Manual vs. Automatic Turntables
We feel manual record players offer the most value for the money, but manual does mean you need to push a button to start it up, move the tonearm over the lead in the groove, use a cueing lever or your hand to lower the tonearm onto the record just to get it started.
When the record ends, you’ll use your hand or the cue lever to lift up the tonearm and place it back on the side. While this may sound intimidating at first, it’s actually quite simple, and most people prefer this type of turntable as it sounds better, and there are no mechanical parts that could fail.
But if that scares you, there are some decent, fully automatic turntables where all you do is lay the record on the platter, push a button, and it’ll do all the work for you, and start playing your record automatically.