 above the other brands and models out there right now, and that’s saying a lot.
Yes, I like a couple other brands and models in this price range for different reasons. But if your goal is to primarily play piano and get the most realistic piano experience you can in this price range, then I would not hesitate to purchase this impressive portable digital piano. You’ll be very glad you did.
