Thorens has been building turntables since 1883. Its newest deck is one inch thick, weighs 1.2 kg, and plays a full-size 12-inch LP off a battery for up to 20 hours at a stretch.
The Coturn CT-TWO comes from Coturn by Thorens, the company Thorens owner Gunter Kürten runs with Bonn designer Benjamin Großjohann. Großjohann designed the original Coturn as a crate-digger’s deck, something to carry into a record shop and drop on a find before paying for it. The CT-TWO is that idea rebuilt with Thorens behind it: the battery grows from the first deck’s 16 hours to 20, the body is milled metal, and the deck still comes from Bonn.
Coturn CT-TWO portable turntable
Milled aluminium body, 1.2 kg · Belt drive, 33⅓ and 45 rpm · aptX HD and AAC Bluetooth
Price: TBD
Where to buy: More details at Coturn
Milled from a solid block of aluminium
There’s no plastic shell and no folded sheet metal. The body and every mechanical part are CNC-milled from solid aluminium, then anodised, and the top panel is Gorilla Glass with the touch controls under it.
Anodising here isn’t a coat of paint. The process turns the top layer of the aluminium itself into aluminium oxide, so the finish grows into the metal instead of sitting on top of it.
The glass top is also why there are no knobs: speed, volume and Bluetooth all sit under the surface as touch keys, and the slab stays a slab.
Three finishes, Grey, Black and Champagne, same deck, same spec each time.
Each one is assembled by hand in the Bonn workshop and tested before it ships. Großjohann’s line on the design is that he could have developed the Coturn in 3D software, but he wanted to hold it in his hand. It shows in the object.
At 31.75 by 12.7 cm, the footprint is smaller than the record it plays.
The tonearm folds out of a slot
The tonearm lives in a recess along the top edge. Tap it.
The arm rises, swings out over the record, and switches the deck on as it goes. It’s permanently mounted, with a counterweight.
It runs a factory-fitted Coturn MM cartridge, so there’s no setup ritual and nothing to balance. The deck arrives fitted and aligned from the workshop, ready to play out of the box it shipped in.
Drive is a belt, turned by a DC motor with encoder regulation holding the speed. Coturn rates wow and flutter at ±0.2 percent. Speeds are 33⅓ and 45, picked on the glass touch panel, and the deck plays 7, 10 and 12-inch records on a milled aluminium platter, with a 7-inch adapter riding in the box.
Listening takes headphones or a speaker
There’s no built-in speaker. The sound leaves three ways: aptX HD or AAC Bluetooth, a 3.5 mm headphone socket with touch volume controls, or a neutral line-out. Pairing runs through the glass too: tap Bluetooth, pick a speed, then hold Bluetooth until it flashes. Volume on the touch panel runs the headphone socket, while the line-out stays neutral, at a fixed level for whatever it feeds.
A phono preamp is built in, so the line-out feeds a hi-fi, powered speakers, a computer or a sampler with nothing in between. Run it into a computer and a record becomes a file, with the preamp already handled. The battery runs up to 20 hours on a 7.4-volt, 2,500 mAh lithium-ion cell, and it charges over the included USB-C cable. One charge covers a weekend of digging and the evenings after it.
The trade-offs are physical, and they’re structural rather than fixable. The platter is far smaller than a 12-inch record, so most of the disc hangs out in the air on both sides, and the deck needs a level, stable surface under the part it does support. It plays records. It doesn’t play them while you carry it, it won’t forgive a sloped picnic table, and level means level.
At home there’s no rack to chain it to either. Set it on a shelf, pair a speaker, done.
Folded flat, it nearly disappears
Stow the arm and the whole thing is a 2.54 cm slab that slides into a backpack next to the records themselves. A fitted case is sold separately.
The use case is the record shop. Dig through a crate, drop the deck on the LP before you pay, and hear the pressing through your own headphones instead of guessing from the sleeve’s condition. Coturn sells every replacement part individually, returns run 14 days, and the legal guarantee runs at least two years, which is a stronger ownership story than most small-run audio gear gets.
The established alternative sits on Amazon
The portable-turntable niche mostly runs on plastic suitcase players with little built-in speakers, plus one established name: Audio-Technica’s Sound Burger. The current AT-SB727 covers the same carry-a-player-anywhere job at $199 through Amazon. What it doesn’t give you is the milled aluminium body, the 20-hour battery or the Bonn hand assembly.
Audio-Technica AT-SB727 Sound Burger (Black)
Portable Bluetooth turntable · The established portable in this niche
Price: $199
Where to buy: Buy on Amazon
Coturn CT-TWO portable turntable
Milled aluminium body, 1.2 kg · Belt drive, 33⅓ and 45 rpm · aptX HD and AAC Bluetooth
Price: TBD
Where to buy: More details at Coturn
It’s an odd bet from the oldest name in turntables. The CT-TWO says vinyl listening doesn’t belong chained to a rack in the living room, and it makes that case with one inch of milled aluminium, a tonearm that folds away, and 20 hours of battery.
