The pianos on the Genesys are among the best as far as sample pianos on a keyboard go.

I hardly use the on board styles on any keyboard (I usually make my own) so I would not be the best person to give a review of the Genesys styles. As far as sounds and styles go, it really depends on your personal taste so I hope you will get a chance to hear the sounds and styles for yourself. One good thing is that you can import samples on to the Genesys so if you want a particular sound, you can get it off the Internet or a CD and load it on the Genesys and use it like you would use any other sound.

The Genesys is a well built keyboard. The buttons are laid out logically. It’s also easy to operate.

The key feel is good I just wish they had a portable 76 or 88 key version.

The audio recording is only one take (one stereo track). You can not do another take untop of the one you first did. There is no USB and no direct connectivity to the computer.

I like the fact that it has a fully functioning and editable 32 track sequencer.

It has a sampler that can come in handy. But they gave a measly 16mb sample memory but I think that is up to 32mb with the new Genesys s? The sad thing is that it is not expandable.

It has a floppy drive although with today’s technology, I don’t see why. It also has a hard drive but I don’t think you can replace it with another hard drive that has more gigs.

It has 1034 (or some number like that) memories (Those are the equivalent to the Yamaha registrations) where you can set up the keyboard the way you need it for every song you are going to play. It also has an advance song DB list (similar to the music finder on Yamaha) where you can organize mp3s, midis, Gem formatted songs, waves, CD songs all in a folder and in a specific order for different occasions.
However when switching between a song and a style, there is a break you can not change between a song and a style without a break.

One feature that I hear the new Genesys S has that the old one didn’t is the use of a multi pedal. You can assign some of the mostly used arranger functions to a 6 switch pedal. So, depending on what you program the pedals to do, you would not have to take your hands off of the keys to press a button for a fill or a intro or ending or vocal harmony on/off.

The bottom line is that you have to be comfortable with the keyboard so I really hope you will have a chance to demo it.
It may or may not be for you the only way you will know is by trying it. Not every keyboard is for every one.

Those are just my opinions.