CasioCT-S400 Touch Response Keyboard Piano, CT-S400C5

I am not really a player; I am an amateur songwriter. I bought my first Casio keyboard 40 years ago. It had a brilliant feature called One Key Play, which regrettably I think Casio have discontinued. But overall this keyboard is at least as good as my first one, and it is much cheaper (£220 instead of £500). It is very good value.It has a good range of instrument voices and rhythm accompaniments. It also has the very useful Casio Chord feature, which lets you play a chord with one finger. It can also record your performance. You can even do multi-track recording (record a song and then add bits to it). If you're not a good player (and I'm not) you can record a song at a slow tempo and then speed up the tempo on playback. It has many other features which I am still exploring.This machine can do a lot, and consequently the online instruction manual runs to some 200 pages! But it's a very good keyboard, and exploring its many features is very enjoyable.

Great sound and feel.

This is an outstanding piece of kit and a steal at the current price (£189). All the focus seems to be on the CT-S1 at the moment but at this price I doubt the CT-S1 has anything more to offer than the CT-S400, especially for a beginner. This has the tone and rhythm bank from the widely-praised CT-X700 with the same new speaker system and key bed as the CT-S1. With the CT-S400 you also get the LCD screen and jog wheel to navigate the operating system. If you're not interested in all the arranger keyboard features then they sit very unobtrusively behind the sleek design. The sound is superb, it feels great to play and the build quality is solid. If you're currently dithering between this and the CT-S1 (or anything else in a similar price bracket), dither no longer, you won't be disappointed.

I have tried a number of 61 key keyboards and this is the one I have decided on. The keys feel just like the CT-S1 (soft and light) but this has 10 times as many tones! My issue with the CT-S1 was I couldn't find a few tone styles, and the CT-S400 has them, plus a display and what seems like more options (at least which are now visible via the display). However my only complaint about this keyboard (which otherwise sounds fantastic) is the display and user interface. It's not intuitive in the slightest but after working out its quirks I can get the job done. The screen is quite harsh on the eyes (maybe designed for being in the sun) I wish there was a way to turn off the backlight or reduce it (there's only contrast option which doesn't help). But once set and playing, I have no complaints about the range of tones, sound quality or feel of this keyboard; it's fun to play.Another notable comparison is with the Roland Keys. The keys on that are much stiffer (hard to press the top of the white keys) and the sound quality does not compare; the Roland sounds muffled, the Casio much richer. The Casio is also much faster to turn on and start playing.

This keyboard has packed in a lot of features for the price, the sound quality is very realistic and the accompanying 'Chordana Play' App is very useful for any beginner who struggles to read music.My last Casio keyboard is over 20 years old and still playing well, the quality of the new one looks very similar to my old keyboard, so I am looking forward to many years of enjoyment with my new keyboard.

The keyboard needs a WU-BT10 Bluetooth dongle for the Bluetooth to work.The cheapest I've been able to find is £59.Personally I think it's overpriced.If I'm wrong please leave a comment.

when looking for a keyboard, i think "this must sound great" and that is exactly what i though when i first pressed a key, plus all the other instruments you can play seem endless.