The Yamaha P155 features extremely high-quality piano tones and the ultra-expressive “Graded Hammer Effect” (also known simply as “Graded Hammer”) keyboard, this is one of the best mid-range contemporary digital stage pianos you can buy at an affordable price today.
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Yamaha P155 review – Features at a glance
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- Size (Width x Depth x Height): 52-1/2″ x 16-13/16″ x 5-1/2″
- Weight: 41 lbs
- 88-key, Graded Hammer Effect
- 128-note polyphony
- 17 different voices
- 7 Demo Songs, 50 Piano Preset Songs
- Built-in speakers
- 2 front-panel 1/4″ headphone jacks
The main attractions of the Yamaha P155 piano are its amazingly realistic piano sound and authentic feel of the keys. This realism remains unmatched in many other digital pianos available today.
Yamaha P155 Review – Professional quality sound
Yamaha is an experienced company when it comes to musical instruments, especially pianos, both acoustic and digital. They have painstakingly researched and perfectly captured the brilliance of the authentic acoustic piano sound in the P 155 Yamaha.
The genius lies in the 4 layers of sampling: pressing a key softly doesn’t just lower the volume like in many touch-sensitive electronic keyboards. It actually triggers one of the four different piano samples for that particular note! This results in an extremely dynamic and expressive sound.
But that’s not the end of it. In many other digital pianos, releasing a key results in a jarring cut-off of the note. This is unlike a true grand piano, where this cut-off is more gradual and complex. Yamaha has gone to great lengths to simulate these minute sonic artifacts, and the result is simply astounding. Discerning the difference between the sound quality of the Yamaha P-155 with a traditional acoustic piano is nearly impossible, even to a trained ear.
Yamaha P155 Review – Legendary piano touch
The P155 features the one of the highest levels of touch realism available in Yamaha keyboards today: the “Graded Hammer Effect” (GHE), or simply shortened as “Graded Hammer” (GH). Compared to cheaper Yamaha digital pianos which typically feature the slightly less realistic “Graded Hammer Standard” (GHS), you can be assured that the finger training you perform on this digital piano will more readily prepare you to move on to a proper grand piano in future.
Graded-hammer means that the keys feel lighter the higher up the notes go, just as on a normal piano. Yamaha has incorporated input from professional pianists into its “Graded-Hammer Effect” feature, and the result? Once again: simply astounding. The difference between “Graded-Hammer Standard” and “Graded-Hammer Effect” is subtle enough that novice pianists might never notice it. But rest assured that the difference is there. If you ever intend to pursue the grand piano as a concert-level pianist in future, the higher price for the GHE will be justified.
Yamhaa P155 Review – Other features
As is standard with most digital pianos today, you can connect headphones to play to your heart’s content in the middle of the night. You can record your wonderful playings or compositions and transfer them to a USB device. The MIDI ports allow you to use this digital piano as a MIDI controller, or to connect to your computer via a USB-MIDI cable. There’s also the split and dual modes, as well as a small number of effects (reverbs and brilliance) you can apply to each voice. And as you might expect from a Yamaha digital piano, it comes with a built-in metronome as well.
Weighing at 41 lbs, this is not the most lightweight digital piano around. It does not have many other voices or tones besides the high-quality piano tones. If you are serious about learning to play the acoustic piano, or are an accomplished pianist looking for a digital alternative, then the Yamaha P155 is ideal, especially if you do not want your piano to be bogged down with additional costly “features” that only serve as distractions.
Yamaha P155 Review – Bottomline
The 2 most important factors for anyone who’s used to an acoustic piano, or who wants to play one in future, are realistic feel and realistic sound. The P155 digital piano is one of the cheapest pianos you can get for such high levels of realism. In fact, it is currently the cheapest Yamaha digital piano which features the legendary “Graded Hammer Effect” keyboard: one of the most realistic touch/feel mechanics currently available from Yamaha today.
Check out these testimonials on Amazon.com from satisfied customers of the Yamaha P155 piano:
“…I tested the hammer action and compared to real acoustic pianos and find the P-155 is quite realistic, even on the heavy side (which I think is good, gives you good strength if you ever decide do go up to a real grand piano!). The sounds it produces are very good (at least the “piano 1?, we only goofed with the others—but the others sound good too, the “chorus” sounds really nice playing Beethoven’s 9th!)…
“…This keyboard comes with 4-level AWS sampling, 128 polyphonic and GH effect (Yamaha’s best) weighted hammers. The features are in line with mid-level Clarinovas. Yamaha did a great job reproducing there top of the line grand piano, trouncing the YPG-235 and the YPG-635. There are subtle sound effects from a real piano reproduced, making the whole experience very realistic.
