Few are better positioned to ride the second wave of vinyl popularity than Crosley Radio. The company has been around in some form or another since 1920, branching out into TVs, kitchen appliances and even cars — but audio has always been the company’s core.

Recent years have seen the company returning to turntables in a big way, thanks in no small part to the success of its Cruiser line of briefcase record players, infiltrating apartments and dorm rooms alike by way of the friendly neighborhood trendsetters at Urban Outfitters.

The line has a lot going for it — good looks, space-age nostalgia, portability, and simplicity, courtesy of a pair of built-in speakers. But few would ever mistake the foldable sound system for a high-end rig.

The C200, on the other hand, might at least give one pause. There are no built-in speakers here, no retro upholstery, and certainly no handle. This is a real, honest-to-goodness record player with a direct drive motor, adjustable counter weights and a built-in preamp. Just BYO speaker system.

Now, don’t get me wrong — the $279 sticker price should be a dead giveaway about where this record player slots in, particularly when placed up against the newly announced Technics turntable, which clocks in at roughly 14 times the cost. The C200 is still very much a starter turntable, albeit one for music fans finally ready to stop living life out of a briefcase.

Respectable looks

Crosley C200 review

Unlike a number of high-tech competitors, the C200 is a machine largely devoid of bells and whistles. No USB transfer, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi — none of the standard array of early 21st century vinyl trappings are present. It's pretty much your daddy’s record player.

Anyone who’s spent time around the wheels of steel knows the score here. It’s a large, flat direct-drive table encased beneath a swiveling transparent dust cover. The platter, naturally, monopolizes the majority of the surface, featuring the standard speed calibration pattern on its side.

Image: Brian Heater/Mashable

The speed calibration light is built directly into the power knob, projecting onto the side of the platter, indicating whether it’s time to use the pitch adjustment slider on the other side. In front of the knob is the Stop/Start button, and along the front on the other side are the speed selector buttons — 33 and 45. Sorry country blues fans, you’ll have to take your 78s elsewhere (there is, however, a 45 adapter built into the surface for those 7-inch singles).

There’s no cuing light here — though, interestingly, there’s a small oval carved out in the exact spot where it would likely sit. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s likely some combination of keeping costs down and not trying to actively encourage anyone to use the C200 in their next DJ set.

The system isn’t really built for that sort of wear and tear. The S-shaped tone-arm has both a counter-weight and anti-skate system to calibrate things so as to not damage records during playback or introduce any distortion into the proceedings. There’s also a cuing arm to raise and lower the needle from the vinyl as gently as possible.

Playback time

Setup is easy, right out of the box. Anyone with a passing familiarity of turntable anatomy should be able to get things up and running without even consulting the instructions (of course, it’s never a bad idea to double-check).

There’s also a preamp on board, so getting the turntable playing with an existing home audio system is pretty much as simple as lining up the correct colors on the RCA cable outputs. Likewise, the needle slips on and off with a quick click — though, according to Crosley’s numbers, you’ll only need to replace them every 1,000 hours or so.

Image: Brian Heater/Mashable

The C200 ships with an NP5 — a custom needle created by Audio-Technica. As with the rest of the system, it’s not exactly a high-end audiophile component, but at $15 retail, it’s probably right in the wheelhouse of what most turntable novices are looking to spend on a replacement.

Beneath the platter is a direct-drive system — Crosley’s first, as a matter of fact. Among the benefits of the move to direct drive is the abandonment of the belt drive, promising more accurate sound and playback speeds. The downside is that the belt traditionally acts to absorb motor shock and vibration. I have to admit, though, the company has done a good job eliminating unwanted noise, and I didn’t really have much of a problem with skipping.

Overall, the sound isn't bad, particularly for a starter system. The built-in preamp gives the C200 a bit of a kick-start, though if you happen to have your own standalone preamp, you'll probably want to futz with that and let your external hardware do the heavy lifting here. Though, honestly, if you already have that sort of sound system sitting around, you've likely graduated beyond the C200. For casual at home vinyl listening, however, this starter turntable certainly does the trick.

A good starter turntable

Image: Brian Heater/Mashable

It’s a good time to be a record player. Somehow, like a phoenix, vinyl has ascended to pop-cultural darling, serving as a bright spot in the waning music industry and giving fodder to TV and movies, including a starring role in a new Scorsese-produced HBO series.

The C200, however, isn’t quite star material. It certainly doesn’t have the high-end cache of new products from Sony and vinyl stalwarts, Technics. Nor does it possess the warm and fuzzy kitsch appeal of Crosley’s Cruiser series. It does, however, offer a low-price incentive to re-introduce a record collection into an existing sound system.

The C200 is easy to use out of the box and features a lot more calibration and customization options than the lion’s share of the company’s record-playing options. You can almost certainly find a higher-end player second hand, but unless you’re a tinkerer, there’s a lot to be said for a brand new system with a warranty and easily replaceable parts.

Crosley C200 The Good Inexpensive • Easy to use • Calibration for playback The Bad Low-end components The Bottom Line It’s not quite as plug-and-play as Crosley’s Cruiser line, but the C200 is a quick and affordable way to introduce vinyl into a home stereo system.



