Playing the drums can be an expensive hobby, right? In this blog, we list budget-friendly, highly reviewed electronic drum brands. It's very much possible to get a great start with a kit under $500, as well as further your abilities with more advanced sets in this price range. Enjoy the read!
ALESIS
With a history dating back to the early ‘80s, Alesis is a sizeable player when it comes to affordable, high quality electronic drum set. A big pro of this brand is that almost all sets have mesh components. Most types also come with an actual kickdrum piece, which opens a world of possibilities for realistic single and double pedal bass drum playing.
Top type of Alesis under $500 is the Nitro mesh kit.
Some of the basic features of this kit:
What we love about this kit is that it is already a very decent 8 piece set, but it can even be expanded (at a very reasonable premium) to a 10-piece set, giving it a second floor tom and an additional cymbal.
Specs of the expansion set:
Is this set still a bit to heavy for your budget or your level of playing? We highly recommend you consider the lower-tier Turbo Mesh kit as well. Just like the Nitro kit, it gets great reviews and it has nice size mesh toms and share, and great quality cymbals and hi-hat.
The main differences with the Nitro kit are:
Christmas around the corner? Give your kids a great headstart in drumming with the Alesis Debut kit! This is essentially a very good, smaller version of the Turbo Mesh kit. The only difference in specifications between the Debut and Turbo Mesh kits, is that the Debut has smaller, 6" snare drum and toms. Add it to the kids' wishlist now!
LYXJAM
Another great contender in the lower price range of electronic drum kits is the brand LyxJam. Just like Alesis, you can expect Mesh toms and snare drums. The lower range types come with 7 pieces, meaning there is no physical bass drum pad. At a small premium, you can however upgrade the top-rated EDS750 model to an 8-piece version. What is great about the LyxJam sets is the number of out-of-the-box sounds you get delivered with them. For the lower end ES750 model for example, you can expect 200+ sounds.
Specifications of the ES750 are:
The upgraded EDM800 kit has the following differences in specifications compared to ES750:
DONNER
If you’re looking for a brand with a similar range of different sets like Alesis, Donner may be your go-to brand. With the DED-80, DED-300 and DED-400, you have a range of sets that start with the 7-piece DED-80 (i.e. no physical bass drum pad) to the DED-300 and DED-400 that are 8-piece sets, and the DED-400 even having a larger size cymbal and hi-hat (a whopping 12”!!).
Specifications of the most basic, DED-80 kit:
Additional specs of DED-300 compared to DED-80:
We’re giving the DED-400 a wildcard here, since it is actually closer to 600 dollars, so for the sake of this list, we consider the DED-300 the best option given the completeness of the set and the fact that it is just shy of $500.
Writing Santa a letter? Make sure he gets you off to a good start by wishing for the Donner DED-70 kids kit. This is a smaller version of the DED-80, where the snare, toms and hi-hat are 6.5"and the other cymbals 8". Also a smaller number of sounds (48) and kits (10) are included. Still, the mesh snare and tom setup and the inclusion of a throne and headphones in the set, make for a great quality start for a young drummer.
HXW
We included HXW in this list because the quality and well-reviewed SD61-4 kit comes with a large set of sounds (250+) out of the box and has a very decent size 10” cymbal set included. The downside of this kit however, is that it only comes as a 7-piece.
The specifications are:
A nice competitor for the Alesis Debut kit on the Christmas lists can be the HXW SD51-2 junior kit, which is very similar in features as the SD61-4.
BEHRINGER
To conclude this brand top 5, we’ve included the well-known Behringer name. They deliver a great 8-piece electronic drum set with the XD8USB. The downside of the kit is unfortunately that it comes with a limited number of out-of-the-box sounds with “only” 123 sounds.
Specifications are:
A cool addition to this kit is that it allows you to attach an Evans double pedal patch. Full support of the kit for double bass playing.