How's it going fella's? Lamp brought this to my attention and seeing how I run a turntable repair business now (to see my work check out my Instagram page @fromscratchdjrepair ) and made a living as a DJ for 25 years, I will throw my 2 cents in hoping to help someone since this forum has helped me so much.
The very best turntable to have right now, in 2020, imo, is still a Technics 1200 MK2 or M3D. I've worked on over 500 of them and I've seen all the competition and "new" does not equate "good" or better". Even the new 1200 MK7 I think is not up to par w/ the MK2's or M3D's.
My reasoning: The build is extremely well thought out and the most durable of all the tables I have ever seen. And as Juke stated, they are very easy to work on if you are half way decent with a soldering iron. So repair-ability is key and them being so simple is also what makes them so reliable. There are only 6 main components to a 1200: motor, tonearm, pitch, power supply, on/off mechanism and target light. This also makes them easy to troubleshoot. Plus there's a lot of forums and groups on social media with resources to repair them because they are the standard. Only negative is that they stopped making parts a few years ago, but if you're resourceful enough they can be found. As far as operation, solid as a motherf#cking rock if maintained and treated right.
The new Pioneer PLX-1000's are garbage. I've had people bring them to me to fix that looked like they'd been through a million gigs and they're only a year or 2 old. And the inside is over complicated which means that there's a lot of sh!t that can go wrong. If you check my IG I break a Technics down side by side with one and you can clearly see the difference.
The Numark decks are OK but parts are not the easiest to find and again, troubleshooting can be a pain. I also see a lot of random stuff go wrong with them.
Same for Stanton.
I've never touched the Mixar decks but they seem like a shot in the dark. I don't think they will pick up and will be a pain to repair in the future if they aren't built well.
The only tables I can say good things about besides Technics are Reloops and Vestax. A lot of people I know have the reloops and are very happy with them and they seem to be built well because only a couple have come into my shop. The Vestax are also very durable and well thought out.
I also saw the Denon decks mentioned in here and while they look amazing and Craze uses them, they look like they have a little too much going on for my taste. I personally have not used or seen them so I really can't say much.
As far as sound quality, with all of these turntables that will ultimately come down to your needle being the big difference and if you want to swap out the RCA cables (I put Mogami cable in for clients overly concerned for sound coloring). Some people put all different types of wiring in their tonearms as well but to me that's audiophile overkill. I've only run into a couple people that anal.
Good luck on choosing your table !
Edit: I forgot to mention Gemini because most Gemini stuff is built to fail within a couple years so it's not even on my radar
BUT my first set up was belt drive Gemini's so they're good to beat up until you get serious.