Casio CDP-S160 Review

This is my long awaited review on Casio’s entry level fully weighted digital piano, the Casio CDP-S160, which was released in 2021.   This piano has been a worthy competitor for Yamaha’s super popular entry level piano, the P-45 for quite a while; but now that Yamaha has released the new version of the P-45 (which is the P-145), how does the CDP-S160 hold up? I’ll be going over all of that towards the end of this review when I talk about the competition. So? Let’s check out the Casio CDP-S160!

Where Does It Fit In To The Casio Lineup?

So where does the CDP-S160 fit into the Casio lineup? The S160 is the least expensive Casio piano that has 88 fully weighted, graded hammer action keys, currently selling for about $480 USD for the piano itself; note that it is often sold in some markets with a basic wooden stand, and in other markets with a wooden stand that includes a triple pedal unit, so keep this in mind when you’re shopping and comparing prices. The next model in this line is the CDP-S360 which sells for about $600 USD but adds in a tiny menu screen, quite a few more voices, and some basic rhythms and accompaniment. From there, you move up to the Privia series which starts with the Casio PX-S1100 & Casio PX-S3100 which sell for a few hundred dollars more than their CDP series equivalents; I have included links to my reviews on both of those if you want to check them out. So with that out of the way, let’s get into the review on the CDP-S160 and talk about the key action.

Key Action

The Casio CDP-S160 has Casio’s “Scaled Hammer Action II” key action. While at first this does feel a bit similar to the action found on the Privia PX-S series, it is NOT the same action. The Privia action is the “Smart Scaled” hammer action, which includes a software assisted sensor that allows for faster repeated notes; as a result, the action on the S160 isn’t quite as responsive as the Privia line, and feels just a tiny bit heavier.

As with the Privia series, the S series pianos are also quite narrow (only a bit over 9″ deep!), which means both product lines have a very compact keybed that results in a shorter pivot length for the keys. And this creates an issue that some people notice and dislike and other people (like me) only notice if I really look for it; and that is that as you play further into the keys they get can feel more difficult to play. And something Casio did to try and compensate for this (both with the Privia line and with the CDP pianos) is to make the black keys a tiny bit lighter than the white keys. There used to be a ton of back and forth and quite frankly in my opinion overblown controversy about all of this online (especially with the Privia series) which has thankfully died down a bit now. I’m not a classically trained player, I play modern chord based music, and to be honest none of these issues have ever bothered me or affected my play at all (and I used to own both a PX-S1100 and a PX-S3000), but if you are an advanced classically trained player it is something to be aware of. Keep in mind, this is an entry level piano marketed towards beginners, so in my opinion; the action is perfectly fine. And a nice touch that Casio included on the CDP-S160 is a matte finish on all of the keys which is nicer to play on that the shiny smooth white keys you’ll find on Yamaha pianos in the same price range.

So with all that being said, I don’t mind this action at all. And there are 3 levels of touch sensitivity to customize the feel to your playing style. It only took me a couple of hours to get comfortable with this action, and be able to play expressively and even start playing some fast rock passages and solos.

As far as comparing this action to other pianos? My favorite fully weighted action ever is Yamaha’s GHS action, which is closely followed by either Yamaha’s new GHC action, and Casio’s Smart Scaled action. And the CDP-S160’s key action is close enough to the Smart Scaled action that I quite like it as well. To be honest, I would much prefer playing the CDP-S160’s Scaled Hammer action than Roland’s heavier triple sensor PHA4 action which I don’t like but TONS of people love so . . . as I’ve always said with piano actions; they’re very personal, so you really need to test them out in person to determine what the best action is for you.

Sounds

So the CDP-S160 only comes with a handful of sounds, 10 in total; on pianos like this, the usual goal is to try and give the customer the “bread and butter” sounds that will get them through most or possibly all of their needs. I’ve owned tons of keyboards and pianos, and even with the ones I’ve owned that have hundreds of sounds? I usually end up using no more than a small handful anyways. So how did Casio fare with the 10 they provided? Overall not bad, but there are some definite improvements that could be made. And note that while you can layer any 2 voices, you cannot split the keyboard into 2 voices (but there is no bass guitar voice anyways, so that’s ok).

The good news is 2 of the 3 piano voices are great for the price. The main piano voice sample changes nicely based on your velocity, so it works well for playing softly & expressively, but also brightens up a bit as you play harder. I’ve never been a fan of “mellow grand” piano voices, and to be honest I don’t like the mellow piano on the S160 at all, it just seems muddy and not expressive. But the bright grand sounds awesome, and I would probably use that voice a ton if I owned this piano for playing rock and blues. And since there is not only built in options for reverb, but also chorus, you can create a great honky-tonk piano sound by adding a bunch of chorus to one of the piano samples (I’d recommend the bright piano). Then for electric piano voices, we have 3 choices – Rhodes, Yamaha DX and Wurlitzer; while none of these are spectacular, they’re all reasonably good and get the job done . . . and quite well if you need those voices. The Rhodes is actually pretty decent, it could just use a bit more growl when you play with more velocity, but . . . it’s really not bad at all.

So far so good, but the remaining voices are where things start to go downhill a bit. The next one is a harpsichord which is pretty plain and thin sounding but I never use harpsichord voices so that doesn’t bother me much. But the next voice is the only strings voice on the piano, and by itself it’s . . . ok, but the most common use for a strings voice on a keyboard is to layer it under a piano to fill out ballads, and this strings voice suffers from a common issue that Casio and Roland never seem to do very well, while Yamaha always seems to excel at it. And that is, the strings voice on the Casio doesn’t have any natural decay at all, and really overpowers the piano voice when it’s used as a layer, especially at the end of a chord when the piano naturally decays, but the strings just maintain their volume and overpower the piano. I’ll show that in the upcoming voice demo, but since this piano doesn’t allow you to adjust relative volume layers between 2 layered voices, this makes using the strings as a layer with piano pretty much unusable (if I needed a layer with a piano voice on the CDP-S160, I would use the Rhodes or Wurlitzer voice instead; it actually sounds much better – I’ll demo that as well).

Then we have 2 organs to choose from. The first is a pipe organ which is . . . OK and I guess usable if you really need one, then we get to the jazz organ, which is typically meant to sound like a Hammond B3 with a little bit of Leslie rotary speaker effect applied. If you follow my channel you know that I am a BIG fan of Hammond organ (I actually own a couple of Hammonds) so I was excited to try this voice, especially since there is NO jazz organ voice on the main competitors, the Yamaha P-45 or the newer P-145. But my excitement didn’t last long because the jazz organ voice Casio chose is a very shrill voice (I think they were TRYING to emulate a Hammond with percussion enabled which on a real Hammond adds an extra initial sound to your keystrikes) but they kind of went overboard with it and it just sounds way too bright and shrill especially higher up on the keyboard. I guess at least there IS a jazz organ option on the CDP-S160 that is missing on the competition, but . . . to be honest? I would never use it; and with the fully weighted piano shaped keys, you can’t really play Hammond slides or palm smears properly anyways so . . . not the end of the world.

So overall, for an entry level fully weighted digital piano at only $480USD? These voices are great; the most important voices are the pianos, and 2/3 of those are really good, the electric pianos are good, and the Rhodes (or even the Wurlitzer) is a decent substitute for layering given that the strings don’t work well for that. Would I love to see a better strings voice and a decent jazz organ? Sure, but . . . you can’t have everything.

User Interface

If you follow my channel, you’ve probably heard me (MANY times lol) criticize pianos that make you use key combinations to choose voices and change settings. The CDP-S160 makes you use key combinations for EVERYTHING, but . . . . I actually LIKE IT!!! And why is that?

The keys to use to select EVERY VOICE & EVERY SETTING are clearly labelled!

It’s SUCH a simple thing to do, and yet this is the ONLY “key combination UI” piano that I’ve ever seen that has labelled EVERYTHING! This actually makes it … super easy to use, and you don’t need to look up anything in a manual! The Yamaha P-145 has the voices labelled which is great, but then only labelled the metronome and 1 or 2 other functions; I actually sold my Casio PX-S1100 (which sells for hundreds more than the CDP-S160) because it has a super minimal user interface which I found super frustrating. If you were to ask me which piano I would rather have given to me for free, the PX-S1100 (with higher quality voices) or the CDP-S160? I would take the CDP-S160 without a second thought, purely for the labelled keys.

So this interface is super simple – there are only 2 buttons, the piano/function button and the record button. You press and hold the piano/function button to select voices or make settings changes; if you just press and release the piano/function button then it will return your voice selection to the main grand piano voice. To layer voices, you press and hold the button and then press the key for your main voice and then the key for your layer. The record button allows you to record a single quick track just to quickly capture an idea – you press and hold it (then start playing) to record (and it will overwrite whatever was there already), and you short press it to play back the current recording. For settings changes that have multiple choices or levels, each time you press the key while holding the button, you will get an audio “beep” indication that differentiates which choice you are making. Note that you can (thankfully) disable that beep if you want to (if I was using the keyboard to gig with, I would definitely want that disabled).

So the user interface is actually pretty awesome and super simple; and all because Casio labelled all the keys! I have no idea why every manufacturer doesn’t do this for their “key combination heavy” pianos; it’s SO simple, wouldn’t cost a bunch and makes all the difference in the world. As an example, the Roland FP-30X (which sells for twice the price of the CDP-S160 and is considered to be a mid-level piano as opposed to entry level – has over 50 voices, but they aren’t labelled so you have to have a manual or list close by which to me is ludicrous. So good job Casio!

Casio Music Space App

OK so at this point in my review on the Yamaha P-145, I talked about how amazing the Yamaha Smart Pianist app is, and how much functionality it adds to the Yamaha P-145; well . . . I can’t say the same thing about the Casio Music Space app. I was excited when this app was first announced, because I was always very critical of its predecessor “Chordana Play”; but I was immediately disappointed when I tried the new app, and found out it’s pretty much just a repackaged Chordana Play all over again, only with some . . . goofy and . . . kind of useless features added.

Granted, it DOES give you a graphical user interface to edit your keyboard settings and choose voices, but given that ALL of the settings available to you are already labelled right on the keyboard, this doesn’t really add anything. And unlike Yamaha’s AMAZING Smart Pianist app which adds a TON of useful functionality to the P-145, the only things Casio Music Space adds to the CDP-S160 is the ability to save a couple of registrations, and a REALLY silly feature where you can change the environment you’re playing in to a stadium, a club etc and as you play you will hear the crowd cheering or other ambient noises etc. I guess this might be a fun feature if you’re a kid, but this app basically adds absolutely nothing to the CDP-160S so I wouldn’t even bother hooking it up.

Connectivity

For connectivity, the CDP-S160 is pretty minimal, but does have the basic needs addressed:

• 1/8″ stereo headphone port that doubles as your audio output for connecting to external audio equipment (it would be nice if it had proper L/R lineouts, but no entry level pianos tend to have those so not a huge issue)
• 1/8″ audio input for streaming external audio into the piano (backing tracks, YouTube videos, etc); there is no BlueTooth on the CDP-S160
• 1/4″ generic sustain pedal port (there is a basic plastic “brick” switch pedal included with the piano, you should upgrade this right away to a proper pedal; and if you get a generic brand as opposed to Casio, make sure it has a polarity switch!)
  • note that you can configure the pedal to some other functions (starting/stopping the metronome, using as the function key or recording functions) – this seems goofy to me because if you do that you no longer have a sustain pedal . . .
• triple pedal port – connects to the Casio SP34 triple pedal unit, so you get a soft and sostenudo pedal as well as sustain, and the sustain pedal in this units supports half pedaling (so if you buy this, you don’t need a sustain pedal as well)
  
• USB to host port – this is for sending MIDI data to a device like an iPad, phone, pc etc to MIDI applications; it’s a shame this port only sends MIDI as opposed to also sending audio; Yamaha has been including an audio interface in their USB ports on almost all their products for years, and Casio (for reasons unknown) continues to ignore this (and as a result, Casio customers miss out on a ton of functionality, like recording high quality piano videos with just your phone, or sending audio directly to a DAW app like GarageBand, all without needing an external audio interface)

So to sum up connectivity on the CDP-S160? It has the basics covered and does add a triple pedal unit port which is cool, but that’s pretty much it.

Speakers

For speakers, there are 2x 5″ backwards facing speakers that are thankfully also vented out the front that are 8 watts each for a total of 16 watts. The speakers sound just fine for personal practice, but for any performing you will definitely need some external amplification. If you follow my channel, you know that I’ve never been a fan of backwards or downward facing speakers in keyboards; I know the “theory” is that the sound will magically bounce of the floor and walls and surround the player etc; in my experience though, this doesn’t happen and they are just simply harder to hear and less clear than just having speakers facing the player. Having them vented out the front so some sound does get directed towards the player definitely helps a bit, but I’d still prefer the speakers to just be aimed directly at me.

Either way though, here is a quick video showing how the speakers sound just as picked up by the internal mic on my iPhone.

Other Features

Some other features to mention on the CDP-S160:

• Effects: there are 4 types of reverb and 4 types of chorus to choose from
• Battery option: you can power the piano with 6 x AA batteries; that combined with a light weight of only about 23 lbs makes the piano easily portable
• There are 4 types of reverb, and 10 levels of depth for each
• There is the usual metronome, transpose and octave shift functionality
• Simple onboard recorder: just for capturing a quick idea (only one song can be recorded)
• Duet mode; this is the “split the keyboard into left and right halves with the same octaves”; this is meant for a student and teacher to sit at the piano together; cool feature I guess, but I’ve never once used this, and given how piano training has moved towards online, I’m not sure this is a huge feature, but if you’re getting private in your home lessons, then I guess it’s a great feature
• There are 2 built in songs you can play along with; I’ve never paid any attention to songs built into keyboards, but they are there if you’re interested
• You can choose different scale modes (Equal, Pure Major, Pure Minor, and other various ethnic modes); kind of cool if you’re familiar with this (I’m not 🙂 but a strange feature in an entry level piano

What’s Missing / Could Be Improved?

For an entry level piano from Casio with a fully weighted and graded key action, good quality sounds at only $480USD? It’s pretty hard to complain much about that; but I do think that Casio could tweak a couple of the weaker voices to really improve the CDP-S160

• improve their strings voice to have some natural decay so it doesn’t totally overpower the piano voice when layered
• replace the jazz organ voice with an improved one that is not so harsh

And a couple more things that would increase the cost a bit but would be SUPER nice:

• left and right line out ports for proper connectivity to external audio equipment
• catch up with the competition, and start including an audio interface in the USB to host port; it’s a MASSIVE feature
• add a simple indicator of some sort (even a simple light above the labelled key for the currently selected voice) so that you KNOW what your currently selected voice is

A lot of people might say “add BlueTooth”; this would be great, but in my opinion the L/R line out ports, audio interface and current voice indicators would be far more valuable features to see. And something else to mention here as an improvement to ALL Casio products: put some thought and effort into a more useful app than Casio Music Space.

But once again, for the incredibly low price of $480USD? The CDP-S160 is a great value.

The Competition

To be honest, there actually isn’t really alot of direct competition anymore that is the same price bracket as the Casio CDP-S160. The main competitor to the CDP-S160 was always the super popular Yamaha P-45, but that piano has been replaced by its successor, the P-143/145, which is $220 USD more expensive!.

Casio CDP-S160 ($480 USD) vs. Yamaha P-45 ($480 USD)

If you can still find a Yamaha P-45, it will probably be selling for about the same price as the CDP-S160.

Pro’s For The CDP-S160:

• Can be battery operated, so it is much more portable
• Actually has a jazz organ voice (although it’s not the greatest)
• Has ALL the available functions labelled on the keyboard, so you don’t need to look them up in the manual

I prefer the key action on the Yamaha P-45, but only by a bit so the pro’s listed above would definitely have me recommending the CDP-S160 over the P-45.

Casio CDP-S160 ($480 USD) vs. Yamaha P-143/5 ($700 USD)

When compared to the new Yamaha P-143/5, things do shift in Yamaha’s favour, because with this new model, Yamaha has added a couple of big things:

• an audio interface built into the USB port which is a huge feature
• compatibility with the Yamaha Smart Pianist app

But as I mentioned, the new Yamaha is $220 more expensive, so these 2 pianos are suddenly not that comparable anymore. And, the CDP-S160 does still have the same 3 things in its favour (battery option, a jazz organ voice and all functions being labelled so you don’t NEED an app). So to be honest if it was me making this choice:

• if I was going to use the piano with my band for gigging I would choose the CDP-S160 for the battery option and the labelled keys
• if I was only looking for a piano for home use, I would lean towards the Yamaha to get the built in audio interface for recordings (as long as I was OK spending the additional $220 USD).

So if it was me? If I was buying the piano primarily for home use I would lean towards the Yamaha P-145 solely because of the built in audio interface; if I planned to use it to gig with? The Casio PX-S1100 would definitely be the better choice.

What About Alesis?

My first EVER digital piano was the Alesis Recital Pro, which if you can still find one probably sells for a bit less than the CDP-S160, but the key action on the Casio is far better (and graded – the Alesis is not graded), and the sounds on the Casio are far better quality.

There is also a new option from Alesis, the Alesis Prestige Artist that sells for about the same as the Casio CDP-S160, but this piano isn’t easily available in my area so I haven’t even had the chance to try one in a store, so I can’t really offer my opinion on that one yet but I hope to track one down to review one day.

Casio CDP-S160: The Verdict

So the verdict on the Casio CDP-S160?

It is a FANTASTIC value at only $480USD – Highly Recommended!

As I mentioned, the only other fully weighted and graded hammer action pianos in this price range are the recently discontinued Yamaha P-45, and the Alesis Prestige Artist. For $480USD you’re getting some good sounds, an easy to use interface (with all the voices and settings clearly labelled), a decent piano action and great portability at only 23 lbs and the option to use batteries.

So that’s pretty much it for this review; as always, I have links below to products I’ve mentioned here so you can check out current prices in your area, as well as some links to other relevant reviews of mine, and also some links to online piano training that worked for me that I highly recommend.  So thanks again for stopping by, and happy piano shopping!   

Thanks so much, and happy piano playing! (and piano shopping 😉 )

Links To Check Out Current Pricing

(please note that as an affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Casio CDP-S160

Casio SP-34 Triple Pedal

Yamaha P-143 (USA?)

Yamaha P-145 (Canada?)

Alesis Recital Pro

Alesis Prestige Artist

M-Audio Pedal

Piano Training I Recommend

I’ve taken a number of online piano courses; the ones I’m listing here are my favorites and I can highly recommend any of these if you are looking for some online training to get started on learning piano, or to take your current skills to the next level.

Video Version Of This Review