Audio-Technica AT-LP140XP Silver

EDIT: after one year the arm lift failed. The lifter dampening design is trash. Basically you have to add silicone oil yearly, it just leaks into the chassis by design.

Just installed this as a living room hifi player. It's a pretty good turntable! Most importantly there is no mechanical motor rumble, that was a problem with the previous gen 120 model. There is a VERY QUIET audible hum when the turntable is on, if you put your ear to the deck, but as far as I can tell it doesn't transfer into the needle and into the audio channel. I'm listening at a moderate level using Genelec 8030A:s and don't hear the hum between tracks. Put my ear to the speaker, no hum, just normal vinyl noise, when spinning and needle is on record. Anti-skate is there, seems a bit aggressive since it kept pulling the arm to the right despite set to zero, when I was calibrating the counterweight. Buttons and controls have a quality feel to them, except the power switch which is ... strange. Arm lifter is nice / ok. Sound quality-wise I have no complaints!

The only problem I can find so far is the platter wobble, which is about 2 mm. But I suppose that is normal for chinese manufacturing and to be expected nowadays. It's not audiophile level tolerance, or even up to 1970s hi-fi standards but it's good enough for casual listening. Don't expect to get a true spinning platter, it'll be about 2 mm out of whack or even more. Otherwise a very good effort from Audio-Technica!

I bought it to replace a 70's one that I had and was getting aged. It is exactly what you see (nice, heavy, robust, sounds allright). But I miss so many features the old one had (swich motor on and off, auto return, etc.). This is a very simply turntable that you need to manually control all the functions... But this seems to be the standard these days for this price range, so no complains. It is what it is. Does the job, looks and feels very very nice.