Yamaha PSR-295 Portatone 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Musical Keyboard

by Yamaha

Product Features

• 61 piano-sized touch-sensitive keys
• PC Button plus USB MIDI for easy PC connectivity
• Flash ROM to download songs from the Internet
• 487 instrument voices
• Performance Assistant lets you play along with any built-in song, regardless of ability level

Product Details

Product Manual [7.36mb PDF]

• Item Weight: 22.4 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 22.8 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002CBRCQ
• Item model number: PSR295
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,029 in Musical Instruments (See Top 100 in Musical Instruments)

Product Description

Yamaha PSR295 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Keyboard Musical Instrument - The Yamaha PSR295 represents a breakthrough in interactive playing, learning, and offers new horizons for the musician. In addition to MIDI connectivity, this is the first time that Yamaha has been able to offer USB on a portable keyboard at such a breakthrough price. Its 'one cable' setup makes it easy to connect the PSR295 and your computer. You can have the ability of creating, editing, and scoring compositions using software on your PC system. The opportunities are virtually endless. Other features include a 6-track sequencer for recording songs and performances, plus 487 selectable instrument voices, including Yamaha's ultra realistic Portable Grand Piano function. The PSR295 comes with 135 built-in styles which will follow your playing like a built-in band. Choose from one of the 30 internal or 70 CD-ROM songs, or download songs from the Web. Easy Song Arranger allows song playback in any of 135 accompaniment styles Portable Grand for the realism of a stereo grand piano Yamaha Education Suite with exercises, interactive lessons and the innovative Your Tempo learning mode, which allows the user to learn songs by progressing at a suitable rate; may repeat any difficult sections On-Board Sequencer records up to 5 songs in 6 tracks 2-way speakers, bass ports & Bass Boost System provide great sound quality Large back-lit LCD shows musical staff & chords Headphone & sustain pedal jacks (headphones and pedals are optional) Includes Digital Music Notebook software for Windows PC

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

53 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Value for Money, June 5, 2005

By 

Rajat Ahuja "RAj" (San Jose, CA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR-295 Portatone 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Musical Keyboard (Electronics)

[Please note that this product is available from Amazon under three packagings: PSR-295 (no adapter) PSR-295AD (includes adapter) and PSR-295MS (includes adapter and stand). I bought the PSR-295MS package.]

I got this full-length keyboard at a great price of $190 with included adapter and keyboard. Both accessories are a must, since this thing is huge.

The product shipped in two days (from PA to MD) with free shipping. I was delighted to find a helpful instructional DVD in the package to get started with the basics, so I didn't have to go through the manual, except for detailed and advanced features.

Also included was a Song Book, with staff music for some popular songs. It's great for someone who knows how to read music - I'm still learning to. There's also software to transfer music between PC and keyboard.

"Portable Grand" is just a one-touch button option to set the keyboard to Grand Piano mode. Of course, this cannot be expected to sound as great or realistic as a high-end digital piano or an expensive wooden one. However, the touch sensitive feature makes it as realistic as possible.

Here are the features I liked:
* Display shows notes and chords being played in three ways - staff notation, note name (ex. E# m7 aug etc.), and graphical (actual keys on a diagram).
* Truly Touch (Force) Sensitive Keys (can be toggled on/off).
* 487 Voices (incl. ~360 XGLite voices).
* 136 Accompaniment Styles to play along.
* Built-in songs which can be practised using Yamaha Education Suite. (Buil-in feature).
* Jog Dial to move between voice/style/song numbers.
* Flash memory to record your songs.
* Direct USB connection (MIDI-USB connecter cable *not* required - that cable would cost around $40).
* Software to transfer songs and voices between PC and keyboard.
* Truly stero output (not just two speakers).
* Phono/Line-Out socket.
* Sustain pedal socket (pedal not included).

Here are some things I didn't like:
* USB cable not included. ($7 extra from Amazon).
* Volume sometime seems a little low. But then, you can always pass output through amps if you really need it that loud.
* No mic or line-in socket.
* Phono out uses 1/4 inch pin. Had to buy a 1/8 to 1/4 converter from RadioShack.
* LCD display is highly "directional", visible only when looking at a particular angle. This is not much of a problem when playing sitting. However, if playing standing, this may be a little inconvenient.
* No sustain toggle switch. If you don't have a sustain pedal, turning sustain on/off manually takes a couple of steps.

Overall, at under $190, free shipping and included adapter and stand, this is a great buy for beginners as well as advanced users.

I had a Yamaha PSS-11 long back. It was a good beginner keyboard but it soon outgrew me, since you couldn't play it with two hands. Overall, I like Yamaha quality and find their keyboards much more professional than Casio ones (maybe I'm wrong). Of course, "real" professionals would use KORG, but that'll be upwards of $1000! :)

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great starter keyboard but be aware of "missing" parts, May 16, 2005

By 

Steve Felker (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR-295 Portatone 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Musical Keyboard (Electronics)

Yamaha has always had a history of making great instruments and for the money, their PSR series keyboards are no exception, but they have conspicuously left out key parts to remain price competitive.

Items that I expected to find in the box were the sustain pedal and AC power adaptor, and maybe a set of headphones. Unfortunately, all of these are optional. Without the AC adaptor, this unit requires 6 "D" size batteries to operate. A dust cover would also have been a nice touch, but they didn't include one of them either (a bath-size towel works perfectly though).

The AC adaptor isn't very expensive, and is available right here at Amazon.com, but what a disappointment when your kid opens the box and can't use it until you scramble to find it (or stock up on batteries). Search here for "pa3c" or if you want some addition power "pa5d" and order them together so you can use the keyboard right away.

All in all, the PSR series are great starter keyboards, but Yamaha gets only 4 stars for being cheap-skates and leaving out the AC adaptor.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Feelings, March 18, 2006

By 

John Bowen Jr. - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Yamaha PSR-295 Portatone 61-Key Touch-Sensitive Musical Keyboard (Electronics)

Generally, I like this keyboard. As a teaching keyboard, it seems to be excellent to that end, but I don't use it for that purpose. I'm an amatuer songwriter with limited space and budget,so I bought myself an 8 track digital recording/mixing unit and I shopped around for an instrument with the most realistic sounds for the money. This keyboard has hundreds of sounds but only a few of them are realistic, but the sounds that are realistic ARE realistic. They are: Brite piano, sweet flute, sweet soprano sax, Galaxy keyboard (LOVE the attack), sweet trumpet, sweet tenor sax and some of the string ensemble sounds. It has a "kinda" cool vocal choir sound too (but they can only sing "AHHH") The organ sounds are kind of disappointing, as are the bass sounds. If they can make a "sweet" tenor sax sound authentic, why can't they make the regular tenor sax sound authentic? To be fair, I'm not rightly comparing apples to apples here, and you get what you pay for in musical instruments. Yamaha make excellent musical instruments of all kinds, and if I wanted to invest another $200 or $300 I'm sure I could get all of the realistic sounds from Yamaha I need. This is NOT a serious musical instrument, and doesn't claim to be (anything with self-contained speakers is not a serious musical instrument), but all in all I've been quite productive with it so far. I never really investigated the "teaching" feature, but skimming over the owner's manual, it looks like it covers quite a bit. It even includes a CD computer program and internet website access that makes more features available to the student. Like I said, I've never used these features, so I'm really not qualified to base my review on it. I'm reviewing the sounds, and with that I'll say, if it had a good Rhodes electric piano sound I'd give it a 5!