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Yamaha P-125 vs DGX-670 is a common comparison for people budgeting between £500-£1000 for a digital piano. At first glance, it may not be clear what the main differences are between them.
25m
Chris explains the main differences between the Yamaha P-125 and the Yamaha DGX-670.
This blog will explain what the important differences are to help you decide which one will be better for you or the person you’re buying for.
The Yamaha P-125 is a small and wonderfully simple piano. The Yamaha DGX-670 is a small and wonderfully complex piano.
The primary objective of the Yamaha P-125 is to give you an authentic and uncomplicated piano playing experience in a portable package.
The Yamaha DGX-670, as well as being a realistic-sounding piano that is authentic in the way it feels to play, is also a surprisingly comprehensive workstation for creating music, performing music, and learning to play the piano.
If you simply want a nice-sounding piano that is realistic to the touch and portable, then you should buy a Yamaha P-125.
If you want a nice-sounding piano that is realistic to the touch, portable, you’d like to create music, perform music, and learn to play the piano, then you should buy a Yamaha DGX-670.
Both models have 88 keys (the standard length of a traditional piano), that are fully weighted and touch-sensitive. For all you spec-lovers – they use the same Yamaha GHS (Graded Hammer Standard) keyboard with matte black keytops.
Both models give you a highly realistic piano sound. Both models allow you to play with headphones. Both models have metronomes built-in. Both models come with sustain pedals, music rests, and power supplies in the box (the included sustain pedals are the little square ones by the way).
Neither of these models comes with a stand, but they are flat underneath and will go on a tabletop nicely. There are various stand options available and both models have their own specially designed screw-in wooden stand. L-125 for the P-125 and L-300 for the DGX-670.
Additional 3-pedal units are available for both models and are actually the same model called LP-1. Note. You will require the wooden stands mentioned above to use the LP-1 3-pedal unit.
The Yamaha P-125 has 24 voices. All the basics are there; Pianos, strings, choirs, harpsicords, etc, but it’s pretty limited.
The Yamaha DGX-670 has 601 voices! – All the basics are covered and then some! In the piano category alone, there are plenty of variations, and there are all sorts of orchestral string variations, guitars, synth pads, brass & woodwind. There is a huge number to choose from.
An important thing to mention here is that the real benefit of having 601 voices is not merely to give you a wider selection to tinker with, it’s also to give the keyboard itself a wider selection to choose from when it’s playing an auto-accompaniment – the auto-accompaniments being made up entirely from the onboard voices themselves.
Having real depth in the selection of voices means that the backings (sometimes I’ll say ‘backings’ instead of ‘auto-accompaniments because, well, it’s a mouthful) can be more varied and sound more authentically like the desired style of music. Speaking of which…
This is one of the major differences in the Yamaha P-125 vs DGX-670 equation. If you’re new to the world of keyboards, auto-accompaniments are a system whereby you, as a person playing by yourself, can enjoy a virtual band or orchestra joining in with you.
The keyboard detects the notes you’re playing and gives you a musical accompaniment that is appropriate to the genre of music you’ve pre-selected and is in tune.
By the way, there are some clever settings of accompaniment that only require minimal playing skill to produce a really great sound. For me, that’s a big part of the value of this type of keyboard, for the beginner, it uses its A.I. to make you sound fantastic!
The Yamaha P-125 has 20 very basic rhythm accompaniments. Essentially, just a drum beat and a bass guitar. It’s a fun way to play, but again, it’s quite limited and functions really as more of a fun timing aid than something you’d perform with.
The Yamaha DGX-670 has 263! and most of these use a full band or orchestra to produce a pro-quality semi-automatic backing. Think drums, bass, guitar, orchestral strings, synths.
For live performances, it also gives you the ability to control your virtual band with drum fills, changes in the makeup of the backings to suit a first verse, chorus, middle 8, etc, and to do proper introductions and endings.
Overall, the DGX-670’s auto-accompaniment system is designed to give players the tools to put together a well-polished live performance.
The Yamaha P-125 control interface is centered on the buttons on the front panel. You use these to change the selected voice, start the rhythm backings, begin recording, etc.
Because of the P-125’s narrow design, there is only room for so much. Unfortunately, this means that some rather clumsy key/button combinations are required to do many tasks like changing the tempo of the metronome, changing the style of rhythm backing, transposing the keyboard, etc. (This is made somewhat easier if you use Yamaha’s companion app called SmartPianist – note: this will require a cable to connect it to the keyboard).
The Yamaha DGX-670, as well as having plenty of physical buttons on the front, also has a 4.3-inch colour LCD screen to help you navigate the various settings, features, and functions.
Understandably, with as much functionality as DGX-670 has, a screen display feels essential to help you keep track of what you’re doing on the keyboard. It’s not a touchscreen but it’s bright and clear and integrates nicely with the control buttons below the screen and the data entry wheel to the right.
5mChris shows how the Yamaha DGX-670 can be an ideal piano for accompanying a singer.
When you’re learning to play the piano, recording on keyboards like these has a real practical use – in that you can record yourself playing a part with one hand and then hear it back as you play the other hand’s part, with the aim of, eventually, learning to play with both hands together.
The Yamaha P-125 offers 2-track recording which is especially useful as you might get your piano teacher to record both hands’ parts separately into the two available tracks, and then leave you to play them back at your leisure to learn the desired hand’s part.
For clarity, you can record with both hands on both of the two tracks and save it as a single song. This is very useful for songwriting, composing music, etc, but again, this is an area where P-125 is comparatively limited because you can only record a single song to the onboard memory at any one time.
The Yamaha DGX-670 offers much, much more in the way of recording facilities. You actually have an amazing 16-track recording facility built-in.
For writing songs or composing music, being able to layer this many tracks on top of each other and having that huge selection of voices (601) to choose from too, means that you’ve really got a deep, deep pallet of creative options at your fingertips.
When doing such recordings, you can also incorporate elements of the 263 rhythm backings too. For example, if you wanted to write a pop song, you could take the preset drums, bass, and guitar from a preset style, and use this as a template to build your own pop song.
Or, you could just compose the entire thing from the ground up. For creative types, prepare to lose entire evenings and weekends doing this as it’s really fun!
Another important distinction between the P-125 and DGX-670 is that once you’ve recorded a song, transferring it to a computer is made easier on the DGX-670 as you can use a USB flash drive (USB stick).
You can send an audio signal to a computer from both of these models using the USB to HOST connection, but managing the recorded file(s) themselves is more convenient when you can simply push in a USB stick and transfer them to a computer that way.
The Yamaha DGX-670 definitely has the upper hand in this department too. While you can use the Yamaha SmartPianist app to play your smart device’s music through the P-125’s onboard speakers, this will still require a wired connection. See our full video on the Yamaha SmartPianists app by the way.
With DGX-670, you can use its built-in BlueTooth connection to play music from your device quickly and easily through the onboard speakers. You also have a stereo mini-jack input on DGX-670.
Importantly for singers, there is a quarter-inch jack microphone input on the DGX-670 so your voice will come through the onboard speakers. And for a really polished performance, you can also add vocal effects like reverb and chorus to your singing voice.
I touched on using the recording facilities on P-125 to aid the learning process. This is about the extent of the P-125’s tutorial built-in functions although I should mention that there are 50 pieces of classical piano music pre-recorded in the song section that you can playback and listen to.
While playing these songs back, not only can you play along, but you can also remove the left or right hand and attempt to play it yourself. It’s well worth seeing our video about using the Yamaha Smart Pianist app with Yamaha P-125 below.
The DGX-670, with its nice colour screen, takes the learning experience to a much higher level. You have 100 preset songs of various genres built-in that you can not only listen to but also load up sheet music notation to the screen! You can also do this with any MIDI songs that you load onto the piano.
9m
Isaac shows how you can use the Yamaha Smart Pianist app with the Yamaha P-125 portable piano.
For example, if there was a particular song that you wanted to learn, you’d find a MIDI file of it online – for which there are no shortage (Yamaha do sell their own top quality ones), load it into the DGX-670, and then simply bring up the music on the screen. You can also do this with songs that you (or your teacher) have recorded.
There are even clever ways that the song playback itself will automatically pause and wait for you to play the correct note before it moves on. This is very useful indeed when you’re only beginning to read sheet music.
If you simply want a nice-sounding piano that is realistic to the touch and portable, then buy a Yamaha P-125.
If you want a nice-sounding piano that is realistic to the touch, portable, you’d like to create music, perform music, and learn to play the piano, then buy a Yamaha DGX-670.
Those are the main differences between the Yamaha P-125 and the Yamaha DGX-670. I hope this has given you all the information you need to make a decision.
If you have any questions, just get in touch with us via phone – 01295 266788, or email – sales@epianos.co.uk. If you’d like to see more of our demonstration videos, then you’ll find them all on ePianosTV by clicking here.
Byebye.
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