Yamaha P-145BT Review: 88 Weighted Keys for £339, with a Stand and Three-Pedal Unit on the Shelf

Eighty-eight keys, and what the action actually is

Yamaha's spec table calls the keyboard a GHC, short for Graded Hammer Compact, with matte black keytops; the brand's UK page describes it as a shorter, thinner replacement for the GHS action in earlier P Series models, with the same weighted feel. Four touch settings (Hard, Medium, Soft, Fixed) decide how much the player, not the piano, shapes a note. The case is 1,326 mm wide, 129 mm tall and 268 mm deep at 11.1 kg; with the music rest fitted it stands 307 mm tall and 320 mm deep. The carton measures 1,424 x 223 x 362 mm, which is the number to check before a narrow staircase.

The sound side is deliberately narrow. A CFIIIS concert grand sample, a damper resonance effect, 64-note polyphony and ten voices: two grand pianos, two electric pianos, two pipe organs, harpsichord, accordion, di zi and strings. Key-off samples and virtual resonance modelling are both absent from Yamaha's column for this model. The manual's Duo function lets two players share the board in the same octave range, one on each side of the E3 key, which suits a teacher and a student working through the same passage.

When 61 unweighted keys is the better buy

Yamaha's PSR-E483 draws the comparison sharply: £299 at Thomann UK, 61 velocity-sensitive keys, 860 sounds, 345 styles, 64-voice polyphony, 992 mm across and 7.0 kg. It matches the piano's polyphony and carries far more sounds. What the listing does not show is a hammer action, and it has 27 keys fewer than the 88 the P-145BT spans.

So the choice is which constraint to accept. An instrument that has to leave for a band room or a shared desk every week is the 7.0 kg keyboard, £40 cheaper and carrying 860 voices against 10. A student working toward piano repertoire written for the full 88 keys is buying the 1,326 mm board, and the extra £40 pays for the 27 keys and the weighted action.

The P-45 below it and the P-225 above it

Thomann UK still sells the P-45 at £279, £60 under the P-145BT, though Yamaha's UK P Series lineup page does not show it. Its listing names the older GHS (Graded Hammer Standard) action and 2 x 6 W speakers rather than 2 x 7 W, and mentions neither Bluetooth nor a pedal-unit input. The £60 buys the newer compact action, the grand sample with damper resonance, Bluetooth audio in and a jack for the LP-5A.

The P-225 at £489 is the other boundary, and Yamaha sets the differences out in the same table: a CFX sample with key-off data and VRM Lite, 192-note polyphony, 24 voices, split mode, two headphone jacks rather than one, an AUX output, 24-bit USB audio rather than 16-bit, and an extra 5 cm driver in each speaker. Both boards run the same GHC action, so the extra £150 goes to how the instrument sounds and where it plugs in, not to how the keys feel.

Pedals narrow that gap less than the sticker suggests. Yamaha UK lists the LP-5A as the P-145BT's three-pedal unit and the LP-1 for the P-225, and both are current and in stock. Piano, L-100 stand and LP-5A come to £506 at Thomann; piano, L-200 stand and LP-1 come to £670, a £164 difference by our own sum, so building a full three-pedal console is where the P-225 premium is hardest to justify on feel alone.

The BT in the name is an audio input, not app control

The manual heads its radio block Bluetooth (Audio only): version 5.0, A2DP profile, SBC codec, Class 2, roughly 10 metres. That is one direction. It plays a phone or tablet through the piano's rear speakers so a student can follow a recording, and the same page states that the instrument cannot send audio out, that Bluetooth headphones cannot be connected, and that Smart device apps such as Smart Pianist cannot be used over this function. One device connects at a time, with pairing memory for eight.

App control runs over USB TO HOST instead, which carries both MIDI and audio at 44.1 kHz/16 bit, with a Type A-B cable under three metres (USB 3.0 cables are excluded) plus whatever adapter the tablet's own port needs. Going wireless means the £50 UD-BT01, a Bluetooth MIDI adapter that Yamaha UK lists for iOS devices and Mac and Thomann lists for iOS 8 or later and OS X Yosemite or later; neither names Android. Yamaha says Smart Pianist brings PDF scores of 303 classical practice pieces with it.

In the box, and what it takes to reach playing height

Included at Thomann UK: the music rest, a sustain pedal and the PA-150B power supply (12 V at 1.5 A); Yamaha notes the adaptor varies by area. Power draw is 6 W playing, and auto power off trips after about 15 idle minutes. The footswitch in that carton is a plain sustain switch. For half-pedalling Yamaha UK names two options: the FC3A foot pedal at £68, or the LP-5A at £56, which adds sostenuto and soft pedals but, per the manual, has to be assembled on the L-100 stand.

The line items that make it a practice station are the L-100 stand at £111, which lifts the keys to 744 mm with the raised music rest reaching 922 mm, and a bench; Thomann's Millenium KB-2006 is £24.90 and adjusts from 49 to 63 cm. That is £339 + £111 + £24.90 = £474.90, or £530.90 with the LP-5A. Thomann also bundles the piano with the L-100 for £444 against £450 separately, and a £549 Mega Bundle adds the LP-5A, bench and headphones. The SC-KB851 soft case is £145 if the piano travels.

Thomann ships free over £149 (£8.90 below that), allows returns within 30 days in original packaging and pays the UK return delivery, and extends Yamaha's warranty from the usual 12 months to 36. Yamaha's UK guarantee page sends owners to their dealer first and asks for the invoice as proof of purchase, so keep it.

Skip it in these four situations

Skip it if two people need to listen on headphones at once, because there is one headphone jack and no line output; the P-225 has two jacks and an AUX output. If the instrument has to move weekly, 11.1 kg over 1,326 mm is a lot to carry, and the 7.0 kg, 992 mm PSR-E483 is the better tool for that round trip.

If the plan is a tablet on the music rest running Smart Pianist with no cable crossing the desk, price the £50 UD-BT01 first rather than assuming the wireless in the model name covers it, and check that the tablet is an iPad or iPhone, since Android is not on either dealer's list. And if the budget stops at £279 with no stand or pedal unit planned, the P-45 gives 88 weighted keys for £60 less.