Looks like Roland’s answer to the Yamaha DGX and Korg Havian . It does a vocal effects and chord looper though.

Thoughts?

https://www.roland.com/uk/products/fp-e50/

Looks very interesting, especially for the performing player. Great price too. Interested to see more in depth reviews.
Thanks for posting

Yeah, it could work nicely as a home keyboard or to take out as well. I'm not sure, but it looks less bulky than the Yamaha DGX, which it a bit too big to take out of the house, in my opinion.

Wow, nice find Paul! ^^THIS is a REAL Roland (unlike the recent entry-level models that borrow elements of their OS from Yamaha.) The chord recognition and feature set appear to be based in part on the dear departed FP50/FP80.

From the manual, its Chord looper appears to have more features and ease of use than the rudimentary one on the BK9.

The icing on the cake is that like the FP50, Bass Inversion can be mapped to a pedal as a MOMENTARY function. Great for playing that odd slash chord while the rest of the score can be played in whatever inversion is most convenient. Bravo Roland!!

I don't need a 37-lb piano action, and there's no provision for on-board style editing. But perhaps there is hope for another high-end Roland arranger after all...

Too bad. Only 2 variations. Even repackaged pa50 sounding XE-20 has 4. Roland dropped the ball again.

From the short online demo it seems the variations changes according to your playing. Puts more control on the player and not the machine. Need to see more in depth reviews.
The one thing that scares me is the weight, 37 lbs.

Waiting on details of the chord recognition modes. I must admit, the Pianist2 mode on the BK series is a huge step up from the traditional ‘3 notes down before a new chord’ which is still the standard for most brands’ pianist system.

The addition of ‘5 notes down before a new chord while the sustain is down’ makes all the difference for the average pianist, allowing much more freedom before the chord recognition freaks out. And without dedicating another pedal to chord recognition on/off which isn’t really how pianists play.

Be interesting to see if the Roland has borrowed some of that new Yamaha system that looks at velocity or note density to automatically bring in higher Variations. I heard some demos of the Yamaha and wasn’t really convinced it was quite perfected. Only two Variation without at least something adding to that is a bit of a turnoff, but then again, pianists tend to need much simpler accompaniment, being used to playing everything in the first place..!

Diki I downloaded the comprehensive reference manual. See p. 36: the FP-E50 DOES have Pianist and Pianist2 chord recognition! Try it, you'll like it!

Jamman the FP-50 and FP-80 also only had two variations per style, but the styles on those older boards were not billed as "Interactive." I'm not sure whether further animation of the style is triggered by velocity, note timing, etc. It will be interesting to learn more once these boards get into the talented hands of some of the folks here on SZ.

A final observation is that it lacks MIDI jacks. There is some kind of "GATT" (MIDI over Bluetooth Low Energy), and a USB out. And as I've said no style editing. But it's the closest thing to a new Roland arranger since launch of the E-A7 in 2015! Since Roland Europe is gone, I would like to know WHERE this thing was developed, what product division, etc. IMO, there are too many similarities to FP-50 for the group not to have access to the code and feature set. What will be their next move!?

Pianist2 is very welcome. I use it all the time and it seldom freaks out the chord recognition even with almost no attention paid to giving the chord recognition a better chance. There’s a natural tendency to use the sustain for ‘extra stuff’ and a tendency to lift at chord boundaries anyway, so all in all I can often completely turn off my awareness that I am triggering and controlling the backing and just ‘play’ and the accompaniment just takes care of itself..!

Tied to the Dynamic Arranger feature on the BK9 (does the FP-E50 mention that in the manual?) which brings up or down the velocities of Parts in response to your dynamics, I have had some of the most blissful times almost disbelieving how the accompaniment seems to be really ‘listening’ to me!

Even with only two variations, if Roland brought all this to the party, they may have a winner on their hands. It may not impress many traditional arranger players, who really play quite minimally, but to a proper pianist it may do quite nicely. And all that Zen-core stuff may tip the balance for forward thinking players…