Casio CT-S300

I bought this keyboard as a simple keyboard for practicing and learning until I thought myself good enough to buy something better. I feel like I had my money's worth and it has everything you need to start practicing and learning, but I feel it's very easy to outgrow it pretty soon.

It is exactly what you would expect from a Casio keyboard at this price range. The keys are velocity sensitive but they have no weight to them, so it's a bit hard to handle velocity with it but, yet again, very hard to find anything much better at this price.

Sounds are ok. They are the classic Casio sounds you might expect. Although it says it has 400 sounds, it has a lot of repeated sounds. Sounds are decent enough. Sustain pedal function changes based on the sound, sometimes it works like a piano sustain and sometimes it just holds notes indefinitely, which can be a bit awkward for some sounds. The built in reverb makes sounds much nicer.

I did not get too deep into other features as they are kind of gimmicky. Rhythm section accompaniment is useful when you're tired of hearing the metronome. Dance music mode is really nothing too interesting or useful. The learning app might be interesting to some, but here I'm reviewing the keyboard itself.

It can work as a MIDI keyboard but without any sort of velocity sensitivity, which I think is quite an odd quirk.

Overall, it's an excellent beginner keyboard that has everything you might need to start learning songs and practicing, it also serves as a really compact jamming tool to bring to a friend's house to have some fun. For the asking price it's features are more than appropriate and I'm satisfied with it.

I'm not a keyboard player, but I needed one to use other sounds (guitar, strings, organs, etc) in my recordings. I was looking for something cheap, compact and good quality. I was in between a CTS200 (because of the colours), the CTX700 (because of other comments and reviews. It's so ugly though!) and this one. At the end the CTS300 won because of size, portability and sensitive keys (compared to CTS200). The sound is more than ok for an eternal amateur like me. My favourite thing is the small amount of buttons since it has only 9 (not counting power and volume) so it is really easy to use. Just plug it and play! It has a really handy control wheel that allows you to move in between sounds. It also has a pitch wheel which I don't use much particularly.
The quality is OK, but the feeling of the keys is too plastic. I'm not complaining though.

Pros: size, portability, low amount of controls, sensitive keys
Cons: Not many to mention, just the plastic feeling.

In my opinion, if you are an amateur like me, get this one. The CTS200 is tempting but CTS300 has sensitive keys.

I liked my CT-S100 (the slightly cheaper sibling of the CT-S300) so much that when the time finally came to upgrade to a keyboard with velocity sensitive keys, the CT-S300 was my first choice. The difference between the CT-S300 and the CT-S100, which has no velocity sensitivity whatsoever, is night and day! It is a lot more inspiring to play the CT-S300 because I can express myself better with it. Sure, for a professional pianist or somebody accustomed to much higher quality (and multiple times more expensive) keyboards, the playing experience of the CT-S300 will probably be sub-par, but to me, a guitarist for whom the piano is a secondary instrument, it is more than satisfactory. All the most important (to me) sounds, such as acoustic and electric pianos, are pretty convincing, and the minimalist user interface makes it very easy to find them whenever needed. Finally, the build quality is great, especially considering the price of the unit. It is a perfect balance between being light enough to carry it anywhere (thanks to the ingenious built-in handle!) and feeling dense enough to give an impression of quality. Oh, and it can also be used as a MIDI controller!..