I don't think you should feel like a sucker. Actually when you grown up on acoustic, indeed a lot of digitals sound like that. Indeed at first glance the basic ones do not feel dramatically worse than the expensive ones. For me the sweetspot are midrange pianos: you already have good or excellent action like in Kawai CA501, it doesn't cost arm and leg and all needed features are on board. Actually I think CA501 in price/performance is BY FAR the best piano one can get and there is long long emptiness until there is next piano.
But the problem is in your thinking, I mean: you look for a REPLACEMENT of acoustic in digital form. If you will think like that, you will never buy a piano. Think of it as additional instruments, with their limited abilities, but buy the one that suits you well.
However, it's not as bad as you are talking. More expensive pianos use more advanced algorithms, allowing to more control over the action and sound.
For me it looks like this:
- Kawai - best in action and sound, but mediocre on build quality
- Yamaha - king of having sound and action equalized to be in the middle of the group, but fantastic build quality
- Roland - well, I am biased here. The older Roland had their design issues, but were competent in virtuoso playing. The new ones have some issues clearly demonstrated on many of their marketing videos. Action wise - their actions have much better feel than Yamaha and I rate them much higher overall. Unless you are playing virtuoso pieces, I would choose without any hesitation Roland PHA 50/100 over ANY Yamaha action. Sound wise Roland was always going their own path, and their piano sound is indeed made more for a studios and band playing, where it can easily cut through mix and other instruments. HOWEVER - playing in their LX pianos gives you impression of sitting in front of a real piano, especially when playing via their fantastic (and the ony proper btw) sound system. Their speaker choice and placement is in another world compared to others, and you feel it each second you play. Noone can even be close to them.
- Casio - some say that their action is best, but somehow I am not really convinced. It feels a bit too shallow and light for me, other will say it's best in digitals you can get. I think we are speaking here between Kawai and Casio more on personal preference than actual feeling. Absolutely no quality issues with Casio. But to sound good via internat speakers you have to open the piano, and even via headphones their internal sound is (for me at least) quite uneven - I do not know how to say, but there is something wrong with it, that is not on par with others.
So, as you see. There is no perfect digital: one has good action, other sound, other quality, other speaker system. Actually Yamaha and Kawai sound system are sad jokes. Roland is using 2 12 or 10 inch bass speakers in the base of the piano, Kawai uses pathethic 4 inch in their CA701 and Yamaha at least put 6.5 inch drivers.
Especially Kawai sound system was many times advised to Kawai James to put bigger drivers, but as with constant issues with their GF action, they think all is right, because their enginner told its ok. No, its not. For piano you need to move a lot of air. 4 inch driver cannot do this. It's beyond my imagination, while with all of the engeenering which comes to the digital part and action, they simply make their piano sound system complete crap by definition. It's realy not that expensive to get two 8 or 10 inch woofer in the bottom cabinet part. We do not need deep bass, we need wide amount of air to be moved. But they are completely resistant to this.
But their 901 with soundboard sound ok too!
they just did some extremely stupid savings on their 701 line.
So you see, it's always trade off.
