You’ve probably seen Pro-Ject turntables in the past, as they have been around for decades. Their turntables are all made and assembled at their plants around Europe. The original Debut Carbon went on to become one of the very best-selling turntables of all time. Pro-Ject developed the Debut Carbon EVO as a full upgrade to the Debut Carbon, which is what we feel is one of the best turntable bargains out there. The Pro-Ject Debut Pro takes the basic EVO chassis and has many big upgrades for better performance.

The EVO and Pro share the same great isolation feet, speed control, motor mount, and plinth, and both come with the Sumiko Rainier phono cartridge with its great upgrade path by simply changing the stylus. The differences lie in two of the most important aspects of a turntable: the platter and the tonearm.

The EVO has a 4-pound steel platter with TPE damping, and the Pro gets a one-piece aluminum platter with the same damping but even more weight around the perimeter for a better flywheel effect which gives you a more consistent speed.

We wanted to include a turntable on this list that offered some degree of automation for those of you who want a little more than a manual turntable. It happens to be an excellent turntable on its own, the Technics SL-1500C Manual Direct Drive Turntable.

Technics has been making great turntables since 1970, and their 1200 model introduced in 1972 is still a classic. The SL1500C is based on that same great design. It is a direct drive model that offers instant start-up, and the tonearm is first-rate and highly adjustable, allowing you to add a better cartridge down the road. The heavy chassis is very well-damped, and the whole table is just built like a tank. It comes with the Ortofon 2M Red cartridge, which allows you to upgrade the sound just by changing the stylus to the Ortofon 2M Blue stylus, and the built-in phono preamp perfectly matches the Ortofon, but you can defeat it if you wish. The icing on the cake is the auto lift at the end, which is pretty cool.

The Rega Planar 3 Turntable has been our best-selling turntable since the debut of the 2016 Planar lineup. It is interesting to note Rega turntables are all manufactured and assembled at their factory in the UK. The Rega Planar 3 is an incredible turntable, available in gloss red, gloss black, and gloss white. It has to be one of the world's most highly reviewed and rated turntables and was a no-brainer for this list. You can purchase it without a cartridge or get the Rega Elys or Exact 2 premounted.

The Planar 3 has a float glass platter and a one-piece RB330 Tonearm. It’s also the first in the Planar lineup to include double bracing, which makes the table more rigid and further reduces resonance. It even comes with the same motor as Rega’s higher-end turntables!

Another thing we really love about the Planar 3 is its upgrade path, where you can add the better external power supply that comes on the higher-end Rega turntables called the Rega Neo, or its tonearm can easily support the moving coil Rega phono cartridges. This is the perfect turntable to provide incredible sound while also providing a runway to grow with it over time.

Michell Audio has been making turntables since 1977. They are most famous for their Gyrodec, introduced in 1982, which is still being made today. Michell turntables not only perform well, but they are beautiful to behold and the Tecnodec is no exception. Even though this is their entry-level turntable, it includes a lot of the technology that has made the Gyrodec so popular.

The structure supporting the platter and tonearm sits on adjustable feet with a special sorbothane insert to reduce resonance.

You get a one-piece billet aluminum motor housing that is free-standing with no contact with the table itself other than the belt. We are really impressed with the platter and bearing. You get the same type of inverted oil circulating main bearing as their best turntables. This Archimedean screw oil lubrication system moves the oil around to keep fresh oil on the inverted bearing. This not only reduces noise but extends the bearing life. The platter is damped with special material, like vinyl, to reduce resonances.

The Pro-Ject X2B True Balanced Turntable is an outstanding turntable out of the box but has an upgrade option that makes 100% perfect sense, but it just now starting to come on the market. If you are into high-performance home audio or pro audio, you probably fully understand why balanced circuitry with balanced cables is better. By design, they cancel out any noise other than the actual signal. The positive and negative signals are out of phase with each other, and when put back into phase, any noise picked up by the cable or circuit board is completely canceled out.

Now get this, a moving coil cartridge is, by nature, a balanced device. The signal from a moving coil is at an extremely low level and is more susceptible to picking up noise than any other type of audio signal. But until now, only turntables at the very extreme end of the price scale had the option to run in a balanced mode.