The stylus is average quality. I suppose if you want to pay a lot more you could pick up a better stylus. Overall I have had pretty decent results. Early on, I noticed a lot of distortion, caused by too high of input levels. The manual is a little unclear, leading the reader to assume it is only applicable when using the analog RCA output to a standard receiver, but I experimented and found that by default the unit ships with the gain at full... turn it down and it should solve the distortion caused by the volume level being too high. The other difficulty I have has is occasional skips on the record which only seem to occur for me when playing a disc with a strong kick bass, especially on 12" singles which have louder volumes as a rule. It might be as simple as adjusting the balance on the tonearm. Finally, I haven't yet been able to successfully get a tape to digitize via the 1/8" stereo input jack yet... it comes out mono and very low volume. However, again I will experiment as I did with the gain before concluding that it is the fault of the Ion -- might be me. Overall, a decent product. If you want better quality, you will pay for it.

The Start/Stop feature is handy. This often does not come with consumer turntables, only with professional ones intended for broadcast or DJ applications. Some might criticize it for not being fully automatic and having the tonearm return at the end of the record, but some records run very close to the centre label... and it can be frustrating if it picks up before the true end, so the lack of this feature doesn't bother me. The 1/8" stereo input is a great idea.... I am still figuring out how to get it to work properly, but assuming I can, it's an excellent bonus feature. The Gain control is useful, but the only complaint about it is its location on the back -- hard to get to while playing a record.

Very easy to use. As pointed out earlier, the manual is a little unclear about a couple of things, but through experimenting it should become intuitive to use.

There are well documented problems with distortion while trying to rip vinyl with this. The electrical housing is very poor and you basically have to unplug everything in the house in order to keep from picking up electrical interference. I hooked it up to my stereo just to compare the sound with my Technics, and it doesn't hold up. The needle provided is of poor quality.

easy to use, unless you want good sound.

Nobody from Ion will get back to me about the distortion problem, and if you go to their forum (http://forums.ion-audio.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3), they will not respond to this particular problem, even though Ion members are visible elsewhere.