The piano, as simple as it may look, has thousands of moving parts and is a complex machine, so there is more to a piano than the sound coming out of it. There are several characteristics to consider before purchasing a piano. For example, do you want a new piano or a used one? A big or a small one, and so on. New pianos have both advantages and disadvantages: a new piano is much more likely to be in a good condition and you wouldn’t have to worry about defects, but new pianos sound unfocused because they haven’t been broken in yet, which takes a few hundred hours of playing. Big pianos sound better than small pianos because they have longer strings and bigger soundboards. New pianos cost more than their used counterparts. The good news is that in general pianos keep their value and may even increase in price over several years, so it’s an investment that is likely to be a good one.
 
The advantage of used pianos is that they tend to be somewhat less expensive than new ones, if there were any manufacturing defects, they would have surfaced after a while. The risks of buying a used piano are that they may have been in unsuitable room temperature and humidity and may have been damaged. There is also a chance that you stumble on a really good piano that the owner is not aware of the real value and get it for a bargain.