The question behind the search
If you are weighing the Kawai CA-401 against the Yamaha CLP-845, you have already narrowed the field to serious furniture consoles — full-size cabinets with a fixed stand and a three-pedal unit, meant to sit in one room for years. Neither is an entry instrument. The useful question is not which brand is better in the abstract, but which of two different design choices matches the way you will actually play.
There is a price gap here, and it is not small: the CLP-845 is the pricier of the two. What that step-up money buys — and whether your playing needs it — is the whole comparison.
A note on method: this is a spec-based comparison. We have not sat down and played these two consoles back to back, so instead of claiming a winner on feel, we line up what each maker actually built and match it to who benefits.
Key action: two families, both weighted
The touch is where these pianos diverge first. The CA-401 uses Kawai's Grand Feel Compact action, a weighted hammer mechanism with a counterweight in every key and an ivory-feel key surface. The CLP-845 uses Yamaha's GrandTouch-S action, also weighted, also with an ivory-feel keytop. Both are graded — heavier in the bass, lighter in the treble — and both are a clear step above the plastic actions in cheaper consoles.
What both share is the keytop surface: synthetic ivory-feel on either side, so what your fingertips actually rest on is much the same. Underneath, Yamaha specifies the CLP-845 as GrandTouch-S with wooden white keys, synthetic ebony and ivory keytops, and escapement. That is worth knowing if you are cross-shopping upwards, because the step from the CLP-845 to the CLP-875 is not about getting wood into the keyboard at all — it is about the longer-pivot GrandTouch action above it. On the Kawai side, the equivalent step up is the longer-pivot Grand Feel III in the CA-701.
Grand Feel Compact and GrandTouch feel different because they are engineered around different acoustic references, and "better" here is a matter of which touch you prefer. The honest framing for a shopper is: try both if you can, because this is the one difference a spec sheet cannot settle for you.
Sound engine: one concert grand vs two
The CA-401 is built on Kawai's SK-EX Rendering, modeled on the Shigeru Kawai SK-EX concert grand, and it carries 19 voices. The CLP-845 runs Yamaha's dual-flagship sound — CFX and Bösendorfer Imperial — with VRM string-resonance modeling, and 38 voices in total.
For a pianist, the number 19 versus 38 matters less than the character. The CA-401 gives you one deeply modeled Kawai concert grand and a focused set of supporting tones. The CLP-845 gives you two distinct concert-grand personalities — the bright, projecting CFX and the darker, deeper Bösendorfer — plus a wider bench of electric pianos, organs, and strings. If you like switching between two grand-piano voices for different repertoire, that flexibility is real. If you play one piano sound almost exclusively, the CA-401 gives up very little.
The room: speakers and cabinet
This is where the price gap becomes audible — though not in the way a driver count would suggest. Both consoles use a 4-speaker system, so the difference is power rather than hardware: the CA-401 runs 100 watts, the CLP-845 a total of 180 watts. Played out loud in a living room, the Yamaha has the greater headroom, which matters most in a larger space or when you want the instrument to fill the room.
The cabinets differ far less than the amplifiers do. The CA-401 weighs 56 kg; the CLP-845 weighs 60 kg — close enough that weight will not decide this. Footprint might: at 1450 x 460 x 927 mm the Yamaha is roughly 10 cm wider and 7 cm taller than the 1355 x 455 x 860 mm Kawai. Both are furniture you place once and leave, but the Kawai is the easier one to fit into a compact room. For classical practice under headphones, where the speaker system barely comes into play, this whole section matters far less — which points squarely at who each piano is for.
Where they draw even
Much of the spec sheet is shared. Both offer 256-note polyphony, enough for dense pedaled passages in Romantic repertoire. Both include Bluetooth Audio and Bluetooth MIDI, USB MIDI, and app connectivity. Both have two headphone jacks with headphone optimization for quiet practice, and both ship with the stand and a damper pedal included. One real difference hides in this section: the CLP-845 has a line out and the CA-401 does not, which is worth knowing if you plan to feed external recording gear. The CLP-845 also carries more built-in practice songs (303 vs 176), a modest edge for lesson-style learning.
Who should buy which
Buy the Kawai CA-401 if you want the most piano-focused instrument for the money, practice largely under headphones or in a smaller room, prefer the more compact cabinet, and are happy with one well-modeled Kawai concert-grand voice. It is the value pick in this pair without feeling like a compromise on touch.
Buy the Yamaha CLP-845 if you play out loud in a larger room and want the extra amplifier headroom, value having two contrasting concert-grand voices and a broader tone set, need a line out, and don't mind paying for it and housing a wider cabinet. It is the step-up console, and the extra money goes into amplification, voice variety and wooden white keys — while the keytop surface you actually touch stays ivory-feel on both.
The deciding question is simple: are you buying for the headphones or for the room? Answer that, and the CA-401-vs-CLP-845 choice mostly answers itself.