Denon has introduced the DP-500BT Bluetooth turntable, a semi-automatic belt-drive model designed to bring vinyl playback into wireless listening systems. The new turntable allows records to be played through traditional analog outputs or streamed directly to Bluetooth speakers and headphones, offering a flexible option for listeners who want the warmth of vinyl without giving up modern convenience.

Vinyl’s resurgence shows no signs of slowing. U.S. vinyl sales rose for the 19th consecutive year to 47.9 million units, with independent record stores accounting for roughly four out of every ten purchases. Buying habits across physical formats are also shifting as direct-to-consumer sales now represent 13.6% of all physical album purchases, according to Luminate. The continued demand for physical media helps explain why companies like Denon are expanding their turntable lineups.

Although Denon is perhaps best known for its AV receivers, the company has a long history of producing turntables. Its current range includes the DP-450USB ($799), DP-400 ($599), DP-300F ($499), DP-29F ($219), and the flagship DP-3000NE ($2,799). The new DP-500BT joins that lineup as a belt-drive design that blends classic analog playback with the convenience of Bluetooth connectivity.

Inside the Denon DP-500BT Bluetooth Turntable

The Denon DP-500BT is a semi-automatic belt-drive turntable that combines traditional analog playback with built-in Bluetooth connectivity. It can be used with modern wireless audio systems or connected to conventional Hi-Fi setups through its analog outputs. The turntable includes an integrated moving magnet phono preamp that can be bypassed if you prefer to use an external phono stage. Wireless playback is supported via Bluetooth with compatibility for aptX, aptX HD, and aptX Adaptive codecs.

Lyle Smith, President of Sound United at HARMAN, explained, “The DP-500BT brings timeless analog and modern wireless freedom together in a way only Denon can. Whether someone is building their first vinyl setup or expanding an existing system, this turntable delivers a premium experience with simple, flexible Bluetooth streaming that carries the depth and detail of vinyl into any room.”

The DP-500BT uses a precision belt-drive system designed to maintain stable platter rotation. It includes a die-cast aluminum platter that adds mass for smoother operation and improved speed stability. Denon also equips the turntable with its balanced S-shaped tonearm, intended to support accurate tracking and help reduce distortion during playback.

A pre installed moving magnet (MM) cartridge and a built in switchable phono preamp are included, allowing the DP-500BT to connect to a wide range of audio systems, including powered speakers and traditional Hi-Fi components.

However, what sets the DP-500BT apart from many turntables is its built-in Bluetooth transmitter, which supports aptX, aptX HD, and aptX Adaptive codecs. This allows users to play vinyl records wirelessly through compatible Bluetooth devices, including headphones, receivers, and powered speakers. In addition, semi-automatic operation with auto lift and playback stop helps protect records while making everyday listening easier and more convenient.

Cast metal feet and vibration-resistant construction maintain stability. A removable dust cover preserves the matte finish. Every element supports both the visual identity and the performance standard expected from Denon.

The design of the DP-500BT reflects Denon’s refined, modern aesthetic with a two-tone finish and minimalist design that fits with a wide range of interiors. 

Denon DP-500BT Key Features

• Pure Vinyl Playback: Stable platter rotation and careful mechanical design help preserve the character and detail of vinyl records while minimizing distortion.
• Bluetooth Streaming: Vinyl records can be played wirelessly through compatible Bluetooth speakers or headphones throughout the home.
• Precision Engineered Construction: A die cast aluminum platter, vibration resistant chassis, and balanced S shaped tonearm are designed to reduce resonance and support stable playback.
• Belt Drive System: The belt drive design helps isolate motor vibration from the platter, contributing to consistent rotation and cleaner playback.
• Semi Automatic Operation: Automatic tonearm lift and playback stop help protect the stylus and records while making operation easier.
• Built In Phono Preamp: A switchable phono preamp allows the DP-500BT to connect directly to powered speakers, receivers, or amplifiers that do not include a dedicated phono input.

Comparison

The Bottom Line 

Streaming is undoubtedly the most popular way to listen to music, but physical media hasn’t quite lost its magic yet. CDs and audio cassettes are making comebacks, but vinyl records have an extra special place in the music listening landscape. 

As a result, there are an increasing number of turntables that also include Bluetooth as a way to stream vinyl record listening all around the house, whether it be on Bluetooth speakers, wireless headphones, or earbuds, without having to have a turntable in every room. 

Denon is the latest to integrate Bluetooth in its turntable line with DP-500BT, but there is also a lot of competition from noted brands, such as the Technics SL-40CBT and Sony PS-LX5BT.  The question is, has Denon entered the Bluetooth Turntable game too late to be competitive? Or is this just the right time to unite the old world and the new? We shall soon find out.

Price & Availability

The Denon DP-500BT Bluetooth turntable is priced at $899 at Crutchfield and can be purchased through Denon and authorized retailers in select global markets.

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The Pittsburgh startup’s AI platform will create digital twins of Pacific Fleet vessels, starting with 18 ships, as the Navy races to fix a maintenance crisis costing up to $20 billion a year.

Roughly 40% of the United States Navy’s fleet is unavailable at any given time. Ships are queued in dry dock. Maintenance cycles stretch across months. The cost of the backlog, according to Gecko Robotics CEO Jake Loosararian, runs somewhere between $13 billion and $20 billion annually. And as he puts it, “at a time when you need every asset you can get, that’s pretty critical.”

On Tuesday, the Pittsburgh startup announced it had signed a five-year IDIQ (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) contract with the US Navy and the General Services Administration, with a ceiling of $71 million.

The initial award stands at $54 million. It is the largest contract the Navy has ever awarded Gecko Robotics , and the largest robotics deal the Navy has signed to date.

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The work begins immediately with 18 ships in the US Pacific Fleet, destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships, over the next nine months. Gecko’s wall-climbing robots, drones, and sensors will crawl across hulls, decks, and welds, gathering data points that would take human inspectors weeks to collect.

That raw data feeds into Cantilever, the company’s AI-powered operating platform, which converts it into a detailed digital twin of each vessel: a living, updatable model of the ship’s structural health.

The company says its technology can identify necessary repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual inspection techniques. Critically, the inspection can happen before a ship even reaches dry dock, meaning the right parts and personnel can be staged in advance, rather than the process beginning only once the vessel is already out of service.

Defense One reported that just 41% of ships completed repairs on time in 2025, well short of the Navy’s 71% goal. The Navy has since reset its target to above 60%, with the broader ambition of reaching 80% fleet combat surge readiness by 2027.

Gecko’s contract structure is also notable for its scope: because it runs through the GSA, any branch of the Department of Defense can access the company’s AI and robotics under the agreement, not just the Navy.

“Readiness isn’t just a metric. It’s all that matters,” Loosararian said in a statement. “This growing partnership is about the unfair advantages Gecko is deploying to our Navy and how prediction, through our robotics and AI products, ensures our brave men and women are the most advantaged in the world in their fight to defend freedom.”

The contract arrives at a moment of heightened urgency around US shipbuilding capacity. The Trump administration released a multi-page plan in February to revive the sector, which has fallen significantly behind China. Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick, in a statement, said the deal demonstrated how “engineers, researchers, and skilled tradesmen from a great Pennsylvania company are leading advances in technology, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and robotics and giving our military the capabilities it needs for the next generation of American defence.”

Gecko is not new to the Navy. The company, co-founded by Loosararian and Troy Demmer, now its president, has previously deployed its TOKA series robots on destroyers, amphibious vessels, and aircraft carriers, and has worked with defence prime contractor L3Harris on digital twins for military aircraft.

Earlier this year it partnered with BPMI, a contractor for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programme, to cut inspection times on nuclear carrier and submarine components by up to 90%.

The company was last valued at $1.25 billion following a Series D round led by Cox Enterprises in June 2025, which brought its total funding to $173 million. It remains private. The TOKA robots that will crawl the Pacific Fleet’s hulls are the same ones Gecko has been deploying in power generation, oil and gas, and heavy manufacturing for years, the argument being that the physical world, whether it’s a coal boiler or a guided-missile destroyer, yields its secrets the same way: slowly, and only to whoever has the patience to look closely enough.

Full-color 3D printing is something of a holy grail, if nothing else just because of how much it impresses the normies. We’ve seen a lot of multi-material units the past few years, and with Snapmaker’s U1 and the Prusa XL it looks like tool changers are coming back into vogue. Just in time, [Radoux] has a fork of OrcaSlicer called FullSpectrum that brings HueForge-like color mixing to tool changing printers.

The hook behind FullSpectrum is very simple: stacking thin layers of colors, preferably with semi-translucent filament, allows for a surprising degree of mixing. The towers in the image above have only three colors: red, blue, and yellow. It’s not literally full-spectrum, but you can generate surprisingly large palettes this way. You aren’t limited to single-layer mixes, either: A-A-B repeats and even arbitrary patterns of four colors are possible, assuming you have a four-head tool changing printer like the Snapmaker U1 this is being developed for.

FullSpectrum is in fact a fork of Snapmaker’s fork of OrcaSlicer, which is itself forked from Bambu Slicer, which forked off of PrusaSlicer, which originated as a fork of Slic3r. Some complain about the open-source chaos of endless forking, but you can see in that chain how much innovation it gets us — including this technique of color mixing by alternating layers.

[Wombly Wonders] shows the limits of this in his video: you really want layer heights of 0.8 mm to 0.12 mm, as the standard 0.2 mm height introduces striping, particularly with opaque filaments. Depending on the colors and the overhang, you might get away with it, but thinner layers generally going to be a safer bet. Fully translucent filaments can blend a little too well at the edges, but the HueForge community — that we’ve covered previously — has already got a good handle on characterizing translucency and we’ll likely see a lot of that knowledge applied to FullSpectrum OrcaSlicer as time goes on.

Now, you could probably use this technique with an multi-material unit (MMU), but the tool-changing printers are where it is going to shine because they’re so much faster at it. With the right tool-changer, it’s actually faster to run off a model mixing colors from the cyan-yellow-magenta color space that it is to print the same model with the exact colors needed loaded on an MMU. That’s unexpected, but [Wombly] does demonstrate in his video with a chicken that’s listed as taking nineteen hours on Bambu’s MakerWorld as taking under seven hours.

Could this be the killer app that pushes tool-change printers into the spotlight? Maybe! Tool changing printers are nothing new, after all. We’ve even seen it done with a delta, and lots of other DIY options if you don’t fancy buying the big Prusa. If you’ve been lusting after such a beast, though, you might finally have your excuse.

If you were hoping Apple might rethink its Liquid Glass interface any time soon, the latest reports suggest that’s unlikely.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, early internal builds of upcoming Apple software show no major design changes to the visual overhaul introduced with iOS 26.

Liquid Glass first arrived across Apple’s recent platforms, including iOS 26 and macOS Tahoe. This brought a translucent, layered look to menus, widgets and system UI elements. While the redesign sparked mixed reactions from users, it appears Apple is committed to refining the style. They are refining it rather than replacing it.

No matter how much we don’t like and oppose it, personal data is now a commodity. Our phone numbers, addresses, shopping habits, or employment history details are collected, analyzed, and traded among data brokers, marketers, recruiters, insurers, and countless other buyers, not to mention frauds and thieves.

However, trying to remove your online presence manually means tracking down every single company that holds your data (which can be hundreds), submitting legal deletion requests, and repeating the process when your data reappears or your request is ignored. This can easily become a full-time job.

That’s why data broker removal services exist: to automate, manage, and repeat those requests on your behalf.

But how to choose the best provider? Below, you will find a 2026 evaluation of the most recognized names in the industry.

Top Data Broker Removal Services at a Glance

Incogni: Best for Balanced Automation, Coverage, and Accountability

Overview and Pricing

Incogni focuses on the continuous removal of personal data from data brokers, including both public people-search sites and private commercial databases.

Incogni’s plans start at $7.99/month when billed annually, and even the basic option contains all you need for effective data removal. Higher-tier plans only change prioritization and scope. There’s no free option, but you can take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee to see if the service suits your needs.

Features

• Fully-automated opt-out and deletion requests across 420+ data brokers
• Recurring removal cycles: 60 days for public, 90 days for private brokers
• Real-time dashboard tracking
• Unlimited custom removal requests (plan-dependent)
• Family plans and multiple-user accounts
• Operational processes audited via a limited assurance report by Deloitte

Effectiveness

Supported by Deloitte’s limited assurance assessment, Incogni officially reports that it has processed 245+ million removal requests from 2022 to mid-2025, indicating sustained operations rather than one-time cleanups. As data brokers can reacquire information and their databases refresh regularly, the recurring cycle is vital if you want to protect your online footprint in the long run.

Transparency and Reputation

Apart from a limited assurance report by Deloitte, the service also holds Editors’ Choice Awards from PCMag and PCWorld, which praise its automation system and wide coverage.

On Trustpilot, Incogni has generally positive feedback, with an average rating of 4.4 based on over 2,000 reviews. Users often note actual reductions in spam and visible listings.

User Experience

Once you set up your account, you need to verify your identity. After that, Incogni will handle most data removal activity in the background without involving you directly. The clear, straightforward dashboard will show you all the brokers Incogni has contacted, confirmed removals, responses, and next scheduled cycles. You can peek into it whenever you like, but you don’t have to engage to make the process effective.

Aura: Best All-in-One Identity and Privacy Suite

Overview and Pricing

Aura is not a provider like others on this list, as it combines data removal service with broader digital protection features, including credit alerts, antivirus, VPN, device security, and identity theft monitoring.

Aura’s prices begin at $9.99/month when billed annually. What’s more, you get a 14-day free trial and a 60-day money-back guarantee for risk-free testing.

Features

• Automated data removal across 200+ data brokers (mainly private)
• Identity theft monitoring
• Dark web monitoring
• Credit score and breach alerts
• Antivirus/anti-malware protection
• VPN
• Family and multi-device plans

Effectiveness

When it comes to data removal itself, this Aura functionality is automated. The platform first scans broker and people-search sites, submits deletion requests whenever finding your

information, and re-checks for reappearances. However, as it’s not its main focus, its data removal coverage is quite narrow compared to dedicated solutions. Aura’s value is the strongest only if combined with the whole toolkit.

Transparency and Reputation

Aura has been widely described in the identity protection space with overall positive sentiments. You can find Aura reviews on PCMag, Forbes, and NerdWallet. On Trustpilot, it holds an average rating of 4.2 based on almost 1,000 reviews. Users appreciate its all-in-one service, but broker removal results themselves don’t match those ensured by services focused exclusively on that problem.

User Experience

Aura’s interface contains all the features offered by the providers, showing alerts, scans, security postures, removal status, and more. This holistic view appeals to people who seek central management of their online presence, but for many users, it can be overwhelming.

DeleteMe: Strong for Proved Public People-Search Listing Deletion

Overview and Pricing

DeleteMe focuses on public people-search sites and background information databases. These are mentions that usually appear in search results when someone Googles your name.

The cheapest DeleteMe plan is $6.97/month when billed annually and can be used by 1 person.

Features

• Automated scans of people-search sites (up to 850+, depending on the plan)
• Expert manual handling
• Quarterly detailed reports
• Coverage for individuals, couples, and families
• Limited custom removal requests (40-60 per year, plan-dependent)
• DIY opt-out tutorials

Effectiveness

DeleteMe is quite effective at removing visible information from many major public listings. The company was a pioneer when, in 2010, it entered the industry with its

part-automatic, part-human-assisted approach. The team submits requests and tracks

progress, then provides you with scheduled, detailed reports that include, for example, even screenshots.

Transparency and Reputation

DeleteMe has been in the industry since 2010, which says a lot about its reliability. It has generally positive user reviews, especially when it comes to its detailed reporting system and exhaustive explanations about what was removed. There have been no third-party assessments of its services, but the provider has a good reputation in the industry, as seen in the review in PCMag or praise from Forbes. When it comes to user feedback, it has a rating of

4.0 on Trustpilot, though based only on 180+ reviews.

User Experience

Contrary to Incogni’s live and always-on progress monitoring, which you can check but don’t have to, DeleteMe is more report-centric. Users receive quarterly PDF summaries that show what sites were contacted, where their information was removed, and what remains pending.

Many people appreciate their human approach.

Optery: Best for Exposure Visibility

Overview and Pricing

Optery’s main field of expertise is discovering where your personal data exists, providing users with insight into exposures before and during removal attempts.

Optery’s offer starts at $3.25/month when billed annually. The company also has a free, self-service version. Apart from that, you get a free scan and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Features

• Exposure dashboard displaying where your personal data exists
• Automated removal from up to 630+ brokers with paid plans
• Initial free scan across 120+ sites and free self-service plan
• Guided removal request sending process
• Custom removal submissions
• Manual tracking of opt-outs and their status

Effectiveness

Optery is most effective at identifying where your personal data has been exposed. Then, for its removal, it blends automatic attempts with user-guided actions and manual tracking.

It doesn’t have the same automated recurring cycles as, for example, Incogni, but it may be helpful if you want to truly understand data exposures.

Transparency and Reputation

Optery is often highlighted for its exposure insights and transparency. Users appreciate the “seeing where my data lives” model, but many note that broader coverage comes only with more expensive plans, while manual user input is still needed.

On Trustpilot, Optery has 171 reviews with an average rating of 4.1. It has also been reviewed by PCMag quite enthusiastically, though they mentioned that the service doesn’t distinguish between removed data and never-found data. TechRadar praised it for its ease of use.

User Experience

Optery is more interactive and gives you more control of the process (which can be both an advantage and a disadvantage, depending on how much time you’re willing to sacrifice). Its dashboard clearly shows where your personal data is, and then you need to decide which removals are more important and what to do next. You also get before and after screenshots as visual proof, while reports are AI-improved to make them more accurate and detailed.

Onerep: Best for Public Listing Removal and Families

What It Does

OneRep automates removal requests issued to public people-search sites. Its focus is on high-risk databases like Intelius and Whitepages. The service also ensures quarterly recurring checks to combat resurfacing of your data.

However, there’s significant controversy around the company (more of that below).

Onerep’s prices start at $8.33/month when billed annually. It also offers a 5-day free trial. What makes it attractive and more affordable is its family plans that cover up to 6 members.

Features

• Automated scans and removal requests across 310+ data brokers
• Quarterly re-scanning
• Great family value
• Clear and straightforward dashboard tracking

Effectiveness

Optery is effective when it comes to reducing online visibility on many public sites, including those deemed high-risk. However, this provider doesn’t focus on private commercial

brokers that are responsible for a large portion of the spam. It makes Optery’s reach much narrower.