The piano is one of the most timeless instruments known to humanity. It’s not the oldest but has the most well-recognized and beloved tone throughout history. And while parents still desire their kids to learn the piano and adult producers are constantly trying to brush up on their skills, the instrument has always struggled to keep up with the times.
We live in smaller spaces, there’s more noise around us, musicians operate on smaller budgets, and more are just a few reasons why getting a conventional grand piano is a pipe dream for most artists and their families. But the Roland RP30 checks all of these boxes in one elegant and authentically-modeled digital piano, and we were lucky enough to be sent one of the RP30s by Roland to see how it handled itself in my home and studio.
So let’s dive into the full review and discover whether or not this piano is worth its sizable investment.
What Is The Roland RP30?
The RP30 is a premium-quality digital piano styled in a classic upright design and features state-of-the-art engineering under the hood. Roland’s sought-after piano tone and speaker system, the RP30 spits vibrant, warm tones that feel authentic and spot on to an acoustic grand piano.
Here’s what else the RP30 brings to the table:
- Experience the musical magic with Roland’s highly acclaimed piano sounds. Perfect for practicing and enhancing your skills, it boasts an authentic touch and tone that will help you develop proper techniques. Playing on this piano feels real with its full-sized, graded hammer action keys and 88-note keyboard with escapement.
- Add expression to your performance with sustain, soft, and sostenuto pedals. The elegant wood cabinet with an integrated stereo speaker system will make you feel like a pro, while the electric pianos, strings, organs, and other sounds let you explore a wide range of music styles.
- Play without disturbing anyone with the headphones jack. If you want to connect to an external speaker system, use the stereo output. The aux input lets you play along with music from your smartphone or music player, and the USB MIDI connection lets you work with music software on your computer or tablet. Get ready to make beautiful music!
My Favorite Things About The Roland RP30
Once the RP30 was set up in the studio and I had a chance to get used to it, I quickly found that there is more to this piano than meets the eye. And while there are a thousand significant and minor features that I could write thousands of words about, here are my four favorite features that stood out to me while playing this digital piano.
Its Feeling
This is an easy feature to lead this section with, as this piano feels authentic to a real grand piano. Often digital pianos cut corners in one way, shape, or form here. But the RP30 went to extreme lengths to recreate a piano that is true to form and is likely to impress even the most fastidious, life-long piano players.
The touch of the keys feels weighty and adequately resistant, allowing for extreme expression levels when playing. This is coupled with a critical design with a tactile and ivory-like material that makes up the keys that feel way above this piano’s pay grade.
All in all, the RP30 allows you to access all of the benefits of a piano that should cost five times as much as the RP30 does and is a great device to have both in your studio and in the living room for your family to take their first steps towards being an accomplished pianist. And the sound of the piano matches its feeling, offering a rich and warm tone in a room-filling stereo sound.
It’s Modern
This idea piggybacks off of the previous point, but I wanted to give it its section here because I cannot stress this enough; the RP30 is Roland’s answer to the modern age which is why they’ve packed it with a ton of features make it a solid contender for being one of the best pianos on the market today.
Firstly, as mentioned above, it has all of the best benefits of having a real grand piano in your house but at a fraction of the price, size, and noise. The digital piano’s nature means that you and your family can practice and listen quietly with headphones on, a key feature I can only assume my parents longingly wished for when my six-year-old self was hammering away at ‘Hot Crossed Buns’ so many years ago.
Next is the piano’s USB MIDI, which opens up a world of functionality to adapt to you and your family’s modern lifestyle. Access to USB MIDI allows you to connect to your computer or mobile device with a single cable, allowing the RP30 to communicate with popular apps, notation software, learning platforms, and much more. You can even use this technology to record your performances for playback later to help identify your errors or impress the grandparents
It’s More Than A Beginner’s Piano
Most digital pianos these days bill themselves as being perfect for beginners, which is often how they can justify poor-quality keys and a thin, cheap sound. And while our friends over at Sweetwater describe the piano using the quote below, I found that the RP30 was way more than just a device to learn the ropes:
“The benefits of digital pianos… engage the whole family and foster the sense of excitement in musical exploration” – Sweetwater
But the ability to input/output MIDI made this piano my go-to MIDI keyboard for my professional production studio. Having a full range of expressive keys and the ability to detach myself from the DAW and sink fully into the experience of playing a keyboard has directly impacted my workflow and creative output in the short month that I’ve been using this piano.
It’s also Incredibly Beginner Friendly.
The RP30 comes packed with many features that also make it perfect for the whole family, meaning both myself and my son I can find an extreme amount of value in this one device. While the RP30 isn’t compatible with Roland’s own piano app, it does work with numerous powerful education software options that can help get you and your family up to speed on playing the keys.
Pianote is a fantastic place to start – which is perfect, as purchasing the RP30 comes with 3 months of online courses through the website completely for free!
What I Wasn’t Crazy About
And while this piano is incredibly impressive, it wouldn’t be an honest review if I also didn’t share some of my thoughts that gave me pause while using this device in my home studio over the last month. Here are the two things that caught my attention.
Its Price
I won’t sugarcoat it; this piano is expensive. With a price point of around $899.99, your wallet will take a hit with this thing. For what you get, though, and the higher costs you avoid if you want to be a conventional grand piano, this piano is a steal. Heck, the fact that you will never have to pay a professional to come out and tune this piano alone warrants at least some extra consideration!
It’s Heavy
This thing was NOT easy to move. Weighing in at over 100 pounds, getting the piano upstairs and situated in the studio was no small task. I guess this is the price you got to pay when dealing with the quality of the piano, but I wanted to let it be known here that this piano is far from portable, and expect some labored installation when it arrives on your doorstep.
The benefit of many other digital pianos nowadays is that you sacrifice quality and feeling for it being portable and more travel-friendly. This is not the case with the RP30, but once it’s in place, you will never want it to leave your house.
Is The Roland RP30 Right For You?
Usually, by this point in the article, I conclude that it’s hard to definitively recommend anything at this price point to everyone as I know that everyone and their family has different wants and needs out of a piano like this.
If you plan on having your kids learn piano, you pick up the hobby yourself, or you need a modern and authentic keyboard in your creative space; this is the ultimate piano for you, and I couldn’t recommend it highly enough.
Specs On The The Roland RP30
- Item Type Digital Piano (Console-Style)
- Keyboard: 88 Full-Size Keys with Graded/Scaled-Hammer Action
- Touch Sensitivity: 3 Levels of Sensitivity, Plus Fixed
- Aftertouch: No Aftertouch Support
- Number of Sounds, Kits, or Samples: 15 x Sound Preset
- Number of Song Presets: 16 x Demo
- Maximum Polyphony: 128 Voice
- Built-In Effects: Chorus, EQ, Reverb
- Performance Functions: Layer, Transpose, Tuning Adjustment
- Built-In Speakers: 2 x 6″ / 15.2 cm
- Amplifiers: 2 x 10 W
- Audio I/O 2 x 1/4″ TRS Headphone Output
- 1 x 1/4″ TRS Instrument Output
- 1 x 1/4″ TRS Stereo Aux Input
- Pedal Support 1 x Proprietary Multi-Pedal (Roland-Proprietary Wiring, Included)
- USB 1 x USB-B (MIDI)
- Weight: 105.8 lb / 48 kg
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
