Vinyl is great. And a pain in the ass.

Everybody’s buzzing (or should that be hissing?) about how “vinyl is back”. Of course, punks, indie-rockers, and dance freaks of all stripes have been spinning wax all along. But now vinyl has moved from the fringes to the mainstream, becoming a major-label product once again. Cool. We’re all for it.

Except that vinyl also kind of sucks. Records demand a lot of care and even more storage space. And every time you enjoy a record, it dies a little, eroding away with each pass under the needle. Hence the spectacle of the collector whose house is dominated by stacks upon stacks of records that he never listens to.

Screw that. Cheap, dirty vinyl fun: that’s what the Sylvania USB Turntable is about. Throw down twenty bucks for the turntable, go grab a stack of dollar vinyl, and BOOM! Record party! Go, cat go!

You can connect some crappy speakers to it via the 3.5mm jack, or use the even crappier built-in speaker. Plug in some headphones and be the office hipster who spins vinyl at your desk (or in the elevator - this turntable can run on battery power, too). Don’t freak out that every scratch and pop hurts your vinyl investment portfolio. Treasure them as the sound of music well loved.

Of course, condition anxiety isn’t the only thing that sucks about vinyl. They’re not ideal for listening to while working out, or in the car, or on an airplane. Dance lightly or the record might skip. If you want to “shuffle” songs from a bunch of different albums, don’t bother sitting down. None of that is a problem if you invest in the initial hassle of digitizing your records with this Sylvania USB turntable.

Vinyl is temporary. Life is temporary. Get used to it. Spin the hell out of those bargain-bin albums while you can. And if you turn them into MP3s, you can dance as hard as you want. Even on an airplane.