When it comes to electronic or digital music instruments, Casio has long established itself as a major player in the domain – whether you are talking about a beginner level instrument or an advanced pro level digital keyboard, Casio boasts of a wide portfolio of instruments to fulfill all such needs of the customers. In this article, we review the Casio PX860.

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How does the Casio PX860 compare to the PX850?

Casio’s Privia range of digital pianos became highly popular with piano enthusiasts because of its versatile features, classy appearance, feel and the exceptional sound quality. The Casio Privia PX850 earned immense praise from experts and beginners alike, for the great value it delivered pertaining to its low cost price. The PX850 used Casio’s latest digital technology back then, which enable it to exceed the other pianos in the lower price range. The PX850 was a furniture cabinet digital piano which was praised universally for its graded hammer key action response and its realistic moisture absorbing synthetic ivory/ebony key tops. Although these features were certainly not unique but they were non-existent in the pianos of this price range which is why the PX850 became quickly the best-selling digital piano across USA.

However, the PX850 has just been replaced with the newly announced Casio PX860, which is basically an upgraded version of the hit PX850 piano. So if you were planning to buy a new PX850 in near future, we would suggest you to wait for a while longer till the new, upgraded Casio PX860 hits the markets.

The new Casio PX860 is marked at the same price as the older PX850 and the features are largely unchanged over the older model. The cabinet design of the Casio PX860 remains the same as the PX850 as does the opening sound projection lid, the finish colours, control panel, the internal sound system and the overall functions; however there is a marked improvement upon the actual piano sound and instrument samples and to the reverb effects system.

The new Casio PX860 boasts of major sound upgrades over PX850 which includes a more realistic acoustic piano sound borrowed from Casio’s PX5s pro stage pianos; also borrowed from the same model are some of the pro-sounding instruments like better strings and electric pianos which only enhance the overall audio quality of the Casio PX860. Another new feature which has been added to the Casio PX860 is a new reverb settings called Hall Simulation which grants the piano an ability to produce music as it would sound in a large, spacious hall.

A new music library consisting of 10 orchestra classical songs (recorded in wav format) has also been added to the Casio PX860 which can be played along with the piano sounds, allowing you to experience how they would sound in a real recording of the songs, although you do need to be able to read music and play along at the same skill level.

Apart from these upgrades, the Casio PX860 contains essentially the same features as the PX850, which actually is a good thing, since we feel that the predecessor, the PX850 was a perfect piano at 1099 USDs, and if the new Casio PX860 actually adds to that at the same price, it will only serve as an icing on the cake. So you still get those astounding features of the PX850 like 256-note polyphony processing power, an incredibly responsive ivory/ebony feel key action, easy to use features along with the latest upgrades all at the same price as before!

Conclusion

The new Casio PX860 is the best option available in the market at a low price range of around 1000 USD. It retains all of the features of the earlier PX850, itself a master piece, and to top them, contains new upgrades and hence, much improved acoustic piano, strings, electric piano and sound quality all at the same old price of $1099. All this makes the new Casio PX860 a must buy, and a perfect instrument for every piano enthusiast!