Whenever Roland releases a new digital piano, there’s always some level of buzz accompanying the product launch. That said, the new FP-E50 digital piano has generated even more buzz than normal, filling a hole in Roland’s lineup most didn’t even know existed.
We’re going to dive into this brand-new instrument to see exactly why it’s been turning so many heads, and to determine whether the fanfare is justified or not.
Roland FP-E50 – Background
The Roland FPE-50 was released to the world in February of 2023 and as we said above, it received a ton of attention and accolades right away. It sells for right at the $1,000 mark in the United States, and for about $1,500 in Canada currently.
This basically means it’s going to fall within a price range that is going to be able to capture a very large portion of the buying market. At the same time, someone familiar with Roland’s lineup might wonder why Roland has released another model in this range given the existence of the FP-30X, FP-60X and RD-88 all available for the same general price point.
This question is more than fair, and frankly, we had it too. But a quick look at the specs sheet reveals what we really have here – an affordable and versatile stage-ready 88-note digital piano for folks looking for a middle ground between the 30X and the 60X/RD88.
Let’s now explore everything sound related.
Piano Sound – SuperNATURAL Piano Engine & ZEN-Core Sound Engine
Dual Sound Engines
The FP-E50 is equipped with not one, but two sound engines – Roland’s SuperNATURAL Piano Engine and the ZEN-Core sound engine. This is really excellent because the SuperNATURAL engine is excellent for acoustic and electric piano sounds, whereas the ZEN-Core is a phenomenal synthesis engine for just about everything else.
They’ve also included the Piano Designer onboard so you can tweak and edit the piano sound to your liking, with access to 8 different parameters like Lid Height and String resonance.
Polyphony
Maximum polyphony on the E50 is a very strong 256 notes. This high polyphony count is becoming pretty common across even lower-priced Roland models and it’s largely thanks to the newer BMC chip they came out within the last few years.
Onboard Sounds
Thanks to having two sound engines, the E50 has over 1,000 available onboard sounds which get used in pro-level stage piano territory, and the ZEN-Core sounds can be expanded or swapped out via the Roland Cloud, either one by one or by adding carefully curated Style Packs.
Navigating the large selection of sounds is very easy, and there are a ton of electric pianos, strings, organs, pads, electric guitars (even some cool Ukulele sounds) and synthesizers to choose from.
There are also two assignable wheels that can function as modulation or pitch wheels, so there’s a tactile dimension to the sound as well.
So, as we said above, for acoustic piano patches you’ll want to stick to the SuperNATURAL engine, but for all other presets, the ZEN-Core will keep you busy for hours exploring all of the high-quality patches.
Stereo Speaker System
The FP-E50 specs sheet lists a dual speaker system with 11 watts of output power per amplifier for 22 watts of power in total. That said, we’re getting serious room-filling sound here as a result of very large speaker boxes.
Are they loud enough that you can gig with these onboard speakers and compete with a band? Well no. For that, fortunately, there are 1/4” line outputs so you can connect to an amp for gigging and rehearsal situations.
But for solo playing and practice, these speakers are excellent and seem stronger than the 22 watts on the specs sheet would imply, as is often the case with Roland digital pianos.
Piano Action
PHA4 Standard Keyboard Action
Piano action is always a really important consideration with digital pianos because the action serves as the player’s physical connection to the instrument. The FP-E50 is equipped with Roland’s go-to hammer action for many of their 88-key digital pianos below $2,500 CAD – the PHA4 Standard Keyboard action.
The PHA4 is a professional quality action widely regarded as being among the top two best plastic digital piano actions currently available due to its solid build quality and authentic piano experience.
Escapement, Triple Sensor, Ivory Feel
One of the highlights is the presence of escapement, which is a sensation that makes the PHA4 feel like an acoustic grand piano by adding an extra little bit of resistance right before the point of attack, especially noticeable when doing quieter playing.
The PHA4 also has triple sensor key detection, so the MIDI information is very accurate, which will be of special interest to those who plan to do a lot of triggering with a soft-synth or MIDI controller. The triple sensor also makes the action very sensitive as well.
Finally, there’s also a subtle texture on the top of the white keys which Roland calls Ivory Feel, and a matte finish on the black keys. This helps in providing a degree of glide to the keytops.
Weighting & Static Resistance
The PHA4 is definitely on the heavier side in terms of weighting, especially so when you first start playing the action out of the box. This is particularly true with regard to the level of static resistance, which refers to how much force is required to initially get the key in motion.
After a few hours of playing this does start to loosen up and the action feels a little bit lighter. Even after it lightens up it is still heavier than the average digital piano action. This will take some getting used to for beginners, but it does set them up well to eventually transition over to an acoustic piano.
Features/Connectivity/Accessories
Accompaniment
Arguably the centerpiece of the FP-E50 is its arranger accompaniment function. There are 177 different accompaniment styles to choose from grouped into pop, dance ballads, Latin, R&B, traditional, contemporary and jazz categories.
To go along with all of those accompaniment styles Roland also included a chord sequencer, and you have the option of displaying those sequences on the screen. You can also build your own sequences and feed them into the E50 through a basic CSV form, or just have the machine detect the chords that you’re playing in real-time with a couple of different modes available to you here.
Thanks to the mic input, you can get some pretty interesting arrangements going here with vocoder transformer vocal effects, reverbs, compressor, ambience etc. to make for some very interesting harmonies. There’s a mixer so you can adjust levels on the fly too.
Finally, you can save the configurations you come up with as Scenes for fast call-up later.
Connectivity
At the time of the companion video review, it appeared that the FP-E50 oddly only had Bluetooth Audio and no MIDI, but Roland has clarified that it does in fact have Bluetooth MIDI as well, though it is not compatible with their Roland Piano App at this time.
Otherwise, there’s a pretty big suite of connectivity ports including dual headphone jacks, two pedal jacks, stereo mini line-in, 1/4” L/MONO, R line outputs, a mic input, USB Type for recording and USB Type B that supports Audio and MIDI.
Overall this is a very impressive list of connectors for the price point.
Accessories
Like most slab-based digital pianos, the FP-E50 ships with a basic damper pedal (Roland DP-2), power supply and owner’s manual.
At a minimum, we would recommend upgrading to the DP-10 damper pedal with continuous detection. You can also add the KSFE50 keyboard stand, as well as the KDP-70 pedal board with damper, sostenuto and soft pedals.
Closing Thoughts
After playing this instrument for a few hours, we were really left feeling surprised that it wasn’t priced quite a bit higher than it is. Why do we say that? Let’s go down the list.
Starting with the speakers, while the performance is not as good as the FP-60X’s speaker system, the E50’s speakers are definitely punching above the FP-30X, so that is definitely notable.
From there, the extensive accompaniment and arranger features are a huge value add for those looking for these types of features. The Yamaha DGX-670 is comparable in terms of the arranger features, but the Roland PHA4 absolutely smokes Yamaha’s GHS action, so that’s a big win for Roland.
There’s also the sheer amount and quality of sounds, plus the onboard sounds are expandable thanks to the Roland Cloud suite.
We can confidently say that Roland has hit an absolute home run with the FP-E50, and consumers are very fortunate to have another quality option to choose from this excellent manufacturer.
Thanks for reading!
