Casio Casiotone CT-S1 – 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Retro Keyboard | Sleek, Portable Design for Beginners to Pros | Stereo Grand Piano + 60 AiX Tones | USB-MIDI Connectivity | Black

I own a top flight acoustic piano and professional digital keyboards. I searched everywhere for a portable, super light-weight keyboard that I could carry on when flying/traveling to use for practicing and composition. The Casio CT-S1 fits the bill well, with a few very minor nits. This keyboard weighs in at less than 10 lbs. yet is very well built and 'feels' sturdy and solid. It's physically impossible to have weighted or semi-weighted keys on a 10 pound instrument, but the key bed is otherwise very good. The keys are nearly full-size, have a matte finish and a good touch sensitive response. The body of the keyboard is well constructed and does not feel fragile. The 'retro', minimalist look of the instrument with the cloth covered panel across the top is easy on the eyes. There is a built-in handle which allows carrying around your house or hotel with ease. It comes with a external power supply, but also runs on batteries. I sprung for a set of AA rechargeable batteries, worth the investment. Nit #1: You'll need to purchase a sustain pedal - not included. There is a very good and wide range of sounds, most important of which are decent acoustic piano, electric piano and organ voices. A nice feature is a set of physical buttons and a volume knob across the front panel. There are dozens of additional sound and tone controls accessible via the function button and the piano keys. Nit #2: I would like to have dedicated buttons for the most used functions: transpose, octave shift and reverb. The built-in speakers are very serviceable. There are 1/8" inch stereo IN and stereo OUT connectors, so I carry a couple of 1/8" stereo patch cables for connecting my Klipsch Groove bluetooth speaker (sounds great), tablets, phone, etc. The USB MIDI interface is ideal for for writing or transcribing music. Nit #3: The Casio case for this instrument, when available, has an awkward design (load from the end ??), and has questionable padding for travel. Casio would do well to make available a decent, well fitting, padded case - even at half the cost of the keyboard, it would be worth it. I scoured the retail world for days to found a good quality, padded, but otherwise snug fitting case for airline carry on, but a case designed for this unit would be better. This instrument is an excellent value.

I've had this Casio for 6 months now, and have learned how to play piano/keyboards on it....and have no intention of upgrading anytime soon, because this thing is great! It's just what I had been looking for- just a simple basic electric piano/organ, without all of the endless nonsense that all the other ones seem to have...and most important of all, the piano and organ voices sound GREAT! I don't need accompaniment, and rhythms, and 600 voices, and all of that crap. With this, there's not too much to distract you or get in the way- yet it odes have a ton of useful features, such as octave shift. I love that it is not festooned with dozens of buttons and displays. You access the additional features by pressing a program button and then hitting one of the 61 piano keys. Every key does something different; and every key also turns on another voice (in conjunction with a different button)- but the beauty is, to look at it, it's just a simple, clean keyboard with only a few buttons. Playing this thing is addictive! The one thing I dislike, isn't the product itself, but the manual- or rather, lack thereof. It comes with only a cheesy fold-out, small-print basic starters guide, and you have to access the actual manual online-which wouldn't be a big deal, as really, you can just turn it on and play...easy-peasy...but the thing is, to access the features which are controlled by the piano keys, you have to refernce a chart, so that you know which key does what; and also which key implements which voice, as there are no markings on the unit or the keys. Don't let that dissuade you from buying, as this is the best keyboard you find for anywhere near this price...but it would be nice if it had come with a proper booklet style manual- or at least a decent quality chart showing which key controls what.

For the price, a great at-home practice piano for my teenaged daughter. The sounds are very good, it's easy to use, lightweight and compact. She hasn't tried performing with it outside or using advanced features such as midi but leaves it set up in her room and plays it regularly. Very happy with it.

Love tbe portability and unique design of this instrument. Has an expensive look to it. The sounds are amazing for this price range. I don’t miss weighted keys at all with this. The keys have a matte textured feel and they are touch sensitive. Lots of great hidden features on this keyboard. Tone layering, octave shifts, etc. If you want great sounds and aren’t wanting drum beats and accompaniment then this is a great instrument. I love that you can use batteries and take it anywhere. Played it in my backyard and my neighbors were coming out to listen! Update: Loving this keyboard more and more as I delve into the full instruction manual (available on the casio website). I recommend printing for easy reference, as there are a lot of hidden features. I just discovered the hidden piano and organ tones, along with a piano/bass split. The organ tones are KILLER> if you love vintage sounding keys (wurly, rhodes, pipe, and gospel organs...even has a nod to vintage video game organ tones). My new favorite features are the simple record/loop feature where I can record one hand playing and then play the other hand over it. Super helpful for learning Bach pieces especially. This keyboard is exactly what I was looking for in that it has super impressive, high quality sounds/tones in an inexpensive keyboard. I love the styling on this. It is quite unique and premium looking with its fabric covered speakers. I think its great that it comes in 3 colors. I often find arranger keyboards a little cheezy and I really just want to play sheet music where I play my own accompaniament. The recorder feature allows me enough layering capability for my tastes, but if you prefer rhythms and arpeggiators I would go with the new Casiotone ct S500 or the cts1000v. Both of these are arranger keyboards and they have my attention currently, as they have the same updated soundchip but I still think the ct s1 has some sounds that are unique to it.

Perfect size for my needs. I am a 75 yo handicapped woman who is unable to walk but wanted to learn piano (again)! It’s on my bucket list and I figure it’s now or never. I find I can have my health care workers roll the piano to me, right before they leave, as I sit up in my recliner. I watch YouTube videos of my favorite songs in piano tutorials. It’s easy and fun. I take my time and don’t rush myself to memorize anything. Both of my hands are stiff and I’ve found that both are getting more pliable as I practice. Back to the product, the sound quality is excellent, the size is not too large and wheels easily when I need to push it away and recline again. Not too fancy with all sorts of buttons but does have some. Just what I wanted. Love it !! I’m actually playing pretty well 👍

Many years ago, I took some piano lessons that never really went anywhere. In more recent times, I'd been thinking of getting back into that and maybe even learning to play the organ. I shopped around and decided that the Casiotone CT-S1WE (the "we" designating a white case) was the best option for me. For as long as Casio has been making musical instruments, they ought to be a safe choice, and I think the Casiotone CT-S1 is a very good if not excellent product. For the price, it's outstanding. While I'm a non-expert, I don't think there is any better inexpensive musical keyboard you can buy if 61 keys are enough for you. The piano tone is of very high quality and this thing will play very loudly if you want it to. You can plug in headphones for private listening and an optional sustain pedal is available. (I also got the pedal, in case I end up needing it.) While not weighted, the keys are velocity sensitive (the harder you press, the louder it plays) for those instruments where the keys would be velocity sensitive on an actual instrument (such as a piano). Casio provides pushbutton access to the most commonly used instruments (several piano and organ variants) and there are seemingly even more than can be chosen when you enter a special mode and press the corresponding key on the keyboard. I haven't tried that. You can also attach a computer using a USB cable and the CT-S1 will appear as a MIDI device. It took a little tinkering around and some dedicated MIDI playback software to make use of this feature. MIDI files played on the CT-S1 sound very good and it's got (at the very least) all 128 common MIDI instruments at its disposal, including drums. You can also continue to play along on the keyboard while a MIDI file is playing, although there is a definite volume difference between the two. (It's possible the MIDI files I tested with have their velocity/volume level set too high.) There's also a Bluetooth adapter and corresponding application from Casio for your mobile device. I bought the optional Bluetooth adapter and gave Casio's app a try. While it works, the Casio app doesn't do much and most of its capabilities seem unavailable on the CT-S1 hardware. I also noticed that the Skoove piano lessons application could not detect and connect to the Casio Bluetooth adapter, instead falling back to the microphone to detect what I was playing. (Maybe this would have worked if I'd have launched the Casio app first and let it handle establishing the connection. I don't know, as I was unable to rerun the Skoove application's first time setup process.) You can power the CT-S1 from batteries, and there's even proper support for the lower terminal voltage of rechargeable batteries, although you have to specify that you are using them. Somewhat surprisingly, Casio chose to allow for the use of AA batteries. I don't know how good the battery lifetime will be as a result, but at least these are less expensive, lighter and more readily available than something like a C battery. I don't plan to play mine using anything other than the provided AC adapter, which has a decently long attached cord. I would have given the CT-S1WE five stars were it not for the lacklustre Casio application and somewhat fiddly effort it took to play MIDI files from an attached computer.

Honestly one of my favorite purchases. HOWEVER, I’d like to get the one negative out of the way. I was planning on using this as a midi controller along with it being a fun portable option. There’s no midi port!!! Listen Casio, I get it we’re trying to further things technologically but if I don’t want to buy a $60 Bluetooth midi adapter, I shouldn’t have to. ADD A MIDI PORT!!! That being the only negative, I’ll start with the sound quality. Right out of the box it sounds great! Such nice tone. The keys are sensitive enough to where you can tell there is quality. I would have loved it to had come with a sustain pedal (even a cheap one would have been fine...) but I went ahead and ordered one today. Sound quality is beyond what you could expect of a portable and very affordable keyboard like this. The sounds it comes with are strong to quite strong. The only section I would say it could use a little more variety on is the actual piano sounds. Maybe instead of having 8 piano sounds and 16 electric piano sounds, they should have gone 8 electric piano and 16 piano. Other than that very happy with the preset sounds. Portability is great, super light, and I love the fact you can put on straps and hold it like that. The usage of the piano and figuring out how to get it to work is very easy, anyone could figure it out even without the instructions. Lastly, my favorite part about this product is IT’S BEAUTY. But really, this is a great looking keyboard. Personally I went with the red option and it is so slick, the red(which I do recommend) gives a great mix off a retro and slick conciseness feel to it. Over all I’d give it a 4.5/5 and would recommend. Thanks for the great product Casio!

I bought this after comparing as many keyboards as I could find on Amazon. My 4yo daughter has taken an interest in piano and this keyboard actually works great for beginners or advanced musicians. This Casio is the whole package. There are 3 sensitivities for key response depending on how hard you stroke it, there are 61 sounds that all sound unique and inspiring, there's a customizable built in metronome, a one-touch button for recording your playing then giving the playback with another button press, there's a surround button to expand the "size" of the sound (the speakers sound great on this), outputs for headphones and external sound, and you can connect different types of inputs to play along with a song or learning app. To be honest, I probably would have gladly paid closer to $300 for this unit. Instead, I purchased the Pyle keyboard stand (fantastic, sturdy unit with plenty of amenities), and a sustain pedal with the "extra money" leftover from what I valued the keyboard at. Any units in Amazon that are cheaper than this one have drawbacks that this Casio doesn't have. Essentially they are more "toys" than an instrument. This Casio is an entry level "hobby" unit that is useful for recording too. I've been a musician since I was a child, so I have somewhat of a good idea for what makes good sound. I can't wait to record with this keyboard!