I bought mine entirely on the strength of its hammer action. To my mind, it is the most realistic action out there. It really does feel like a Steinway when you close your eyes - this was the most important factor to me.

The sounds, however, are a bit of a mixed bag. None of them I would classify as truly high-end... The words "bread and butter" come to mind. They are, however, all very clean and punchy.

The piano sounds are, at the same time, impressive and disappointing. As mentioned earlier, they would be difficult to handle in the context of a mix. There is just too much bass, for a start. It all sounds over the top, and too much designed to impress potential buyers in music shops. Also - and this I find really annoying - the rather small internal memory only allows for heavily looped piano samples, so that, after an initially very realistic attack phase, the subsequent early looping of sustained notes takes away all the realism one might have hoped for.

The bottom line is that it is a brilliant controller keyboard, with heaps of routing options, and a feel I would describe as close to perfection. Use it to play high-quality piano samples, triggered from your computer, and you will have a lot of fun with it.

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