7 Best Roland Keyboards of 2023

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by Jeff Mitchell July 28, 2023, 4:53 pm

Need help choosing between the best Roland keyboards? This guide should help you find that perfect digital piano to play around with.

We cover some great options from Roland's roster of instruments, including keyboards that can sound like an authentic acoustic piano and more.

You'll also find info on selecting the best Roland digital pianos in our buyer's guide below.

Our top pick is the JUNO-DS88 which offers a full seven octave range and tons of effects to choose from.

Let's check out some digital pianos!

If you're looking to play everything from authentic piano sounds to bold, custom waveforms, then this is the keyboard to keep in your roster.

Roland's JUNO-DS88 offers a full 7-octave range across 88 keys for piano purists to play just about anything on. No need to worry about it suffering from common synthesizer size limitations or barring you from branching into classical overtures whenever you want.

The addition of all the best synth bells and whistles brings a wealth of creative possibilities into the picture for those looking to push boundaries and practice on the same instrument.

Roland's special touch of including carefully weighted keys makes this a winner with more traditional pianists as well.

Players who've purchased this model insist it is one of the absolute best Roland keyboards available, especially given its accessible price of less than $1300.

They also love the inclusion of physical buttons for sound categories and expressive pads for sequencing experiments. The JUNO-DS88 is clearly designed to be menu-light despite being so feature-heavy.

Loads of presets, including some vintage gems from Roland's early creations, practically guarantee you won't go wanting for options when inspiration strikes.

You can focus on banging out hits instead, plugging this keyboard into your studio setup, and making MIDI magic happen.

This digital piano is our top pick for a good reason - the balance of pro-level features and accessible pricing put it well over the edge.

Looking for digital pianos that don't break the bank? The Roland GO:KEYS keyboard might be your best bet.

Tones and I of "Dance Monkey" fame perform with this gigging gem of a keyboard, and for a good reason - you get a lot of bang for your buck with it.

A respectable collection of more than 500 sounds that you can quickly navigate through at the push of a categorized button makes this seemingly simple keyboard a great songwriting workhorse.

Plus, the Roland GO:KEYS offers built-in Bluetooth functionality for you to pair your media player and practice with whatever backing tracks you want.

Buskers tout the overall portability of this digital piano as well as its adjustable keys, which can be tuned to respond to your touch the way you might expect a traditional piano's ivories to.

If you're looking for a great gig and travel companion, then this keyboard is a brilliant buy. Combined with additional speakers, you can definitely put on a show with the Roland GO:KEYS.

Newcomers looking to learn acoustic piano may find this keyboard to be an essential practicing tool as it offers built-in recording and looping capabilities to jam with.

Experienced players should find a lot to love in the GO:KEYS, too, such as the ten performance pads it has for stream-of-thought sequencing experimentation.

Just being able to power this keyboard with a few batteries makes it worth trying out.

The Fantom line from Roland has long offered some of the best value to be had in the digital piano space, and the Fantom-7 is no different.

An astounding array of more than 3,500 sounds practically guarantees the perfect tone to take your playing to the next level but a button press away. Plus, the multitimbral sound engine it uses allows you to fine-tune those tones to perfection.

People who purchased this keyboard point out the incredible abundance of options for generating your own unique piano sounds.

From configurable Zen-Core engine-based waveform samples (which can be combined) to modeled instrument sounds that closely match the originals they're based on, there is a crazy amount of customizability built into the Fantom-7.

One of the things that makes this one of the best Roland keyboards out there is the massive amount of analog controls it has. You can adjust almost anything in seconds this way without having to navigate nested digital menus much.

The Fantom-7 is also a true workstation, with its own built-in stereo audio interface capable of recording with external mics and routing signals into your computer in real-time.

The Fantom-8 Roland keyboard is a tool that even highly accomplished keyboardists like Yohan Kim keep close at hand. It's very easy to see why.

Everything that the aforementioned Fantom-7 does, this model does better. Designed to play like an authentic acoustic grand piano, this epic workstation not only packs in tons of features, it can capture the finer touches of top-tier talent without missing a beat.

Everyone who buys this digital piano seems to agree that it is a top contender for the title of best synthesizer on the market. Some even claim it's the best of all time.

One of the features that inspire such respect from so many musicians is the inclusion of information regarding each of the buttons and functions of the keyboard in its digital menus.

This information shows up intuitively to help you keep track of the instrument's many moving parts as you play.

Whether you're aiming to recreate authentic piano sounds for moving performances or entirely alien synth sounds to captivate listeners and spice up tracks, the Fantom-8 workstation is the best of the best in Roland's extensive keyboard lineup.

At least, it is until they release the Fantom-9. Until then, you can count on this model's incredible unlimited V-Piano polyphony and abundance of intuitive controls to power your music production process from start to finish.

Yes, it's another Fantom. No, it's not quite the same as the Fantom-8. That additional "0" before the "8" makes a difference, and it's reflected in a halving of the price tag of the full-featured F8 model.

Don't let the lower price fool you, though. This is every bit a beast of a keyboard as any other Fantom in Roland's lineup, and it offers all of the features that make Fantoms such sought-after instruments in the first place.

Plus, melodic metalheads should appreciate the fact that this digital piano has been played by the likes of Epica keyboardist Coen Janssen and a smattering of others.

This is considered by many to be one of the best Roland keyboards an intermediate (or advanced) piano player could possibly purchase, as it combines professional playability with the studio workstation inputs and outputs needed to competently record solo pieces.

This keyboard comes with Roland's proprietary SuperNATURAL piano tech embedded in its circuitry to give you access to multi-sampled magic at every key. This makes its acoustic piano models incredibly accurate sounding regardless of playing technique.

If you're looking for a competitively priced Roland keyboard that is capable of powering your entire creative process on top of simply being really enjoyable to play, then this is probably the one for you.

You can play way more than mere piano sounds with the Roland FP-E50 keyboard, but it excels at the basics.

This is the quintessential student's keyboard, benefiting from Roland's SuperNATURAL sound engine and the high-end multisampling across all keys that entails. This keyboard should sound authentic whether you play pianissimo, forte, or somewhere in between.

Outfitted with an optional furniture-style stand and sustain pedals, the FP-E50 becomes an ideal home piano system that can be used for both practice and pleasure.

Roland digital pianos are known for their synth capabilities, playability, and extensive sound banks. Although this model's collection of presets pales in comparison to the Fantom models, it is still pretty overwhelming, with more than 900 available by default.

Owners of this keyboard seem to love the USB audio connectivity as it makes jamming to tunes on your laptop or PC possible using the keyboard's built-in speakers or connected headphones.

This really is one of the best Roland keyboards a budding pianist could pick up. You can record with it, overdub, and even pair it with your phone via Bluetooth to bring your own improvisations to life.

The inclusion of Scene functionality for quick access to fully customized keyboard setups is yet another nice touch the FP-E50 offers, making it an excellent option to consider.

Not every keyboard needs to have a full dynamic range to be useful. In fact, for pop and techno pros like the inimitable Thomas Dolby, the Jupiter line of synths has proven that less is indeed more.

Anyone interested in something portable yet immensely powerful should take a closer look at the Jupiter-Xm.

Easily one of the most iconic keyboard lines of all time, Roland's Jupiter series is among the very best in the synth sphere. It runs on AC power or 8 AA batteries and offers all kinds of crazy features that are sure to satisfy even the most demanding of artists on the move.

You can simulate acoustic piano tones or piece together your own Frankenstein waveforms from scratch with Jupiter-Xm. Layer sounds on top of each other and plays around with polyphony to your heart's content - this keyboard can handle it all and more.

Purchasers have extolled the many virtues of this tiny Roland keyboard, highlighting its super durable, all-metal build as well as its incredible capacity for simulating retro sounds.

The additional vocoder effect seems to be a hit with everyone too. As is the absolutely massive collection of over 4000 presets encompassing practically any sound you could ever dream of generating.

The Jupiter-Xm is a great digital piano for anyone looking to put together expressive drum tracks and beats too. Some truly epic drum machines (including the TR-808) are included in its overwhelming array of presets.

As if the above was not enough, this portable jewel offers AI-enhanced accompaniment generation features to automatically create drum segments, bass lines, chords, and more that match your music.

There are a lot of Roland digital pianos to pick from, but the best choice will always be the one that matches your own unique needs as a musician.

We've identified a few important factors worth considering when shopping for your next Roland keyboard. By paying attention to each keyboard's number of keys, presets, effects, inputs, and outputs, you should be able to tell which one will work for your situation.

Here's why each of the above factors is so important for selecting a great keyboard:

A traditional acoustic piano normally has 88 keys, allowing you to play seven different octaves. However, this arrangement may not be necessary for you to get the kind of sound you're going for.

In fact, besides classical pianists and jazz musicians, there might not be much need for such a full range at all. A 61-key option still offers five octaves of notes in the chromatic scale which is plenty of room to explore.

Options like Roland's Jupiter-Xm take octave limitations to the extreme by offering only enough keys to cover 3, but this works much better for musicians and producers making pop and rock sounds where too many notes simply muddy the mix.

The best digital pianos come with built-in presets. But not just any old presets will do. You need high-quality presets to make high-quality music.

The presets that matter most to you should influence your choice of keyboard, as some models are designed to favor certain categories over others.

Roland's lineup tends to succeed at offering general utility regardless of the purpose you may have in mind. However, fans of vintage sounds would do best to choose a keyboard with those as a top priority.

Anyone interested in making their keyboard sound like an authentic grand piano should steer clear of models that don't feature multi-sampled tones to choose from.

With all of the above in mind, it can also be a good (and simple) rule of thumb to prioritize any keyboard that offers more presets than others. You're more likely to find solid sounds to play with when there are loads of them available in the first place.

Your Roland keyboard is almost guaranteed to come with a decent batch of effects. But you do need to make sure that the effects you want are there. This is often linked to the type of keyboard you are considering.

The main types of keyboards available are generally stage keyboards, portable options, workstations, and synths. Both workstations and synths are likely to include more effects than other models as they are intended for sound modeling and custom sound engineering on stages as well as in studios.

For performances, you may only need a few keyboard effects to make things sound right. Beyond reverb, sustain, distortion, and minimal EQ, you could find additional effects don't matter much mid-performance.

Your Roland keyboard can be a great playing instrument, but it won't be of much use to you if it can't connect to any of your devices or a PA system.

Inputs like Bluetooth are ideal for solo practice and jamming sessions, but XLR outputs could be necessary to set everything up on stage. Consider your keyboard stand setup and how you intend to route audio through your instrument before you commit to a purchase.

The best digital pianos are always the ones that match the players' goals. You should choose the kind of keyboard you need to accomplish whatever it is you are looking to do.

If you're trying to set up a home studio from scratch, then a workstation type of keyboard with loads of inputs, outputs, presets, and effects will work wonders.

For live performances, lightweight, portable keyboards are probably a good option to consider. But techno pros are likely better off with a synth that is durable, small, and jam-packed with presets.

Electric pianos are one of Roland's specialties, and the company has been producing excellent instruments in this niche for decades. You can't really go wrong with a brand-new keyboard from Roland's extensive lineup.

You produce all of the same kinds of synth sounds on an 88-key keyboard as you can on a 61-key model.

The big difference lies in playing style - classical musicians should absolutely opt for an 88-key option whenever possible, as many advanced songs require immediate access to all 7 octaves to be played correctly.

When it comes to electric pianos, the number of keys you need will match your interests. Playing pop music, producing techno tracks, or jamming with rock bands? Go for a 49 key or lower, and you'll be just fine.

A 61-key option is a great middle-of-the-road choice for many performers, especially if you aren't married to any particular style of playing.

The right Roland keyboard can help you do anything from mimicking the sounds of an acoustic piano to plastering distorted tones all over a screaming metal track.

For the absolute best value at a great price, you can't beat the Juno DS88. It has loads of presets to work with and is extremely playable. If you're looking for a top-of-the-line option, then you'll find all of the functionality you could want in the beastly Fantom 8.

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