Not one but two turntables have burst onto our buying guide this month

While in pre-season football fixtures it makes sense to sub in new talent, purely to freshen things up or give them a runout, we at What Hi-Fi? don’t take that approach when updating our product buying guides. For a product to take up one of a buying guide’s eminent spots, of which there are typically fewer than ten, it must confidently outperform the closest competitor currently there and prove it is a better-value proposition. You could call it a more mid-season approach, then. It therefore isn’t surprising that our fortnightly or monthly buying guide updates don’t always – or even all that often – see changes in the lineups. So you can imagine our surprise and delight when we came to update our turntable buying guide and saw that two new deserving turntables reviewed this month were ready and waiting to be thrust into the spotlight.

Indeed, of the nine decks in our record player buying guide – which includes budget-spanning, phono-toting, USB and Bluetooth options – two have just been replaced: Rega’s Planar 3 RS Edition now sits where its Planar 3/Nd3 was, while the company’s Planar 6/Ania has also been demoted to the ‘Also Consider’ list, to make way for the Technics SL-1300G.

Nine decks feature in our turntable buying guide – which includes budget-spanning, phono-toting, USB and Bluetooth options – and during its latest monthly update, two have been replaced: Rega’s Planar 3 RS Edition now sits where its Planar 3/Nd3 was, while the company’s Planar 6/Ania package has also been demoted to the ‘Also Consider’ list, to make way for the Technics SL-1300G.

The preferred sibling

OK, so that first position pilfer is hardly drama on the Love Island scale. The new Rega Planar 3 RS Edition (pictured below) is essentially a souped-up version of the Planar 3 deck/Nd3 cartridge combination that took home the What Hi-Fi? Award in November. You can read all about the differences between the two in our comprehensive Planar 3 vs RS Edition comparison, but in a nutshell the advancements it brings to the chassis, power supply and drive belt, not to mention the inclusion of the model-up cartridge, make it a better-value proposition. This is especially considering the current price difference between them – in the UK, the Planar 3/Nd3 package price has recently risen from £799 (the price we tested it at last August) to £840, shifting it ever closer to the £999 RS Edition.

We think the superior turntable is worth the £159 premium, hence why it now sits proudly as our ‘Best Overall’ pick – not a bad showing from the new Rega spinner. If £840 is already pushing your budget, however, the Planar 3/Nd3 is still recommendable and takes a respectable spot in our Also Consider list of worthy alternatives.

A premium switch up

The RS Edition sensibly filled the rather gaping gap between the Planar 3 and Planar 6 models in the British brand’s lineup, so it’s quite a coincidence that those models on either side of it have both been booted to the bottom of the buying guide. Unfortunately for Rega this time, its Planar 6/Ania hasn’t been usurped as our ‘Best Premium’ pick by another of its own decks but by a Technics one – specifically the SL-1300G (pictured top).

This isn’t exactly a like-for-like replacement, though, as the Technics SL-1300G costs several hundred more (who can define what’s ‘premium’ anyway?) and is a heavyweight direct-drive design as opposed to a low-mass belt-drive one – which we’d say would appeal to different audiences. As we point out in our SL-1300G review, its closest price-rival is actually Rega’s slightly pricier Planar 8 deck/Apheta cartridge combination, against which it puts up a good fight, the Rega “livelier and more articulate”, the Technics more “authoritative and solidly planted”. We simply feel the Technics is the choice deck here for its all-round combination of price, performance, design and usability. “It is superbly made, easy to use and well-engineered,” concludes our review. “We love its fuss-free nature almost as much as its powerful and wonderfully stable sonic character.”

Again, if your ‘premium’ budget doesn’t tally with our new ‘Premium’ pick, Rega’s Planar 6 remains an incredibly fine spinner that sets the benchmark at its lower price point.

So there you have it: two reigns – one relatively short, one impressively long – are over, with newcomers proving their class-leading worth and ensuring our buying guide is anything but static so far this year.

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