I am an amateur piano player with some ~25 years of experience on and off. I mostly play classical music and enjoy a bit of jazz playing as well. I had several uprights, the last one was a beautifully sounding Wendle&Lung W130, that I regretfully had to sell when I moved out from my home country Lithuania, for a work (spent some 7 years abroad, happy to be back for 5 years now). Currently I have Roland FP30, that I bought about 7 years ago. I decided it's time for an upgrade.
I spent a couple of hours testing different pianos at my local dealer's shop today. Fast forward - decided to buy P-525.
I will try to lay my impressions here in no particular order.
1. Kawai K300 ATX4 silent piano. That's my next piano, when I have budget for that. I loved everything about it except price 
2. Kawai CA901. Was positively impressed by sound. Keyboard is very nice as well. Spent almost an hour playing it. It's almost there, but not yet. Sound is one of the best in DP for sure, keyboard is good, but I wasn't convinced to spend 4K+ on it.
3. Kawai CA701. Sound is much worse than CA901. It has the same keyboard as CA901, but somehow it felt different. Probably that's psychological thing because of the sound difference.
4. Roland LX708. I liked the keyboard. Probably on pair with CA901, a bit firmer, but easy to control. I didn't like the sound at all. Very artificial, all of the presets I've tried.
5. Dexibell H10. Sound is good. Not Kawai CA901 good, but close enough. Keyboard is terrible. That artificial let-off makes it impossible to play pianissimo or high speed repetition. I'm sure, my abilities are limited in that regard, but I didn't have that kind of issues with any other pianos I've tried today.
6. Yamaha NU1X (older model, they didn't have NU1XA). I really wanted to like it. But something was off. I cannot even describe it. The combination of sound/keyboard wasn't there for me. Don't get me wrong - keyboard is great. Sound is good. But somehow, they didn't stick together.
7. Kawai Novus 10s. Keyboard is great. But... I liked the sound of CA901 better. Sound was a disappointment. Unfortunately they didn't have Novus 5s, couldn't compare them.
8. Yamaha N1X. Keyboard is amazing. Sound is great. But the price was the same as Kawai K300 ATX4 (which is upright of course, but I really liked it's action and acoustic/digital sound).
9. Yamaha CLP775. Sound is great. I couldn't overcome that initial keyboard resistance. TBH, P525 keyboard felt much more natural and controllable. Unfortunately they didn't have CLP785 to try (with counterweights in the same keyboard), but I skipped CLP775 as an option in 5 minutes.
10. Finally, Yamaha P525. I was impressed by it's keyboard and it's sound. The combination of both is very organic and believable. Of course, the sound is not as powerful as CA901 or even CA701, but I tried to connect additional external monitor to it and it works great!
It arrived yesterday, played quite a while at home.
Some impressions:
- The sound system is quite powerful, though a bit squeaky in upper registers.
- Keyboard is the best I've tried on portable pianos. There is one drawback though - they added a texture on black keys, that make them quite slippery. No idea why did they do that.
- Unfortunately sound with sustain pedal on is not that great. You can hear digital nature of it quite quick.
I am thinking to buy some external speakers to complement current sound system. Also, connect some VST's as well.
Overall it is very good value for money. Anything better is at least x2 more expensive.
One note for myself though - it's very hard to decide on any piano in the store with one big space. It's too loud and too big compared to my room. It's totally possible my impressions on some of the pianos would be quite different if played in some silent smaller space.
Cheers!
Mikas
