Alesis Prestige, Recital Grand – REVIEW | 2023 | Should you buy?

Also, in past years I had never seen Alesis digital pianos models under $500 at a major music store like Guitar Center, Sam Ash, etc because Alesis did not have a portable weighted key action digital piano that was good enough in my opinion. But that has changed because those music stores have started to carry a newer Alesis digital piano called the “Prestige.” But does that mean this Alesis Prestige is the right digital for you? The meaning of the name “prestige” is “widespread respect or admiration based on quality and/or other factors.” So my question concerning this model was “does the name Prestige reflect how this model actually plays as a piano?” The answer is, unfortunately…no in my opinion. 

I already knew that the possibilities of this model playing like a real acoustic piano were pretty low because the off-brands in this price range that I have played normally have to sacrifice “something important” to get the price down to near or under $500. That sacrifice is usually with key action, piano sound response, pedaling or a combination of these things. The old saying of “you don’t get something for nothing” is generally still true today especially in many of  these  models by Alesis, Donner, Eastar, Williams, Artesia, Suzuki, Souidmy, and others that you’ll see on Amazon, Costco, and in a few stores.

OK…so then what are the issues I have found on the Alesis Prestige that are negative? The bottom line is this…for me it is never about the appearance, “bells & whistles,” or internal speaker system that are most important because you can get all kinds of digital pianos in a variety of price ranges with those things. The focus should always be on the “piano playing experience” and whether the digital piano you are considering can play like a real piano? That is what will be of most importance to you, your family, and other people who may be involved in your music. A digital pianos should play as much like a piano as possible in your price range, so make sure it can do that.

The key action on the Alesis Prestige is relatively good as compared to other “off-brand” digital pianos I have played. What I mean by “off-brand” are brands not carried in actual piano stores. However, the Alesis brand is starting to be carried in mainstream music stores now such as Sam Ash, Guitar Center, and others. With regard to key action, after you press the keys down, the response of the keys coming back up is fairly strong and feels more springy in my opinion, more like a spring coming back up after you press it down as compared to the way a real piano key responds. Pressing the key down is called “down-weight force or touch-weight. When the key comes back up, that is called upweight force and it is this return force I am talking about.

In other words, the amount of force it takes to press the keys down is not necessarily heavy on this model and feels good. But the “upweight” or return force of the keys is much too strong coming back up (more like a spring return) and can have a noticeable negative affect piano playing technique because you have to compensate a lot for the much stronger upward force of the key return and it can cause hand and wrist fatigue after a while of playing. 

When it comes to an acoustic piano sound reproduction, in digital pianos that’s no easy thing to do. What most off-brand digital pianos suffer from is noticeably artificial piano sound in my opinion because they likely use inexpensive piano sound technology along with basic made electronic key sensors that go under the keys to “sense” the movement of the keys so that the sound hopefully comes out at the appropriate times.

Unfortunately, on the Alesis Prestige the piano sound is noticeably jumpy and abrupt. In the Alesis Prestige there are just 3 tonal changes (mellow, bright, brighter) instead of numerous or unlimited tonal and volume changes (like a real piano) as you press the keys down and listen to the piano sound. 

This instant and abrupt tonal change from mellow to bright (and then even instantly brighter when you press the key even harder) is definitely not natural and makes your music sound very artificial and abnormal in my opinion. It’s like not having a smooth transmission in your vehicle gears as you increase speed when riding a bike or driving a car. If your bike or car just “jumped” into the next gear when you increased or decreased speed and you felt this jump or shift in gears, then you probably would not like it and it would likely bother you before too long. 

PIANO SOUND – continued

It’s too bad because the piano “sound” itself is descent, although average for this price range, and also there is more than one piano sound option which is good. But you should not have to encounter a jumpy, abrupt piano sound changes in terms of volume and tone when playing normally. For some people, especially beginners, you may not notice this issue right away because you don’t know how a piano should behave. But the way this model is working is not good as opposed to having many more numerous amounts of tonal and volume changes as you would on a real acoustic piano.

Another piano sound anomaly that I noticed was when you are lightly playing individual notes going from middle C to the octave C note above, the piano tone comes out the same on all those notes. One note is not brighter or more mellow than another when you play at the same speed, so that is good.  However, as soon as you play the C# note one octave above the middle C# in the same way you played the previous notes, the piano sound gets noticeably dull from that point on.

Polyphony is a word used when describing the amount of piano sound processing power allowing you to play a certain amount of notes at one time while using a sustain pedal and/or layering 2 sounds together. If there is not enough polyphony memory in the piano and/or the right amount of piano sound processing, then the notes you play could possibly cut out as you are playing your song. Generally speaking, 120 notes of polyphony or higher is enough “processing power” for most people who play on digital pianos. The Alesis Prestige has 128-notes of polyphony piano processing power so you likely will not need more than that. In other words, with regard to “polyphony,” this model is just fine.

As far as the pedals on a piano go, generally there are 3 of them with the right pedal being the most important one called the sustain (damper) pedal that gives sustain to the notes you play. The Alesis Prestige comes with one square plastic sustain pedal that allows you to trigger the sustain fuction when you press the pedal down. It is an on & off function and does not do variable sustain like a regular piano. So as you grow in your piano skills, you won’t be able to have a normal piano damper-sustain experience as you would on a real acoustic piano using the Alesis single black plastic pedal.

When it comes to the instrument sounds in this model, there are 16 of them that are divided up into 4 separate buttons on the control panel. These sounds include 3 different piano sounds (grand, dark, bright), harpsichord, 4 electric pianos, 4 organ sounds, strings, poly synth, and 2 bass sounds. Overall I liked the piano sounds except for them being jumpy, but the other sounds I did not like much at all except for the synth, strings, and bases. The electric pianos, harpsichord, organs, etc sounded fake to me and more like what you might get out of $100 keyboards.

There are 4 other buttons on the control panel including “record/start/stop,” “layer,” “split,” and “key function.” The recording feature is pretty basic and records your playing and then you can play it back, and stop it. You get one recording to store in the piano but then you have to record over it if you want to record something else.

There is also a “lesson mode” that automatically and electronically divides the keyboard up into two 44-key keyboards having the same octave piano sounds and pedaling so that 2 people can practice the same music at the same time. But this feature also needs a triple pedal unit to control both sustain parts, which is not available yet. The lesson mode doesn’t actually teach you to play piano. It is only a keyboard setup mode for 2 people. The majority of digital pianos these days have this feature but in reality I do not see it used very often so to me it is not a big deal.

The key function button makes it so you can access the metronome timing functions & volume, reverb effects, split & layer volume control, transpose key change and a few other things. So there are are more functions on this model but you do not access them with their own dedicated buttons but you do it by holding a function button and then selecting the function by pressing an appropriate and defined white or black key on the keyboard. Other digital piano companies do the same thing so this is not unusual and it works fine.

Speaking of internal speaker system, like a few other brands and models under $500, the internal speaker system in this model is very good. I was impressed with its power, bass frequency range, and sound dispersion. At 50 watts stereo amplifier power going through four 2.5″ speakers and 4 passive ports coming up out of the top back of the piano, the Alesis internal sound system is impressive, no doubt about that. So I give them 5 stars for having this feature in their Prestige digital piano whereas other digital pianos are not this powerful.

The connectivity ports on the back of the piano are more than sufficient to take care of most external connectivity needs. These ports include USB output to computer, a triple pedal input for an Alesis triple pedal unit which may be unavailable right now, dual 1/4″ audio outputs to connect to an additional external speaker system, and a mini jack audio input to run external audio devices through the Alesis Prestige speaker system. On the front of the Alesis  Prestige are 2 stereo headphone jacks for private practice.

I like the design of the Alesis Prestige cabinet and user interface buttons in the center of the piano, and the cabinet has some height to it as opposed to being just a typical “metal slab” with uninteresting looking buttons and controls. So it does look good in this price range and comes with a large music rack to support sheet music. Even the master volume knob on this model is larger and easier to handle and it also looks pretty cool. The weight of this model is about 28 lbs so it is definitely not very heavy, which is a good thing.

Here’s the bottom line: There is a lot to like about the Alesis Prestige & Recital Grand. The looks, functionality, speaker system, features, and connectivity. You can certainly buy the Alesis Prestige and play piano on it. But as far as this piano being “prestigious” and perfect and wonderful, etc…it definitely is not that way in my opinion.  It lacks in a big way as far as the “piano playing experience” goes and that is why most people purchase digital pianos…it’s to primarily play piano and then maybe have some fun and/or useful bells & whistles as well. 

At the end of the day I always recommend to “not judge a book by its cover” as the old saying goes, especially if that item has a very nice cover. It’s not the cabinet, or “name” and it is not the “spec sheet” or what the manufacturer tells you in their marketing & promotional materials. There is always a reality to these digital pianos when you finally play them. As you get into a lower price range like this one, then that reality seldom matches up to the “hype” that you may otherwise read on-line, based on all my experience with these things. The same is true for another more off name brand called Artesia which is typically available at Costco. They have a portable model called the Harmony which is in this same price range. If you want to learn more about that piano then go to my review of it at the following link: Artesia Harmony Review