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Casio Casiotone, 61-Key Portable Keyboard (CT-S200BK)

£42.495£84.99Clearance
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About this deal

The CT-S1 is a return to what Casio intended to create with the very first Casiotone keyboard: a simple instrument which looks as good as it sounds. If the vocal stuff was all that the CT-S1000V had then you’d probably feel a little short-changed, but fortunately, it’s also an excellent portable keyboard. There’s a great variety of sounds, and while the keyboard action can sometimes feel a light to get the most out of them (when you're playing the electric pianos, for example), you’ve got everything you need.

The most exciting feature for a keyboard in this price range is the USB connection, allowing you to connect up to a computer or mobile device and control them using MIDI. This opens up practically limitless applications for the CT-S100. Similarly, the widespread success of the first Casiotone keyboards is responsible for propelling Casio further into the musical instrument business, where they went on to cement themselves as one of the major players for electronic keyboards and digital pianos. If Casio’s SA-7x range of children’s keyboards is still somewhat grown-up for your little darlings, then consider the even more elementary SA-51. Weighing in at less than a kilo, measuring just 44.6cm across and equipped with 32 mini keys, it’s the perfect size for little hands.The CT-S1000V comes with a Bluetooth dongle, as well as all of the connections featured on the S500. Though it’s still a relatively portable unit, the PX-S1100 is a serious instrument, with an active touch-panel display, Casio’s great-feeling Smart Scaled Hammer Action weighted keyboard and a whopping 192-note polyphony to ensure you won’t have any sustained notes dropping out. After the release of the Casio SK-1 in 1985, gradually PCM sample-based tone generators became dominant in Casio's keyboards line. After the 1990s, most Casio keyboards utilized PCM tone generator or its variants. When connected to your Casio piano or keyboard, Casio Music Space can act as a digital music score, a teacher, a live-performance simulator and an all-round app with which to enjoy learning and playing music. Based around the functionality of Chordana Play but with an expanded array of features, it’s aimed at complete beginners, people taking up an instrument again, or intermediate to advanced players who want to experience a new way of playing. In fact, one of our criticisms of the Lyric Creator app would be the number of presses it takes to go through the transfer process. It’d be great if Casio could streamline this a bit in an update.

The CT-S400 uses Casio’s AiX Sound Source. AiX stands for Acoustic Intelligent Expression (sort of), and it combines high-performance EQ and DSP effects with carefully designed instrument noises. This results in highly expressive acoustic instrument noises with incredible clarity. The CT-S100 is the spiritual successor to the original Casiotone 201. It’s simple – basic, even – but it does what it does very well. The Casiotone 201 proved immensely popular and opened up the world of electronic music to a much wider demographic than ever before. Casio had discovered a gap in the market: consumer-grade electronic musical instruments. Compatible with all of Casio’s current keyboard and piano line-up, Chordana Play and Chordana Play Piano are free educational apps (Android or iOS) that’ll help you learn how to play songs using a simple interface. Once connected via USB or Casio’s optional WU-BT10 Bluetooth dongle, you can browse the 50 or so traditional songs in the online library, or import any MIDI file you choose. The notes of the song will then drop down in a videogame style (and light up the keys if you have an LK-S250), enabling you to play the song while the app scores your performance. There’s even a mode where Chordana will wait for you to find the right key before continuing with the song, meaning you can learn at your own pace.

A World of Music to Explore

Adding performance-focussed functionality, the CT-S300 is perfect for those seeking more expressive capabilities. It retains all of the features of the CT-S200, but with improved playability. Arranger keyboards often ship with hundreds of different instrument presets, representing practically every instrument that exists and probably quite a few that don’t. Bear in mind that quantity isn’t always a measure of quality, though – it’s far better to have fewer usable voices than hundreds you’ll never bother with, especially if you’re more in the market for a digital piano than a portable keyboard. For more information on the differences between the two types of instrument, see our digital piano vs keyboard article here. It’s a bit bigger and heavier, and the handle is gone – so this keyboard has lost some of the mobility of the earlier Casiotones. Dance Music Mode has also been taken off.

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