BIAS WARINING - I'M ANTI-VINYL!*
Why are you thinking about buying a turntable and have you ever owned one?
I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but if you have some old records that you want to play and/or digitize I'd say that's a good reason. But if you've never owned records or a turntable, I'd advise against adding one to your setup. Or, if the money means nothing to you, go ahead and have fun!!!
Knowzy.com has lots of turntable reviews and recommendations. Tons of good information but it's mostly focused on USB turntables and digitizing records and he doesn't have a review of that particular Sony model.
Based on what
seems to be an original price around $300 USD, I'd say the Sony is in what I consider the "sweet spot" of $300 - $500.
And I'd just assume it might need a belt and/or I'd just go-ahead and buy a spare while it's available. And if I was buying a used turntable I'd plan on buying a new cartridge, or at least a new stylus if it comes with a good cartridge.
The biggest limitation on sound quality is the records themselves and there's nothing you can do about that.
With analog, more money
can buy better sound quality, to a point, but no matter how much you spend you're never going to match the sound quality** of a cheap CD player.
So.... If you go too-cheap you'll get poor sound quality. If you spend too much money there is little or no improvement in sound quality.
On the super-cheap end you might end-up with a ceramic (instead of magnetic) phono cartridge and they have lousy frequency response (and they might even damage your records). A cheap magnetic cartridge will be a lot better, but a better magnetic cartridge is even better, to a point.
The main difference between (good magnetic) cartridges is frequency response. That can be tweaked with EQ and if you are playing older records they don't have "flat response" anyway.
Mechanically, a cheap turntable can have rumble or other mechanical vibration/noise that gets picked-up by the cartridge. And a cheap tone arm can have trouble with low tracking force and compliant cartridges.
My personal preference would be for a direct drive turntable. I've seen worn belts & drive wheels. But my ~30 year old direct drive Techniques is still going strong. It only gets used occasionally to digitize a record, and I only do that when a recording isn't available digitally. If I was buying a turntable today, I'd seriously consider the current version of the
AT-LP120-USB. It's in my price-quality sweet spot, it comes ready-to-play with a built-in preamp, a not-terrible cartridge, and as a bonus it has USB for digitizing.
* I don't "play records" anymore but I grew-up with vinyl. My main complaint is (and was)
noise. There is always some audible surface noise, and no matter how good your playback system, you get noise from the record. And then there are the clicks & pops which are usually caused by damage, but even if you take care of your records the clicks & pops seem to "develop" and most old records left-over from the vinyl days will have clicks & pops. The clicks & pops ALWAYS drove me nuts! In those days, I could with some background hiss & crackle, and maybe even a little hum from the preamp. But now, I appreciate the dead-silent background of digital.
The frequency response (or "frequency balance") on older records was rather bad too with most having rolled-off highs. Occasionally you'd run across a good one I
assume modern vinyl is better in that regard.
** I'm talking about
technical sound quality (noise, distortion, and frequency response). Some people like the sound of vinyl and are not bothered by the background nose and other limitations. That's fine and I'm arguing about what sounds best so someone else.