Audio-Technica LP120XUSBBK Manual Direct-Drive Turntable (Analogue & USB) Black

Wanted a decent turntable for my vinyl collection. Couldnt be happier. Looks and sounds fantastic. Sturdy, smart and beautiful. And very reasonable price

I like my music a lot. Not quite to nerd level but pretty intense nonetheless! I did a fair bit of research before buying this turntable. I did my online research and asked music loving friends what turntables they had. A recurring answer was "I've got an Audio Technica." These were people whose opinions I trusted. I've bought the LP120 XUSB in black. I've had it for about two weeks and I absolutely love it. The fact that is has a pre-amp built in is a big plus. It means that you don't have to buy more expensive kit to play your records. I connected my turntable up to my old midi-hifi, which is just a CD player with AM/FM tuner with speakers. The red and white cables just plug into the turntable sockets and that's the connection sorted! The stylus is simple to affix, it just screws into the needle arm. Balancing the tone arm is the hardest of the tasks required to set it up. It's still simple to do though, especially if you follow the Audio Technica video for this process which is on YouTube. The whole body of the unit is metal and the turntable is a weighty piece of steel. The unit is well made and is of good quality. Playing records is simple. You just line up the needle over the grooves, lower the arm and away you go. The tone arm is manual and not automatic, meaning at the end of the record you need to return the tone arm to its' rest yourself. The sound quality obviously depends on the quality of your speakers. Mine are reasonably average and not at all specialist. However, the sound is immense! The tones are rich, the bass is deep and the overall sound is crisp. There is barely any vinyl crackle. I've converted a couple of albums to mp3 using the supplied USB cable. It is very simple. I am using a Mac with GarageBand as the platform that I record to. (Audacity is also a perfectly good platform to use too.) The quality of the recordings is excellent and now, albums that I've had for years that I only had on record, can be listened to in my car! Don't hesitate if you are thinking of buying this turntable. It is a lot of quality for the price and it compares favourably with more expensive turntables with similar features.

Not particularly challenging to assemble and balance the tonearm. Getting the 3-pin adapter on the power lead was more problematic. Levelling the turntable took a while but was worth doing right. My first direct drive and Bluetooth turntable, it connects automatically to Bluetooth speakers across the room. Sound reproduction is excellent. I did the right thing, avoiding the cheaper option of an all-in-one player. The extra quality from this turntable is worth the extra expense.

A real piece of quality from getting it out of the box to the set only tricky part was getting the tone arm level when you crack that your flying. Starting with the weight of the turntable you know it ain’t cheap good sturdy heavy piece of quality even the head shell looks expensive all the buttons are big and bold so you know what your operating what I like most is when using the tonearm lifter after your ready to lower it on to the vinyl it slowly drops nice and easy no big heavy drop and its a great sound through a Panasonic mini Hifi it looks great and while it seems a bit expensive believe me it’s pure quality and class makes every penny spent on it worth while well pleased it hasn’t cooled since it was set up 10 out of 10.

This review is for an Audio-Technica LP120XUSBBK Manual Direct-Drive Turntable. It arrived in a huge box, inside another box, inside a third Amazon box. Why so many boxes? The turntable takes some assembling. The instructions are good, and within 5 minutes you should be up and running, at least for analogue sound. The built-in amplifier is OK. It's better to use direct to your own speakers. When I recorded my records to a digital format, I found it hard to get levels set right so they didn't distort if I used the built-in amplifier. I had to set it to Phono Out, then use the pre-amp on my digital recorder which gave much better results, as I think the pre-amp on that is better than the one in the turntable. The included needle is good, it's not high end by any means, but it's a good sound quality that exceeds that of even the best cheaper turntables. The turntable can play all standard records, 33 1/3, 45, and 78 RPM. The wow and flutter is great, the speed remains contant and is accurate. Where this turntable really falls down is the USB connectivity. It simply does not work. I tried it with multiple devices, on multiple OS'es (Windows 10, 11 and Linux Mint) and it was just a nightmare to deal with. It is recognised fine, but I can never hear anything, and on the devices I could hear, I couldn't record. Maybe it's a Windows issue, but I also did not have the best luck with Linux. Ultimately I gave up and used my digital recorder. This is a good quality turntable, but I seriously would go for a model without all the USB stuff and maybe save a few quid. It is pricey but the quality of this compared to the cheap suitcase turntables is miles ahead.

I didn't know what to expect but I can safely say this is a perfect purchase. It took me a while to decide upon which deck to purchase and after a few weeks of listening to my record on this deck I can say this deck is perfect and the best mid-range Hi-Fi decks out there. The sound quality is amazing and the Audio Technica needle does an amazing job picking up all the nuances of sound within each record, even revealing sounds I am sure I have not heard before. the depth of pick up is astounding - and after having many decks throughout the years I can say with confidence this deck is one of the best out there for this price range. The build is sturdy and the set up for the needle was very straight forward. I also chose the direct drive due to previous years as a DJ and being used to DD rather than belt, though many have their reasons for each. This deck has played every record I have so far perfectly, no skipping etc. I'm so glad I purchased this deck and replacement needle are available if you want to change the level of pick up too at reasonable prices. All in all a great deck, a great price and something that will no doubt keep me entertained for many years. Latest Update: All still great and working well. (Aug 2018)

Amazing turntable! The sound is incredible, we've also purchased the speakers from the same Audio Technica and the sound is pristine. It also looks great and it's very solid.

Works extremely well, excellent product. And also very easy to use for me as a first timer! Would highly recommend