Record Cleaning Machine

Yes, the Keith Monks stands out, followed closely by the Loricraft. The others are all vacuum suction, and tend to be more or lessloud. The Clearaudio double Matrix or some of the Blue Danube stand out among these.

if you have all kinds of dollars to spend, then the above recommendations are right on. however, i've been using a nitty gritty model that cost maybe $200 and it works beautifully. plus it has a small footprint which is important to me. a machine and clean vinyl is very important, but as long as it gets the job done, i'd rather spend the majority of my dollars on the vinyl and table.

I also have the low end NG, and while it's manual, meaning there is a ceiling on how many I want to clean at a time, it's effective. I am like Sberger - the money is better spent elsewhere. But getting a machine that cleans is well worth some dollars. I don't know from personal experience, but I suspect the incremental dollars don't increase the effectiveness - just the effort, sound, etc. If others have had several machines, I'd be curious to know if pricier machines do a better cleaning job, or if they mainly impact the process.

I find the SOTA LP Cleaner to work very good for me.

I'm sure the Monks or Loricraft are great machines, but for between $3,000 and $5,000 they should be. If you are really interested in cleaning vinyl, there is a huge amount of info in the Vinyl Asylum at Audioasylum. After spending a bit of time there, I came to the conclusion that you should go cheap or go very expensive but not waste a lot of money by going in between. Obviously, the Monks and Loricraft are very expensive.

I ended up with a KAB EV1, simply because I didn't want to have to deal with the extra noise from a shop vac (which can be very, very noisy) along with the space that shop vacs consume. The KAB is simply the "guts" of the Nitty Gritty machines, which you in turn hook up your own vacuum cleaner to (it can be a wet or dry vac as the KAB traps all fluid). Having sold Filter Queen vacs about 28 years ago, I have 3 kicking around the house and use one of them with the KAB. There are distinct advantages to going this route using a quality vac if you already have one:
1) you will, in all likelihood, end up with better/stronger suction than you will with any of the Nitty Gritty or VPI motorized versions 2) you will not experience overheating that can occur with those models and 3) if your vac breaks down, it is no big deal, you can buy another one used for next to nothing as opposed to paying a huge buck for a replacement motor from VPI or Nitty Gritty.

Going DIY with a shop vac is even less expensive than the KAB route, which will end up costing you about $200 by the time you buy a carbon fibre brush and some RRL Super Vinyl Wash (which I would recommend). A beater turntable (buy one at the Goodwill) is also a must have, in my opinion, with this kind of setup for applying the fluid before vacuuming.
Keep in mind that your choice of fluid is probably at least as important as your choice of cleaner, and there are certainly many choices.

I am certainly no expert, simply having drawn my own conclusions from the vast amount of info at the Vinyl Asylum, but I have had records cleaned on a Monks as well, and am not interested in spending that kind of money on a machine. I had an opportunity to buy a used Monks (well used, not in the greatest of shape) for around $800 and skipped it (many will say I'm crazy of course for that), and honestly don't feel like I am missing that much. But I am a bit of a cheapskate and $800 will buy me vinyl for the rest of my life the way things are going. I just picked up 30 albums last night for $10-a very serious score at the thrift store, actually the best I've had in the 3 months since I purchased the KAB, and it is working beautifully. So at that rate, $800 can buy me 2400 albums, not that I think I'll be doing that (or at least keeping them!).