Piano Partner vs XPad
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Piano Partner
Enhance your Roland digital piano experience with interactive learning tools. This app offers a fun music game to build skills, a browser to access onboard sounds and songs, and a digital sheet music display for built-in pieces.
- Interactive music game for skill building
- Access onboard sounds and songs
- Digital sheet music display
- Wireless connectivity with adapter
- Content browsing by category
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Experience the luxury of a digital piano with your iPad. Piano Partner is iPad app that provides a fresh, interactive way to learn and play a piano with your Roland digital piano. (Some models may require a system update.) * Piano Partner supports Roland’s LX-15e/15, HP508/507/506/505/504/503, DP90Se/90e/90S/90, RP401R, F-130R, FP-80/50 and F-20. * DigiScore Lite is only compatible with the LX-15e/15, HP508/507/506/504, DP90Se/90e, RP401R and F-130R. Piano Partner contains three applications: Flash Card, Content Browser, and DigiScore Lite. • Flash Card is an interactive music game that builds your listening and reading skills in a fun. • Contents Browser lets you quickly access hundreds of onboard sounds and songs of the connected Roland piano by category names on the iPad’s display. • DigiScore Lite displays digital sheet music of the built-in songs on the iPad screen. * Content Browser and DigiScore Lite are only available for the built-in songs. You can’t use your original piano recordings nor other SMF files. * By inserting the Roland’s WNA1100-RL Wireless USB Adapter (sold separately) into the USB MEMORY port of your Roland piano, you can use Piano Partner applications on your iPad wirelessly. * In order for the iPad to communicate with compatible Roland pianos using the WNA1100-RL, a wireless LAN access point with an Internet connection is required. * Make sure your instrument is updated with the most current System Program. Some models may require a system update. Latest system program and setup instructions can be found at www.roland.com.
XPad
This app provides professional pad sounds for keyboardists, aiming to replicate warm analog synth tones with advanced digital features. It offers intuitive glissando control, real-time sound morphing, and extensive MIDI compatibility for a dynamic playing experience.
- Modern pad sounds
- Realistic glissando control
- Tone Width morphing
- Sensible sound controls
- MIDI remote control
- Extensive sound library search
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XPad is a professional sound module app and Audio Unit v3 plugin with focus on modern pad sounds for iPad. Goal was to get the warm and vibrant sound of analogue synths onto the convenient platform of an iPad and combining those sounds with the benefits of state of the art digital features while still preserving that analogue tone and feeling. Glissando XPad introduces a new way that we were developing for our apps to achieve realistic large interval Glissando. You can glide a tone continuously e.g. from the lowest octave up to the highest octave and vice versa, in any desirable speed and without causing an artificial impression to the listener. We were also thinking about how to improve the usability aspects for playing Glissando in a much more intuitive & convenient way for a keyboard player, while still preserving the player's full control. Foremost this app allows you to mix Glissando with regular polyphonic notes (e.g. chords) simultaneously or switch between these playing styles quickly at any time without leaving your hands off the keyboard. For instance you might be playing and holding a chord with your right hand while playing a Glissando slide with your left hand and punching through the right hand's chord from an octave lower than the chord, up to some octave higher than the chord. Tone Width Replicating some analogue boutique pad synthesizers is nice, but what about having a huge stack of them? That's where "Tone Width" control comes into play. Especially the important pad sounds of this app allow you to morph the sound with the "Tone Width" knob in real-time steplessly between a very thin and clean sound up to a huge and fat tonal sound as if an army of pad synths was working under your finger tips. Sensible Control Controls for the individual sound aspects is good. But it should be in a sensible way. Nothing is hard wired here. Every sound of this app presents controls that make sense for the individual sound. All controls presented are always fine tuned to the individual elements of that sound. You can alter all controls remotely by MIDI e.g. with sliders at your keyboard. The most important controls for each sound are mapped to things that you are most likely using anyway at your keyboard. For instance all sounds use the Aftertouch information of your keyboard to bring more dynamic behaviour into the sound even while just holding some notes. And just grab your modulation wheel at your keyboard to bring in some more variance. Never Lost XPad offers up to 462 sounds, but don't worry, it never lets you down and always assists you finding just the sound you need in a glimpse. You can quickly search for sounds with any combination of several criteria like sound characteristics, articulations, controls and more. Connectivity Like all our apps, XPad is very easy to use and start with. Just connect your keyboard with your iPad and you are ready to go. And of course if needed, you can simply tweak the setup, e.g. use a Bluetooth MIDI wireless connection to your keyboard instead of a cabled one, restrict MIDI input to certain devices or apps, connect to other apps with Inter-App Audio or use the sounds of this app as Audio Unit v3 plugin directly in the DAW app of your choice. Recorder The app comes with a built-in MIDI recorder that allows you to quickly record your musical ideas. You can share them as audio files with other people or transfer them as MIDI files for further work e.g. on your Mac. Sound Sets XPad is divided into 14 optional sound sets of different sound categories and provide up to 462 sounds in total. Even though the app is focused on pad sounds, this is not all this app has to offer sound-wise. The "Atmo" pack for instance contains atmospheric sounds for generating very emotional sound bases and backgrounds e.g. for film and entertainment. The "Perc" sound set contains drums and percussive sounds. The "Silicon" sound set covers synthesizers also offside the pad field, and much more.
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: XPad at 3.8 against Piano Partner's 1.7. XPad also leads on review sentiment (50% vs 9%) and update cadence (every 4 weeks vs every 26 months). Piano Partner's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 14) and iOS requirement (9.3.5 vs 12.0). On price, ads, monetization model and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. XPad sells 14 one-off in-app purchases. Piano Partner asks for nothing beyond the download.
XPad holds the better App Store score, 3.8 against 1.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 7 and 24 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 9% of Piano Partner's written reviews are positive against 50% of XPad's.
Piano Partner ships an update every 26 months, XPad every 4 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 13, 2026 and September 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Piano Partner | XPad |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 1.7 (7 ratings) | 3.8 (24 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 9.3% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 7 | 24 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 26 months | Every 4 weeks — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Devices | iPad | iPad |
| Requires iOS | 9.3.5 — better | 12.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 8 MB | 1.2 GB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Roland Corporation | Christian Schoenebeck d/b/a Crudebyte |
Customer experience
Piano Partner
XPad
In-app purchases
Piano Partner
No in-app purchases
XPad
- Weirdo Sound Set$2.99
- Pluck Sound Set$2.99
- Metal Sound Set$3.99
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- Bass Sound Set$3.99
- Choir Sound Set$3.99
- Altro Sound Set$3.99
- Organ Sound Set$3.99
- Percussive Sound Set$3.99
- Silicon Sound Set$4.99
- Vintage Sound Set$4.99
- Atmo Sound Set$5.99
- Space Sound Set$5.99
- Nature Sound Set$5.99
- Sequence Sound Set$5.99









