PSA from someone who's a dork about this:
Most inexpensive record players/turntables suck. And if they just gave you poor sound I wouldn't care about this, do what you want. But the problem is: a cheap-y record player is going to wear records out orders of magnitude faster than a decent one because they're dragging a blunt plastic needle across the vinyl with much more force than necessary.
(they're pretty much identical in tech to kids' Fisher Price record players from the 70s and not very far from a Victrola)
The Crosley portable ones that you can fold into a suitcase are the most notorious for this, but many other brands and models portable and non-portable are also like this.
A decent turntable is going to have a weighted knob on the end of the arm that connects to the end of the device that allows you to adjust how hard the needle is pressing into the groove:
Now, this may not be easy to determine if you're not used to staring at turntables, but what is probably more obvious is that for whatever reason, it seems like all or nearly all of the recent cheapass models have their cheapass plastic needle/cartridge situation in bright red:
INCIDENTALLY: A decent turntable is PROBABLY not going to be an all-in-one unit. I.e., it's not going to have built-in speakers. You're going to have to plug it into a stereo receiver and speakers.
This is because you want the needle to float across the record as lightly as possible while still picking up the sound. The vibrations from speakers could knock the needle out of the groove or effect how it's moving through the groove, messing with the playback and the wear and tear on the record. You probably don't want the speakers on the same piece of furniture as the turntable and you definitely don't want them to be an actual part of the same unit.
(All this can get kinda overwhelming and complicated and the rabbit hole goes much further than this. imo pursuing hi-fi phono is worth it only if you like tinkering and/or treasure hunts)
*There is one situation where I would recommend one of these cheapass things, which is if you want to play 78s (provided the cheapass record player in question has a 78 rpm setting), i.e. 1910s to 1940s SHELLAC records. There isn't really a way to play those that ISN'T going to degrade the record a little bit with each play, the sound is never going to be all that great, and a metal phono needle designed for vinyl isn't going to play them. Even then, if you somehow have rare/valuable 78s in your possession, I'd personally play them ONCE to rip them and then leave them be.
