ROLI Piano M Review – Learning Piano Made Easy and Fun

The journey of learning piano often begins with childhood memories of stern teachers and tedious lessons, but ROLI’s Piano M aims to revolutionise this experience through a blend of technology and thoughtful, fun design. This compact 24-key instrument isn’t just another MIDI controller – it’s a comprehensive learning platform that makes piano education accessible and engaging through its innovative companion apps and rainbow-lit keys.

Packaging

If I have one word to describe the packaging of ROLI Piano M, the word would be pretty. Everything about the packaging is pretty. In fact, pretty is the theme that I am going with throughout this review. As I unboxed the package, I found a welcome note with pretty handwriting (might be copied or printed) by (I’m hoping) Roland Lamb himself. Again, it is not a personal letter, but a generic one that they send to everybody, but a handwritten note in a digital era is really uncommon and definitely most welcome.

The instrument

Piano M is colourful and pretty. My five-year-old daughter herself gave it her stamp of approval when I turned the device on and colours of the rainbow swept through the whole board from the lowest note to the highest.

ROLI Piano M is very simple to use. You have 24 keys on the instrument with 2 octaves range. But you can venture to the next octave up and down by pressing the octave modifier buttons. This is probably not very easy to use when you are performing live (not easy, but not impossible either), but for recording purposes where you have the luxury of pausing between different segments of the songs, these octave modifier buttons are definitely useful. Having said all that, Piano M is extendable, so if you are willing to spend the money, there’s always the option to buy another one and connect it to your current one.

You can charge your Piano M with any 5 volt/1 amp USB 3 charger or a USB 3 port. The battery indicator is also very clear.

• Green means your battery is above 80%. You’re fine.
• Amber means that your battery is between 20% and 88%, so you have some time.
• Red means that the battery is below 20%, so CHARGE NOW!!!!

When you charge, you will see the battery indicator blinking to confirm that it is indeed charging. I love how easy it is to understand.

Piano M will generate sound depending on how hard or soft you press the keys (which can be useful for learning purposes). Another cool thing is how you can do a vibrato-like move on the keys and it will trigger the vibrato effect to the sound.

As a music creation tool

ROLI Piano M can be used as a midi player to create music. You can easily connect it to your Macbook (or Windows PC) and download the ROLI connect app.

For my initial playaround, I downloaded the ROLI Studio Player that lets you experiment with hundreds of different instruments to play with. You can even download more sounds in the ROLI Connect sounds tab. There’s of course a ROLI Studio Drum that you can use to emulate a drum kit.

There are different effects applicable to various sounds that you can play with. For example, for this Acoustic Piano sound, you can adjust the chorus, tremolo, and release settings. There are also arpeggiator and smart chords available for you to set up and take advantage of. You can also set up what kind of effects you want to apply to the sound you created.

As a learning tool

I am a guitarist, so guitar is really my main instrument. But I learnt piano when I was little and that really shaped how I visualise music. With piano as my base instrument, it is definitely easier for me to identify and formulate musical chord patterns and notes as piano keys rather than guitar frets or tabs. Coming from that background, I really appreciate how important it is to learn music from an early age and how much easier it is to understand if you start with a piano. The struggle I am having right now is how to get the younger generation (e.g my kids) engaged in the process. This is where the ROLI Learn app comes into play.

Roli Learn app is designed to work seamlessly with Piano M. In my opinion, this is where Piano M’s true strength really lies. There are many songs available to be played in the ROLI Learn app for Piano M from nursery rhymes, Disney songs, to more modern pop music by various artists. You can play them in the Tap Tap Revenge style musical game, except that you use Piano M to play the music.

There are 3 modes you can choose when playing a song:

Watch

This is quite useful if you are not familiar with the song and would like to see how the song is played

Practice

This is where you can practice how to play the song with Piano M and really up your skills. Maybe something like what I try in this video:

But sometimes a song can be challenging, even overwhelming especially when you really have to stay with the tempo. Well, when things get too challenging, you can always change the tempo to “wait” where it will wait until you play the correct note before continuing. When you are feeling more ready, but not super confident about it, you can try to play the song with half of the tempo.

Challenge

This is where you can go for glory and really try to match the tempo of the song. At the end of the challenge, you will be graded based on your performance.

There are also a few musical games that ROLI Learn has in the app to get your eye-brain-hand coordination improving every time you play them. So be sure to take advantage of them.

I must say though, the most amazing feature is actually having well structured courses with clear pathways on how you can learn basic music and piano skills. The lessons are very engaging and interactive. They claim in their website that “you’ll hardly notice you’re learning” and they are definitely right on the money there.

ROLI Piano M Review – The verdict

As a musical instrument, ROLI Piano M is pretty, versatile, and portable. It being pretty really makes it super interesting to kids (or anyone) making them more motivated to learn piano. Its small size lets you bring it on your travels. You can even bring two of them if you want more range and it will still take minimum space.

The different apps ROLI has that are compatible with this instrument really make this a versatile instrument. A seasoned musician can create music with Piano M and enjoy the wide range of available sounds ROLI Studio Player offers while a music beginner can learn how to play piano in a fun and engaging way using ROLI Learn app.

Although, one might wonder: why is ROLI Studio player only available on computers like Mac and PC, when the ROLI Learning app is only available for mobile devices and tablets? Ideally, it will be nice to be able to access both apps on any device, computer, tablets, or mobile. But I can appreciate that they had to make a decision and priority on which app should go where first. Hopefully, this is something in ROLI’s roadmap for the future, but if it is not, I think we users can survive with what we have now.

If you are a beginner, Piano M is really for you. I also highly recommend downloading the ROLI Learn app and subscribing to the membership for 119.99 USD per year or 14.99 USD per month. If you try it for 30 days and decide that it is not for you, you can cancel it and get your money back, so really nothing to lose there. Piano M is available for 249 USD (it’s on sale for 199 USD at the moment this review is published) and you can buy it from ROLI’s website.

Disclosure: ROLI Piano M review sample was supplied by ROLI for reviewing