Fluance RT85 vs RT87

Intra-brand step-ups usually shuffle fittings. A better cartridge, a nicer veneer, a heavier platter, and the maker’s published measurements stay exactly where they were. The RT85 to RT87 jump is not that, which is what makes it worth writing about: Fluance publishes 0.06% wow and flutter against 0.07%, and 71 dB signal-to-noise against 69 dB, for a deck fitted with the same Ortofon 2M Blue cartridge.

That is the honest frame for this comparison. Hold the cartridge constant, and the price gap buys chassis, platter and tonearm — nothing else.

The question that decides it: is your listening currently limited by the machine, or by the cartridge and the phono stage in front of it?

The short answer

• Buy the RT85 if you want an acrylic platter and a 2M Blue for the least money, and you will never adjust VTA, never play a 78, and are not chasing the last 0.01% of wow and flutter. It is the better value and it always was.
• Buy the RT87if you want the best-measuring deck Fluance publishes, a tonearm you can set the height of, isolation designed rather than bolted on, and a third speed — and you already own a phono stage worth feeding it into.

The dual plinth is the headline, and it is not marketing

The RT85 is a conventional single-plinth deck: one MDF cabinet carries the motor, the bearing, the platter and the arm, with the motor under-mounted on seven-point silicone isolation and a decoupling ring. That is a good implementation of the normal approach.

The RT87 splits the cabinet. The upper platform carries the spindle, platter and tonearm; the lower plinth carries the motor and the electronics, and the two are separated by isolators. The motor keeps its own seven-point silicone mounting on top of that. The design intent is straightforward: every path from the motor to the stylus is made deliberately bad.

You do not have to take the intent on faith, because Fluance publishes the result. Two decibels of signal-to-noise and a tenth of a percent-point of wow and flutter are not transformative numbers — but they are numbers, they are the maker’s own, and they move in the direction the engineering claims. That is more evidence than most turntable upgrades at any price offer.

The platter: heavier and thicker, for a reason

Both decks use a 12-inch acrylic platter. The RT85’s is 1.56 kg and 16 mm thick; the RT87’s is 1.85 kg and 22 mm.

Mass on a platter does one useful thing: it stores rotational inertia, so short-term variations in motor torque or in stylus drag get smoothed out instead of turning into speed variation. That is the mechanism behind a lower wow and flutter figure, and it is why the platter and the motor should be read as one system rather than two spec rows.

Thickness matters for a second reason. Acrylic is used here because its acoustic behaviour is close to vinyl’s, so the record couples to the platter and energy from the stylus is absorbed rather than reflected back up into the groove. More material means more of that. It is also why neither deck ships a felt mat, and why fitting one would be a step backwards — see our turntable mat guide for when a mat helps and when it undoes what the platter was for.

The tonearm, and the adjustment the RT85 does not have

The RT85 uses a static balanced S-shaped aluminum arm with a 224 mm effective length, an adjustable anti-skate control, a 9 g H-4 bayonet headshell, and a published effective mass of 27.5 g.

The RT87 uses a static balanced straight arm with a one-piece carbon fiber tube at 230 mm effective length, a lighter 7.8 g headshell, and thread-and-hanging-weight anti-skate rather than a slider. Fluance does not publish an effective mass for it, which is why that row in the matrix above says “Not published” rather than a number we worked out.

The functional difference is VTA adjustment: 6 mm of it, on the RT87 only. VTA — vertical tracking angle — is the angle at which the stylus meets the groove, and it changes when you fit a cartridge of a different height, or a thicker mat, or play 180 g records against standard ones. On a deck without VTA adjustment you accept whatever angle the fixed arm height produces. On one with it, you set the arm parallel and then adjust by ear.

Be honest about who that is for. If you will fit one cartridge and leave it there, VTA adjustment is a feature you will use once during setup. If you expect to try several cartridges — and at this money a fair number of buyers do — it is the difference between setting the deck up correctly and hoping.

The third speed, with the usual caveat

The RT87 plays 33 1/3, 45 and 78 RPM. No other Fluance Reference deck offers 78.

The caveat is the same one that applies to every 78-capable modern deck: a shellac 78 has a far wider groove than a microgroove LP, and the stylus fitted to the RT87 — the 2M Blue’s nude elliptical, cut for modern records — is the wrong shape for it. Playing 78s properly means a 78-specific stylus, which is a separate purchase. The speed setting is necessary; it is not sufficient.

What does not change, and why it matters to the maths

Both decks ship the same Ortofon 2M Blue: nude elliptical, r/R 8/18 um tip, 5.5 mV output, 1.8 g recommended tracking force. Both have the same H-4 bayonet headshellstandard, so a cartridge change on either is a pre-aligned assembly swap. Both use the same footprint on the shelf — 16.5 by 14.25 inches. And critically, neither has a phono preamp.

That last one is what to do with the price gap if you do not already own a phono stage. A deck that measures 2 dB quieter feeding a mediocre preamp is a worse system than the cheaper deck feeding a good one, because the preamp is where the signal is at its most fragile: a few millivolts, RIAA-shaped, amplified sixty-fold before anything else touches it. Our phono preamp roundup is the page to read before you decide the turntable is the constraint.

Where the RT85 is still the right buy

Two situations, and both are common.

• Your system is not finished yet. If the money for the RT87 is the same money as a phono stage plus a better pair of bookshelf speakers, the RT85 plus those two beats the RT87 alone by a distance that is not close.
• You will never touch the arm.The RT87’s clearest practical advantages — VTA adjustment, a lighter headshell, a third speed — are all things you have to want to use. Its measured advantages are real but small. If you intend to fit the 2M Blue it comes with and leave it alone for five years, you are paying for headroom you will not spend.

The decision, in one paragraph

The RT87 is the better turntable and Fluance’s own numbers say so, which is rarer than it should be at this end of the market. Buy it if the rest of your system is already good enough to show the difference, if you want an arm you can set the height on, and if you would rather buy the ceiling once. Buy the RT85 if the phono stage or the speakers are still the weakest link, because you get the identical cartridge and the same acrylic-platter design for less, and the difference spent downstream will change what you hear far more than 0.01% of wow and flutter will.