The Yamaha NP31 is a high-quality, affordable digital keyboard that makes an excellent instrument for beginner pianists or traveling musicians. At 19.2 pounds, the keyboard is plenty light enough to take anywhere with ease while still having a 76-key, Graded Soft Touch (GST) keyboard that provides a key action that is far more realistic then what you get with most portable keyboards. In this Yamaha NP31 review, we will take a look at the various details and features of the NP31 and determine what type of musician this piano would be a good fit for.
To begin with, the NP31 is affordable and portable—the two main qualities people often look for in a secondary piano to take with them on the go. Yamaha’s GST keyboard is nice and responsive, and the NP31 sounds excellent, benefiting from the company’s cutting-edge innovations in sound sampling technology. To top it all off, the NP31 has plenty of useful features, settings, and modes that are suited for musicians of all levels. This includes features that allow you to experiment and create your own sound if you are an advanced pianist or ones to help you learn if you are a beginner.
While realistic for a cheap, portable keyboard, the GST keyboard is a little light for some pianists and certainly not an exact copy of what you would feel if you were playing an upright acoustic. The NP31 does come with onboard speakers, but these are not especially loud, meaning you will want to purchase external speakers if you really want to crank out the volume.
Our Ratings
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Sound Quality
The piano sounds on the NP31 were recorded using Yamaha’s renowned Advanced Wave Memory (AWM) technology. Thanks to this innovative stereo sampling system that they have created, the company is able to capture all of the expressiveness and detail of the original instrument and download into the sound engine of their digital pianos.
The NP31 has certainly benefited from this. The piano has a bold and rich sound that is unrivaled among most portable keyboards. Really, the only knock against the NP31’s sound is that the speakers the piano comes with aren’t all that powerful. If you listen through headphones, though, or purchase an amp then the sound quality of the NP31 is outstanding.
Key Action and Realism
The GST keyboard that the NP31 comes equipped with is partially weighted, though not as much as the company’s flagship GHS keyboard. This is done to keep both the cost and the weight of the instrument down. The NP31’s key action is a little light, but not so much that it feels unrealistic. The keyboard is graded, meaning that the lower keys have more resistance than the higher ones, and this is a nice touch. As far as portable keyboards are concerned, many of which are not weighted at all much less graded, the NP31 has a superb key action. Compared against Yamaha’s larger, more expensive pianos such as the Yamaha DGX 640 it may fall a little short, but for the purposes it serves it is great.
Other Features and Specifications
The NP31 has plenty of great features that are highly useful and serve as a nice bonus for this instrument. These features include MIDI connectivity, built-in headphone jack, 10 different voices, the ability to be powered off of an AC current or off of batteries, a built-in metronome, 4 types of reverb effects, built-in demo songs, and several other helpful settings and adjustments. The NP31 weigh 19.2 pounds and has a slim and compact design, making it a very portable instrument that you can take with you anywhere you go.
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Final Thoughts
For a beginner pianist or an advanced one looking for a cheap, portable piano that still sounds and feels much better than the competition, the NP31 is the perfect fit. It has a nice key action, a great sound, and plenty of helpful digital features. Certainly, if you fall into one of the above categories then the NP31 is worth considering.