Audio-Technica vs Victrola: Which Should You Buy?

The short answer: buy the Audio-Technica if you have, or will buy, something to play it through — it is a real turntable with a replaceable cartridge and a switchable preamp. Buy the Victrola Eastwood II if you want one object that plays a record out of the box with nothing else in the house, and accept that the sound ceiling is set by the speakers in the plinth. What you should not do is compare the two on price alone, because one of those prices includes speakers and the other does not.

They are not the same kind of product

This comparison gets asked constantly, and the reason it is confusing is that the two brands sell different things that sit on the same shelf in the same price band.

Audio-Technica sells component turntables. An AT-LP60X produces an electrical signal and nothing else. It has a switchable built-in phono preamp, which is the feature that lets it drive powered speakers directly, but you still have to own those speakers. In exchange you get a deck built around a cartridge Audio-Technica also sells separately, on a chassis the company designs as the entry rung of a range that runs up to adjustable-arm decks.

Victrola sells all-in-one players. The Eastwood II has the amplifier and the speakers inside the same cabinet as the platter. Plug it in, drop the stylus, hear music. That is a genuine feature and the reason the category exists — our all-in-one picks rank the class honestly rather than dismissing it.

So the first question is not “which brand is better” but do you own speakers? If yes, the Audio-Technica is almost always the better buy. If no, and you are not buying any, the all-in-one is doing a job the turntable cannot do at all.

The cartridge row is the one that matters

Victrola’s reputation comes from its cheap suitcase players, and it is deserved: those use a sealed ceramic cartridge that tracks at a high force and cannot be upgraded or, in most cases, replaced. A ceramic pickup pressing into a groove is what people mean when they say a player “eats records”. We rank one of those decks — the Journey — and we say the same thing on its card.

The Eastwood II is a different product from the same brand, and the difference is exactly this row: Victrola fits a replaceable Audio-Technica cartridge. That means a worn stylus is a part you buy rather than a player you throw away, and it means the tracking behavior is in the same family as the AT-LP60X’s rather than a generation behind it. If you take one thing from this page, take this: judge any player in this price band on whether the cartridge is replaceable, not on the badge.

The AT-LP60X publishes an AT3600L conical cartridge with a replaceable stylus, and Audio-Technica publishes two styli for that body — the conical ATN3600LC at roughly 300 to 500 hours, and the elliptical ATN3600LE at about 300 hours, which is the one real upgrade available for the deck. Both are published at the same 3.0 to 4.0 g tracking force, because the arm sets the force rather than the cartridge. Our cartridges for Audio-Technica decks page explains why that deck takes no cartridge at all, only a stylus.

What neither of them can do

Both decks use a fixed tonearm: no counterweight, no anti-skate, no tracking-force dial. That is the trade for automation and for the price, and it is the honest ceiling on both products. You cannot set the tracking force your cartridge specifies, you cannot fit a different cartridge, and you cannot correct a mistracking problem by adjustment — the arm is what it is.

That matters more than any brand argument. A deck with an adjustable arm lets you balance it properly, confirm the force with a gauge, and fit a better cartridge when the first one wears out. The cheapest deck we rank that does all three is the Fluance RT81, and the step from a fixed arm to an adjustable one is the most meaningful upgrade in this whole category — AT-LP60X vs Fluance RT81 puts exactly that choice side by side.

Sound: what each one is limited by

We have not heard either deck and we publish no listening comparison. What can be said from the published specifications is where each one’s ceiling comes from, and the ceilings are in different places.

The Audio-Technica’s ceiling is its cartridge and arm: a conical stylus reads less of the groove wall than an elliptical, and a fixed arm cannot be optimized. Everything downstream is your choice, so the same deck through $400 speakers sounds like a different machine from the same deck through $80 ones.

The Victrola’s ceiling is its speakers, and it is a hard one: small drivers in the same cabinet as a spinning platter, with no room for a real cabinet volume. No cartridge upgrade changes that. What the Eastwood II does offer is a way around it — Bluetooth out, so the player can send the record to a bigger speaker once you own one. That single feature is why we rank it above the sealed all-in-ones, and why it is the all-in-one we would actually give someone.

Which to buy, by situation

• You already own a Bluetooth speaker, a soundbar or any amplifier. Buy the Audio-Technica. The built-in preamp means it connects to almost anything, and you are not paying twice for speakers you already have.
• You own nothing and want to play records tonight. Buy the Eastwood II. It is the all-in-one with a replaceable cartridge and a route out through Bluetooth, which is as future-proof as this category gets.
• You are buying a gift and do not know what they own. The all-in-one is the safer gift for exactly that reason — it cannot arrive incomplete. Our gift guide works through the same question.
• You are building a system you intend to keep. Buy neither: start at a deck with an adjustable counterweight and anti-skate, and put the difference into speakers. Our picks under $300 are where that line sits.
• You have inherited valuable records. Buy neither, for the reason in the section above: a fixed arm cannot be set to the force a cartridge specifies, and worn or mistracking styli are what actually damage records. Our do cheap turntables ruin records guide covers the evidence.

What to add, whichever you choose

If you buy the Audio-Technica, the next purchase is speakers — our speaker picks start at the pairs that cost less than the deck, and our receiver connection guide covers the case where you already own an amplifier and want to use it. If you buy the Victrola, the next purchase is not an upgrade at all: it is a cleaning kit and a set of inner sleeves, because on a fixed-arm player the thing you can most improve is the condition of the records going onto it.