REVIEW - Korg Kronos Digital Piano Workstation - Sounds Great & Lots of Fun to Use

Korg has been making some very impressive pro keyboards and digital piano workstations for many years. These instruments are played by pro musicians worldwide on stage, in studio, at home, and many other places. Korg has been a leader in producing some pretty awesome keyboard technology over the years (all of which I have played) including their famous M1, Trinity, Triton, OASYS, and other models, and now they have come out with the new Kronos. This instrument comes in a 61-key ($2999) lightweight synth type action, and 73 key ($3499 internet price) & 88 key ($3799 internet price) piano type weighted key action. There are no built-in speakers as this is a stage piano and the speakers, stand, and other accessories are optional and an extra cost.

I have played the 88-key version of the Kronos as that is what interests me the most when it comes to pianos. The first thing that I noticed about this piano when playing it, was that Korg is using the same key action (RH3) as found in their lower priced 88-key stage pianos including the SV1 ($2199 internet price) and the SP250 ($699 internet price). Unless Korg has made some changes to their key action since coming out with the their low priced SP250 piano at $699 many years ago, it's curious why they have not made advancements in their piano key action for the new Kronos? Although the Korg RH3 key action is very good, it is not what an acoustic grand piano feels like, although it does a pretty good job simulating an nice upright piano key action. It plays nicely, evenly, and quickly and this is particularly good if the player is going to be regularly using the extensive library of sounds on this model including electric pianos, synths, jazz organs, strings, guitars, horns, percussion, and other instruments that need a quick, fast key reaction time.

When it comes to a digital piano (and the Kronos is much more than that), my first thought is that the piano key action needs to be great, especially in an instrument that sells near $4000 that has very convincing grand piano sounds, which the Kronos 88 does including very realistic reproductions of German and Japanese acoustic grand pianos. So if you're wanting a grand piano playing experience when it comes to accurate organic acoustic piano key action, this piano would not be it. However with that said, the rest of the piano is very exciting. The 8" color touch screen is super cool and fun to use and allows multitasking of sounds and events in various ways. However, the control panel and interface display is flat and and the display screen is flush in the top and not slightly slanted which would have been a better way to see and use the controls when sitting at the keyboard. Perhaps Korg thought a flush flat panel would be better and safer for for transport? But a flat panel is not near as good for performance when sitting down (in my opinion). Maybe Korg thinks most people will be standing up when playing!?  The touch screen does not work like an iPad where you can take your fingers and stretch or move the info on the display, but it wasn't designed for that. The Kronos has a solid state hard drive where many of the piano sounds reside (in unlooped form - very cool) and the tone generation is from multiple sources including sampling as well as PCM generated tones and Physical & Analog modeling, which is simply a different and effective way of coming up with very realistic instrument tones. The best way to judge sound quality is to listen to a Korg Kronos for yourself, and at the end of the day, that's all that really counts. As I have talked about in other blog reviews, it's not the descriptive terminology that a company uses to describe their product (and Korg uses plenty), but it's what actually comes out of the instrument for tone, touch, and features.

The Kronos has the ability to record and play instruments over 16 MIDI tracks & 16 separate audio tracks which is a great features when it comes to creating, recording, and playing back your music or music that you have imported from other sources. The Kronos has very convincing backing tracks for live performance, phrase creation, arpeggiator, CD burner & playback features (needs to be used in conjunction with external USB CD drive), and 1000's of exciting sounds in every way you can imagine and is also highly upgradable with additional factory sounds and features that can be installed later. You can write and compose film scores, entire musical productions, or just play the Kronos as a live acoustic piano, electric piano, jazz organ, or anything else you like. Ultimately, this instrument is (what I call) a CREATION STATION with everything you would need make incredible music for studio or performance...and that's what it's all about. If you want to create and play music with the 1000's of available quality instruments (all of which can be edited in a number of ways on the touch screen) and features with smooth transition movements from one tone to the next without delay or dropout, then this new Kronos piano workstation (a workstation is an all-in-one way to create music) with it's beautiful large color interactive touch display screen is a winner and I would recommend it over anything that Roland & Yamaha has in their line of piano workstation keyboards. Speaking of other brands, although the Roland workstation piano (Fantom G8) has a beautiful 8.5" color display screen (not a touch screen but it is tilted - good idea) and a more realistic key action movement than the Korg, the piano action is noisy and thumpy (in my opinion) when playing the keys, especially when playing hard. Basically the Roland key action bottoms out and hits the bottom hard making a lot of thumping noise compared to the Korg and the Yamaha which are noticeably quieter. Roland has an issue with this action noise (thumping) in other models as well.

As far as aesthetics (looks ) go, the Korg Kronos 88 key version is very sleek and attractive except for the fact that the side panels on the ends of the keyboards are a shiny black plastic which in my opinion, looks very cheap and picks up fingerprints and smudges like crazy (and probably dust as well) and can easily be seen. Not a good decision to do that as far as I'm concerned given the rest of the piano is so attractive. They should have used another material. But hey, it's only money and for $3799, this Kronos has great unlooped grand piano sounds (resident on the internal SSD hard drive for more realistic sound) and all the other features you could want including a more than sufficient amount of polyphony. This new production digital piano workstation will keep you busy for a lifetime (depending on how old you are:).

However, if you are really wanting to get the BEST grand piano reproduction as far as a lower priced digital piano that combines excellent grand piano key touch with beautiful grand piano tone, then I would recommend you also consider the Kawai MP10 digital concert grand piano. This is an instrument that hits a big home run with it's amazing full wooden key action and center pivot grand piano key action with let-off control, new synthetic ivory keytops, and and beautiful piano sound that is unmatched for it's lower price of $2499. It's affordable and is also a great piano midi controller as well so that you can use it to control external computer instruments & workstation controls and midi sound modules as well being able to create separate independent zones on the keyboard itself. Please go to the link below to read my blog review on the MP10.

Kawai MP10 Piano Review

If you want more info on these and other pianos and LOWER PRICES than internet discounts, please email me at tim@azpianowholesale.com or call direct at 602-571-1864.