There’s a few weeks happy deliberation in this new Pro-Ject turntable

Was rather hoping we’d left this archaic nonsense back in ’16.

Oh, it’s alright for you. Jerking through life like a Clanger, your every work/play move predetermined by puppeteers of propiety. Some of us run at a higher frame rate. Forced to make our own decisions, we often crunch through the meagre pile of available options and find ourselves, whirring and clicking, in a mental wasteland. Sometimes, just to feed our gears, we have to invent a need. And that’s how we wind up wrestling with a ZigBee smarthome system, or trying to install a Japanese megatoilet in the en-suite. Or buying a turntable. Because it’s that, or die. You know?

Uh, I don’t think I do know.

An envious position. The good thing about turntables is that they absolutely hog processor time: what deck, what cartridge, what phono amp, what de-static widget? Never mind what to listen to! Ah, blessed distraction.

But this… is some kind of solution?

Yes. Pro-Ject’s Essential range has always been ideally placed – fancy enough to be special, affordable enough to be an impulse buy. The new ‘III’ version gets various build tweaks plus a better cartridge, up from an Ortofon OM 5 to an OM 10. Standard red, white or black models are £239, or you can happily ponder upgrading to the opaque acrylic platter, as seen above, for £279.