I'm inclined to agree with MajorFubar and All Ears, both give good points and I agree re the AT LP-5. There has been a good deal of snobbery over decades of HI FI, mostly aimed at the high end gear, hey, if you have money spend it on what you like, but this snobbery was very evident on review sites, not all I might ad.
Most of the turn table market with the resurgence of Vinyl is budget to middle, thats where the profits are for the manufactueres, high end gear often referred to in the States as the NERD/GEEK end of the hobby has a small market. SME really need to do some serious market research before investing huge ammounts of money in a product that might not return them a profit,
Why did I buy a Audio Technica LP-5, no, not from reviews but from a shop demo. My reason was my old Rega Planar 3 was getting tired even though I did the motor mount mod and new drive belt along with a bearing clean and re oil, I even fitted a new Ortofon Red, it sounded great but a new deck was out of my price range. Then I heard the LP-5, Well, it sort of did things better than the Rega, and absolutely no detectable Wow or motor noise, which the Rega had on inner tracks, and the AT95EX really out shone the Ortofon. In my humble opinion the arm is capabale of handling more expensive cartridges.