61 keys or 88? How to choose
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This is not really a question about how many keys you need. It is a question about which of two different instruments you are buying.
An 88-key digital piano with hammer-weighted keys is built to teach and reward piano technique. A 61-key keyboard is built to be portable, immediate and fun, usually with backing rhythms to play along to. The cheaper one is not a smaller version of the dearer one — it is a different instrument that happens to have black and white keys.
So: if piano lessons are involved, buy 88 weighted keys. If they are not, 61 is a genuine choice rather than a compromise. The rest of this page is why, and what to do in four common situations.
Prices below are ours and correct as at 5 August 2026 — check the live price on each product page.
What 88 hammer-weighted keys actually give you
Three things, and only the first is about the count.
The range. Eighty-eight keys is seven and a bit octaves. Sixty-one is five. Classical piano repertoire regularly runs past both ends of a 61-note keyboard, so a student working through graded books hits the wall in both directions — and hits it early, because the wall is written into the music rather than into their ability.
The action. "Weighted" means a physical hammer sits under each key and the weighting is scaled: heavier in the bass, progressively lighter towards the treble, the way an acoustic piano behaves. That resistance is what builds the hand strength and dynamic control piano playing is made of. An unweighted keyboard's keys are sprung — light, fast and even from end to end. Sprung keys are excellent for organ, synth and electric-piano parts, but they will not teach anyone to control an acoustic piano, and the strength has to be built again later on a weighted action.
The pedal. The easiest of the three to overlook. Graded piano tuition assumes a damper pedal, and pedalling is part of what is assessed. A 61-key keyboard may not even have a socket for one — on the Casio CT-S100, for instance, Casio's connection list has three entries and none of them is a pedal jack. And not all pedals are equal: an on/off footswitch sustains and nothing else, while half-damper support gives you the partial sustain that pedalling technique actually depends on.
Those three features are what graded repertoire is written around. Exam and syllabus requirements themselves are set by your examining board, not by us, so check their current guidance before you commit to a practice instrument.
What a 61-key keyboard is actually for
Not everything is a piano lesson, and 61 keys is genuinely better at some things.
It is portable in a way an 88 is not. The Casio CT-S100 is 3.3 kg and the CT-S1 is 4.5 kg — a child can carry either. An 88-key piano is a different order of weight; the Casio CDP-S110 is 10.5 kg, carryable by an adult but not by a seven-year-old, and not something that lives on a kitchen table between uses.
Auto-accompaniment. This is what 61-key keyboards offer that the pianos do not. Play a chord with your left hand and a full backing arrangement follows it — drums, bass, the lot. The CT-S100 has 61 rhythms and 60 built-in songs with a part-off function that mutes the left hand, the right hand or both, so a learner can play one hand against the recording. None of the 88-key Casio pianos has any auto-accompaniment at all. If the point is playing along and having fun, that is worth more than key count.
Five octaves covers a lot, and costs less. Beginner songbooks, pop, lead sheets and chord-and-melody playing all sit comfortably inside 61 keys; it is classical repertoire that does not. The CT-S100 is $217.95 and the CT-S1 is $367.95, against $597.95 for the cheapest weighted 88-key Casio we stock.
Touch response is a separate question again
Key count and key weight are two axes. Here is the third, and it is easy to miss because it is invisible in a photograph: touch response, meaning whether playing a key harder makes it louder at all. On the Casio CT-S100 it does not — Casio's published specification lists no touch response, so the volume control sets the level and your fingers do not. That is the defining limitation of that instrument and a wall for anyone learning dynamics or phrasing. The step up in the same family, the CT-S1, has three sensitivity settings; the 88-key pianos have it too, three levels on the CDP-S110 and PX-770 and five on the PX-S1100.
So there are three rungs, not two:
1. No touch response — the volume knob is the dynamics. Fine for finding middle C, a wall for anything expressive. 2. Touch-responsive but unweighted — your playing controls the volume, but the keys are sprung and will not build piano technique. 3. Touch-responsive and hammer-weighted — a piano action.
If a keyboard seems not to respond to how hard you play, check the sensitivity setting before you blame the instrument — but on a model with no touch response at all, there is no setting to find.
The "we'll upgrade later" trap
Buy cheap now, buy properly if it sticks — the reasoning is sound, on one condition: be clear you are buying a first instrument, not a first piano. A student on an unweighted 61-key keyboard will need to replace it the moment a teacher asks for weighted keys, so if lessons are already booked the cheap keyboard is not a saving, it is a delay. What not to do is buy a 61-key keyboard because it was described as a piano. Check for hammer action, check for touch response, and check whether a sustain pedal can be plugged in at all.
Four situations, four answers
A child starting lessons — 88 weighted keys. Get the hammer action and the damper pedal from day one, because those are what the teacher will be working with. The Casio CDP-S110 at $597.95 is the cheapest of the weighted 88-key Casio pianos we stock and gives you both, at 10.5 kg — light enough to live in a bedroom. If the lessons are heading towards graded exams where pedalling is assessed, step to the Casio PX-770 at $1,027.95, which has three real pedals built into a cabinet with half-damper support — the one thing the CDP-S110 cannot give you at any price. Add an adjustable bench or stool either way: playing at the wrong height is the fastest way to build bad technique.
An adult returning to the piano — 88 weighted keys, and the real question is where it lives. You already know what a piano feels like, so an unweighted keyboard will disappoint you quickly. If it is staying in one room, the PX-770 is the console answer: three pedals, a sliding key cover, 31.5 kg, and it does not move again once built. If it has to share a room with everything else, the Casio PX-S1100 at $947.95 is 232 mm deep and 11.2 kg with 192-note polyphony — but budget the SP-34 three-pedal unit at $129.95 on top, because the included SP-3 footswitch does not do half-damper.
A songwriter or producer — 61 keys is a legitimate choice. If the keyboard's job is getting chords and parts into your hands and your DAW, five octaves and a light sprung action are quicker to work on and easier to fit on a desk. The Casio Casiotone CT-S1 at $367.95 is built for that: a curated 61 tones, touch response, a 40,000-note MIDI recorder, 4.5 kg, battery power, and a 6.3 mm pedal jack for an optional SP-20 sustain pedal at $87.95. It has no auto-accompaniment rhythms and no built-in Bluetooth. If your writing needs a real piano feel, buy the weighted 88 and use it as a controller.
Not sure the lessons will stick — buy the cheap one on purpose. Two hundred dollars of keyboard that gets played beats six hundred dollars of piano that does not. The Casio CT-S100 at $217.95 is the cheapest Casio keyboard we stock, runs about 16 hours on six AA batteries, weighs 3.3 kg, and has 61 rhythms and 60 songs to play along with — the feature that keeps a young player coming back. Go in knowing the two things it does not do: the keys are not touch-sensitive, and Casio lists no sustain pedal jack. If it sticks you will be replacing it, and that is a good outcome rather than a failure.
Frequently asked questions
Is 61 keys enough to learn piano on?
For the first few weeks of finding your way around, yes. For piano lessons, no — graded repertoire runs past both ends of a 61-note keyboard, and it assumes weighted keys and a damper pedal that a 61-key keyboard may not offer at all. The range is actually the least of those three reasons: the hammer action and the pedal matter more from the first lesson than the extra two octaves do, but they come on the same instruments, so buying 88 is how you get all three.
Is "weighted" the same as "touch-sensitive"?
No — they are two different properties and one does not imply the other. Weighted means a physical hammer under each key, scaled heavier in the bass and lighter towards the treble, the way an acoustic piano is: it is resistance under your finger. Touch-sensitive only means the volume follows how hard you play. An instrument can be touch-sensitive and completely unweighted — the Casio CT-S1 is exactly that — and some are neither. Piano study wants both.
Can I add a sustain pedal to a 61-key keyboard?
Only if it has a pedal socket, and not all of them do. The Casio CT-S1 has a 6.3 mm pedal jack on the back and Casio names the SP-3 and SP-20 as compatible options, with sustain assigned by default. The Casio CT-S100 lists no pedal jack in its connections at all — don't buy a pedal for one on the assumption it will work.
My child is very young. Is 88 keys too much instrument?
Physical size is worth thinking about — an 88 is around 1.3 m wide and needs a stand and an adjustable bench, where a 61 sits on a table and weighs a few kilos. If a teacher is involved the weighted action still wins; if it is pre-lesson play, the lighter keyboard is easier for a child to live with and to carry. Compare the finished setup rather than the sticker either way: both still need a stand, a bench and headphones on top.
Where to see them
Scarlett Music is an independent Australian retailer at 284–288 Ballarat Rd, Footscray VIC, trading since 1997, with a physical showroom and in-house technicians. Key weight is the one thing on this page you cannot judge from a spec sheet — five minutes with your hands on both answers the question faster than any article can. Check live availability on the product page before you make the trip in.
Standard shipping is a $7 flat rate and free on orders over $150. Click & Collect from Footscray is free.