I tried most of the keyboards mentioned and end up returning them all because they lack two things crucial for live playing (pro) but I think it's also important for beginners as well. They lack registration memories capability which allows saving of all the settings into one button. So lets say you want to play a song that requires the use of piano voice, finger bass and set the keyboard transpose to key of G then all you have to do is to save it into that one button. Also as George mentioned about the inability to change the split voice independently. I think PSR292, DGX series and all the YAMAHA line below $300 has the one or more drawbacks as I mentioned above.

However CASIO WK-1630 has everything one needs plus it also has loud speakers - the loudest of them all which is nice. The only drawback is the piano sound which is not as nice sounding as the YAMAHA PSR292 or the DGX202 that George mentioned. In fact I saw a prefessional player uses this keyboard performing live in front of hundreds of people (concert) in a band and it sounds ok. As Uncle Dave in this forum also testified that in the hands of a pro, this keyboard could sound decent.

If you go to Guitar Center, you will see all these keyboards side by side and you can make your own comparison. Sure the Yamaha sounds better than CASIO's but they lack the said features while the CASIO's have them. If you don't care for it now, then YAMAHA is a good bet. Most beginners will probably chooses YAMAHA. But if I am a pro and only has $300 to spend, I will pick CASIO anyday over YAMAHA. CASIO just make more functional keyboards for the under $300 range although the sound is inferior. The lack of registration memory function in YAMAHA will get tiring after a while !!

GUITAR CENTER is the best place to buy this since you can return it within 30 days for any reason. I returned the keyboard 6 times without any problems-poor GC. Also, bring the lowest priced ad from the internet and show them to the sales person to be matched !