Planar 10 Comes Highly Recommended from AV Forums
Posted by The Sound Organisation on Apr 27th 2020
As if you needed additional encouragement to consider the Planar 10 for your next turntable, more high marks have come in for Rega's newest turntable, this time form AV Forums. After garnering much praise from Stereophile, What Hi-Fi?, StereoNet, Hi-Fi Choice, The Ear, and more, the Planar 10 continues to impress everyone who gets a chance to hear it play. The Planar 10 is currently available in the United States, so ask your local hi-fi shop how you can be the next to experience Rega's finest turntable yet.
Photo courtesy of AVForums.com
If you haven't heard much about the Planar 10, it is Rega's top-of-the-line retail turntable. Though Rega has one turntable that offers even greater performance, The Naiad, those are only available by special order (and cost over $40,000 a piece). However, the Planar 10 utilizes most of the technology and engineering used to create the Naiad, but in a more attainable form. By refining the technology and careful selection of materials, Rega can offer audio lovers the performance closest to the Naiad, but a substantially more attractive price.
So attractive a price, in fact, that nearly every reviewer has stated it outperforms every turntable at its price point, and most other turntables twice its price. That's high praise for a turntable with a starting MSRP of $5,695. Just why is the Rega Planar 10 so good? Ed Selley explains in his review for AV Forums. Describing the Planar 10 as Rega's Endgame—like that Marvel movie of the same name—Selley sees the P10 as the the culmination of all the technological advances that Rega has been leading up to in their other turntables. But, pure technological superiority isn't what makes the Planar 10 sound so good. Selley explains:
Perhaps the Rega’s greatest attribute is that it doesn’t ram home how talented it is. It’s only when you switch back to something less determinedly radical in its design and construction that you begin to appreciate just how high a level of performance it is offering. Comparing it to my own much loved Gyrodec, the Rega just feels more dynamic without compromising on the factors that make a performance believable. It’s an extremely neat balancing act and something that the Planar 10 does so effortlessly, you barely notice it in isolation.
Selley had many other great things to say about the Planar 10, in addition to adding a great deal of detail into each piece of equipment and technology associated with P10. His final score was a 9/10, impressed by the performance, fit and finish, and the ease of set-up, though noting that many may not prefer the unique appearance of the Planar 10. In bestowing AV Forums' High Recommended award on the Planar 10, Selley contrasts it to the Planar 8 stating, "For most people, the Planar 8 will be as good as they ever need and that’s why it secures the Editor’s Choice. The Planar 10 is for people shooting for perfection and it does sufficiently well at that, that it has to come Highly Recommended."