Is the Medeli AK603 Accompaniment Keyboard Worth Buying?

I’m surprised that this seriously underrated $400 Medeli AK603 keyboard has gone under the radar with so few people noticing and talking about it. Its key action, sound engine and especially the features and functionality are far better than what the low price suggests. Let’s take a closer look.

Key Action

Most affordable keyboards have less than ideal key action. But not the Medeli AK603. The 61 touch sensitive keys are responsive, even near the key pivots. While the action on similarly priced Yamaha PSR and Korg EK keyboards are marginally better, these keys are a step up from those found on the Roland Go:keys and Casio CT-X keyboards. With 5 custom velocity curves, I was able to find a sweet spot for my playing style. The keys are quiet, which was great when I was using headphones.

Sound Quality

Let’s go through the headline figures. 750 factory sounds with the ability to deep edit the cutoff, resonance, release, attack, decay and vibrato of the PCM samples and save them onto 50 user presets. 24 insert, 96 global reverb & chorus and 5 EQ effects ensured I could tweak the onboard sounds till they were ear candy. The patches are high quality stereo multisamples with many featuring velocity switches and the implementation is excellent. Every sound can be layered or split across the keyboard and the easily accessible 17-part mixer gives me absolute granular control over my sound balance. 256 note polyphony – which is significantly higher than equivalent Yamaha & Casio keyboards – ensures no note dropouts even when I was playing lush, thick, effects-laden voice combinations. For live performances, there is an omni-directional configurable joystick that controls pitch bend & modulation. There is also a configurable sustain & soft pedal input and an expression pedal input that can be assigned to control volume, modulation, resonance & cutoff. A beefy onboard speaker system consisting of a pair of 50W woofers & a pair of 30W tweeters with a total of 80 watts amplification ensures good frequency separation and distortion free sound even at an uncomfortable maximum volume. If you would like more than the 750 sounds found on the AK603, you can find another similarly priced keyboard with more than 1,000 sounds here.

Styles

The Medeli AK603 is an arranger keyboard and it would be criminal not to talk about the onboard accompaniment – also commonly known as styles. With 280 styles encompassing every imaginable musical genre from pop, rock, jazz, & world music, the AK603 is chock full of accompaniment controls such as 3 intros, 3 endings, 4 style variations, fade in and out and 5 chord modes including bass inversions usually found on higher end arranger keyboards. The style controls are so comprehensive it puts even the newly released in 2026 and more expensive Yamaha PSR-E483 to shame as the Yamaha has just a paltry 2 rhythm variations and 1 intro and ending. The only feature I wish the AK603 had is the ability to turn on and off various tracks of a style on the fly - like those found on the Yamaha PSR-E483. If you are unsure what’s a good sound combination for a particular song, all you need to do is use the Quick Settings feature and four sets of well programmed sounds would be matched with the style you selected. In the unlikely situation where there are no suitable styles to match the music you are playing, the AK603 allows you to load an additional 100 styles – 50 user styles and 50 styles from Medeli expansion packs available on their website. To make your performance more dynamic, 400 phrases triggered with 4 phrase pads adds instant spice to your playing.

Features & Functionality

I love the handy and easily accessible Transpose and Octave Shift buttons on the panel – absolutely critical during live performances yet many keyboards hide these under deep menus. Turning on and off insert effects, chord harmony, arpeggiator as well as onboard sustain is convenient with logically laid out panel buttons. I could instantly recall my own user sounds and registrations with 32 banks of 6 memory buttons – giving me 192 user programmable sound sets at my fingertips. A metronome helps me keep in time during my practice and a 17 track MIDI song sequencer lets me produce complex and rich multi-layered song arrangements. A single track digital audio song recorder allows you to produce globally compatible MP3 & wav digital audio files onto a USB stick. The onboard music player lets you play along with external MIDI, MP3 or WAV backing tracks stored in your USB stick.

Connectivity

The AK603 comes with every connectivity option a musician needs. Headphones jack for quiet practice, USB stick expansion to save unlimited song recordings, user registrations and accompaniment styles. ¼” stereo outputs for connecting to more powerful external amplifiers. ¼” aux input for wired music streaming from your iPhone or iPad. The USB port transmits and receives both MIDI and digital audio – perfect for connecting to your laptop or mobile devices for music production with a DAW or for learning with music learning apps. You can find out my recommended digital pianos, keyboards, and music-learning app right here.

Is It Perfect?

While the Medeli AK603 ticks many boxes, there are a number of shortcomings which may be dealbreakers for you. There is no wireless Bluetooth audio streaming or wireless MIDI – I do like a less cluttered setup with fewer cables. The power button is located illogically behind the keyboard and I often fumble and feel my way to turn it on and off. I’m not sure why Medeli couldn’t just locate the power button on the front panel like most keyboards. While style expansion packs are available, there is no way to create or edit styles – something the cheaper Casio CT-X keyboards can do. While the LCD is large, bright and clear, lots of screen real estate is wasted. I want to see what my currently selected dual voice, left hand layer and style are all at once at a glance. I cannot do that with this screen.

You can find out the full specifications and the best price for this together with my recommended digital pianos, keyboards, and music-learning app right here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmEf8JBaX70