Yamaha PSR275 Portable Keyboard

$199, Smart Toy

Teaches: music, piano instruction

CTR Review

Looking for an affordable starting keyboard that sounds just like a full sized piano? This is a 61 key, electronic piano keyboard with built in "song lesson feature" for piano lessons. Key features include built in speakers -- so you can just turn it on and start playing. Other key features include touch sensitive keys (touch the keys harder to play louder), a built in metronome, musical games, DJ voices, 100 instrument voices, 100 accompaniment styles. The built-in software includes a built-in Yamaha Education Suite (Y.E.S.) with 100 songs, teaching note reading and chords in seven steps. Y.E.S. will actually count down the beat, just as a teacher would, providing right and left hand exercises, a chord dictionary, and interactive functions that will grade the playing of internal exercises. To make the learning experience more fun, there are built-in musical games. In addition, a special songbook with an enhanced teaching system and four multi-pads with ten banks of musical phrases to use as fill-ins. The keyboard also comes equipped with stereo and MIDI capability, a headphone jack and an LCD display and bass ports for improved sound. This keyboard provides the most features per dollar that we've seen.