Korg G1 Air
Pros
- Nice design
- Realistic key action
- Powerful speaker system
- Bluetooth
Cons
- Limited Polyphony of only 120
Korg is a well-known piano manufacturer with many wonderful digital pianos to their names. The Korg G1 Air is a highly-rated digital piano and the flagship of Korg’s Concert Piano Series. This Korg G1 Air review will let us know why it has been so highly rated and popular.
DESIGN
The Look
There is no way you won’t be influenced by the wonderful finishing of the Korg G1 Air. This digital piano is beautiful and sleek.
It comes in four color shades: Black, White, Dark Brown and White Ash. The Black and White have the standard matt finish, while the Brown and White Ash has a more premium woodgrain finish.
I prefer Dark Brown, but all color shades are wonderful. You start having a taste of a high-end digital piano from the look of this one.
Korg G1 Air can be recognized from other digital pianos through the new back panel that now comes with its latest design. This confers with it some uniqueness and stability, as well as privacy for the user.
Music Rest
The key cover doubles as the music rest. Thanks to the new design, it is now elevated above the cabin. I really like this feature since it creates a better viewing angle for the sheet music.
The full length of the key cover can be used as music rest, which is amazingly convenient. However, I do find the rest a bit short. When I try to display my print sheet on A4, the pages would sometimes fold over the top of the music rest.
Control
While the Korg G1 Air does come with an LED screen to aid functional navigation, it also features 18 buttons and one control knob. You can regulate the volume using the control knob. Through its buttons, you can turn the piano on/off, switch between its three grand pianos, navigate through its other sounds, record and save music, play/pause music, and so on.
Your user manual will come in handy in the first few, but you will get used to all these navigations very quickly. The Korg G1 Air is as simple as a digital piano of its price could be.
Keys
Like other modern-day digital pianos, the Korg G1 Air features 88 fully-weighted keys. The keys are covered with a layer of ivory/ebony and behind them lies a thin layer of red velvet, both impacting the piano with elegance and beauty.
Size and Weight
The Korg G1 Air weighs about 91 pounds and is of dimension 52.99 x 15.12 x 32.36 inches. At such a dimension, the instrument only needs enough space for accommodation in your bedroom, living room or studio, causing no inconvenience through its size.
KEY ACTION
All known digital piano manufacturers have their own keyboard technologies that were, in one way or the other, designed to mimic the feel of acoustic pianos to various degrees. Some of these manufacturers have more than one such technology. Korg features its fully-weighted hammer action keys from its RH3 Keyboard technology in Korg G1 Air. This keyboard technology simulates a real acoustic feel with its graded keys, feeling heavier at the lower pitch and lighter at the higher pitch.
Moreover, the key feel is made more enjoyable by its key touch sensitivity feature. This enhances the keyboard’s responsiveness and puts the player in control of the piano’s sound. The pianist can select between five piano key sensitivity settings: normal sensitivity, light sensitivity, hard sensitivity, fixed sensitivity, and stable sensitivity. The extensive options give the pianist enough freedom to personalize the sound output, an important need of music makers.
SOUND
In addition to touch sensitivity and hammer action, string and damper resonance are featured in Korg G1 Air. Both of which simulates a realistic acoustic sound.
Additionally, this also comes with a Key-off technology that gives similar sound output produced by an acoustic piano when its hammers lift off their strings as the player lifts off the fingers. The resonance produced this way is real and immersive for the player.
Also, the Korg G1 Air has 32 onboard sounds. Three of which are excellent grand pianos: the dynamic Japanese grand piano, the warm Austrian grand piano, and the brilliant German grand piano. While 32 sounds may not provide the universe of sounds some players are looking for in this age, but a player who is only looking for a piano that offers quality and realistic sounds to practice with wouldn’t mind this number of sounds.
The 32 sounds that come with the Korg G1 Air were made with great attention to details and their outputs are excellent. Even a hard-to-please expert pianist would appreciate their quality.
These great in-built sounds are enhanced by the featured three sound effects (Brilliance, Chorus, and Reverb effects) that add to the customization options of the player. Brilliance adds perfection to the sound quality of the player, producing bright and sharp sounds. Chorus adds a dynamic quality to long songs and stimulates sustained interest in the song being played. Reverb successfully recreates the sound from different spaces for the player. From the sound inside a typical concert hall to that of a small studio room, the Reverb effects will immerse the pianist in any environment of their choice.
When it comes to making music, the number of polyphony notes that accompanies with a digital piano is important. A 120-note polyphony is adequate for a piano beginner and good enough for an intermediate player as well, and that is what the Korg G1 Air has featured. While you may find other pianos that have greater polyphony at the same price and more polyphony will truly offer the player greater opportunity to grow, a 120-note polyphony is great for beginners and intermediate players. With this, you can play complex notes without a cut and most piano enthusiasts will never need more than 120-note throughout their playing careers.
Moreover, it comes with four in-built speakers (2 x 4.72 x 1.97 inches each) that give you full volume as a bonus to the quality sound they produce. The speakers are fired by two 20 Watt amplifiers.
It also has two digital piano headphone jacks, paving the way for two players to use two different headphones at a time during practice or when it’s in the Partner mode.
FEATURES
Korg G1 Air also makes music-making and recording awesome for players, as it comes with two in-built track recorders. Pianists can make music and store directly on their Korg G1 Air digital pianos without any hassle. Interestingly, you can save up to 99 songs on the instrument this way.
It also features MIDI in/out ports, providing the medium to exchange MIDI files from and into the piano. MIDI is the format digital pianos first record new songs made by the player before they are then converted into audio formats. The advantage of MIDI files is that they are editable by the music maker while audio files are not. Therefore, MIDI capabilities are very important to music makers in pianos.
Korg G1 Air can be played in three modes: the Split, Layer, and Partner modes.
With the Partner mode, you can divide the piano into two equal sections. This way, two players can successfully player it together, one player on one side and the other player on the other side. This mode makes the Korg G1 Air an adequate instrument for piano classes, affording a tutor-student playing section. It also facilitates parent-child and friend-friend playing sections as well, depending on the purpose.
With the Layer mode, you can play two different musical instruments at a time without one interfering with the other. For instance, you can play the piano and a guitar at a time using the same keyboard. Each key producing the sounds of the two instruments at a time as you press them.
With the Split mode, you can divide the keyboard into two voices. For instance, the lower pitch can be made to producing bass while the higher pitch is made to produce a grand piano sound. So, while the left hand of the player engages a voice, the right hand engages another at the same time.
Its Bluetooth connection feature provides an easy way to transfer audio files from and into your external device. And you can play music from an external device while you use the piano as a loudspeaker.
Other Features
- 5 Key touch sensitivity options
- Pitch includes Transpose tuning and Master tuning
- Maximum Polyphony is 120 voices
- 32 in-built sounds (including 3 bass and 3 grand pianos)
- 3 Sound effects (Brilliance, Reverb and Chorus)
- 2 in-built track recorders with a maximum of 45k notes (i.e. 400,000 bytes)
- 50 Demo Songs (including 10 Sound Demos and 40 Piano Songs)
- Pedals include Damper, Soft, Sostenuto
- Bluetooth
- Connection ports:
- LINE OUT,
- MIDI IN/OUT,
- USB,
- 2 Headphones,
- Pedals,
- Speakers,
- 24V DC
ACCESSORIES
Being an upright style digital piano, the Korg G1 Air has nearly everything you would need.
Depends on the bundle you choose, you might have to purchase separately a piano bench.
And as always, a pair of high quality headphones is recommended for any digital piano.
WHO IT’S FOR
Because of its many acoustic features such as the hammer action keyboard, the key sensitivity, and the string and damper resonance, the Korg G1 Air will come in handy for piano beginners and intermediates.
Beginners will have no hard time changing to real acoustic pianos when they eventually decide to do so since the keys feel almost the same way. So it’s an adequate piano to start with for beginners looking for reasonable acoustic piano features at a little fraction of the cost of an actual acoustic piano.
Piano enthusiasts will also love Korg G1 Air because it gives them that excellent acoustic feel, quality sound output, and enough music customization features that they usually love in pianos.
CONCLUSION
From its sound quality and effects to its 120-note polyphony, track recording feature, Bluetooth connectivity, key touch sensitivity, and 88 hammer action keys, to mention but a few, the Korg G1 Air offers a lot of features to piano players across the spectrum. However, this flagship model from Korg is not cheap and there are quite a few strong competitors on the market right now.
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY
Leave a comment to let me know what you think of this review. And if you happen to have some experience with the Korg G1 Air, please share with us in the comment below.
Hello Wei!
Love the website. Would it make sense for me to get this G1 Air for my 4 year old son. We are looking for a beginner piano for him.
PROS:
1) If my son ended up not continuing with the piano, we can use it as a really powerful bluetooth speaker instead, the piano doesn’t go to waste.
2) Design & Size is my favorite of all the pianos. I think this is the most important factor since we don’t want it to stick out too much.
3) Made in Japan.
4) Price now in the $1500-$1700 range.
CONS:
1) Sound quality the Kawai/Yamaha
2) Key action. But this will be for a very young child, so a lighter key action would be easier to learn?
Thoughts?
Hi Sam,
I agree with you on most points you made. Just not really sure about the first one. If your son gives up on piano, I’d probably sell the G1. You can buy a really premium Bluetooth speaker system with that money.
As for piano performance, the Korg G1 would be more than adequate for a beginner like your son. And yes, I agree that that the Yamaha action might be a bit heavy for a 4 year old.
Overall, G1 is a great choice.