Stokyo Record Mate RM-1B Review

Video Review

First Impressions / Setting up

It felt like a nostalgia trip for me opening the Stokyo Record Mate RM-1B for the first time, because it’s a spitting image of turntables I remember from when I was a child. A bit of web research showed me that there were indeed several incarnations of this over the years.

It is a primarily plastic rectangular box with a handle on the top, and externally you’ll find two rotary controls, one for on/off and volume, and one as a rotary pitch adjust.

Under the plastic cover that clips on and off, you’ll find a lightweight plastic tonearm with a small speaker just above the platter itself, which is seven inches wide and has a 33/45/off level control at the bottom of it.

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Clipped underneath the detachable plastic cover you will find a bizarre plastic clamp designed to hold a record in place on the spindle, meaning that you can even play records vertically with this turntable! This is possible due to the fact that the arm itself is sprung rather than weighted, so it doesn’t rely on gravity to stay in the groove.

Apart from that, you get a 45 adapter, which clips into its own little indent on the body of the unit, and on the back of the unit is a battery compartment lid underneath which you have to put six size D batteries to use it on battery power, although it comes with a mains adapter as well for powering via 9-volt DC.

In Use

Despite its diminutive size, thankfully the Stokyo Record Mate is happy to play all sizes of records. I can happily report that a set of rechargeable D batteries lasted many hours for us, so no worries about it running out too quickly on a record listening session either.

So, to the sound quality: You’d be crazy to use the internal speaker for anything other than basic cratedigging etc. For pleasure, you’re going to want to plug a lead from the headphone out into any mixer or speaker input that will take it in order to take advantage of a better external speaker.

Of course, you can also plug headphones in directly, and once you do, you’ll find that the audio quality is surprisingly good. This is due in no small part to the fact that it has a proper Audio-Technica moving magnet cartridge, as opposed to the cheap (record-damaging) ceramic cartridges with way too much tracking weight that you find on most cheap turntables, including scratch turntables.

Overall, it does the job and is lots of fun to use.

Conclusion

This is not a DJ turntable, even though they do sell them in a pair with a mixer (if you are that way inclined). Really, it’s a turntable designed for listening to vinyl on the go, especially through headphones.

For this purpose, it’s great. It sounds good (once you bypass the internal speaker) and it won’t damage your records – and these two things alone mean it’s head and shoulders above practically all similar turntables on the market.

The ability to play records vertically is a bit of a gimmick, at least for me, but it does work. Bizarrely maybe, I like having the speed adjust control even just for listening to music because – especially when I’m reminiscing with old dance music – there’s always a tempo I prefer, and it tends not to be exactly the tempo the track was recorded at.

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There are a few things I would change. I’d like to see USB-C with a built-in rechargeable battery to save the need for six large, heavy D batteries. And I’d love them to add a Bluetooth chip so that you could easily link it with external speakers in order to take advantage of Bluetooth speakers you no doubt already own, and bypass the poor built-in speaker.

Overall, if you are a music junkie like me who’s never got over their vinyl addiction and wants a turntable that can travel with you – whether that’s on holiday, traveling, or just crate-digging – currently, I think there’s no better we can find than the iconic Stokyo Record Mate RM-1B, and we’re happy to recommend it.