Since no one else has mentioned this, let me be the first. If your records are very worn and were not properly cared for from the time they were purchased by you or a previous owner, all the cleaning in the world will not make them sound less scratchy. Going beyond the care your records received throughout the years, let's face it, many commercially pressed records had far from perfect surfaces when they were new. In the meantime, I really like the VPI 16.5 RCM. I previously used a Nitty Gritty 1.0. It was OK, not as good as the VPI and certainly inadequate if using a multiple step cleaning system like the Walker Prelude Record Cleaning System which I highly recommend.
Record cleaning machine makes more surface noise?
I use to have a nitty gritty hand crank record cleaner until I accidentally kicked it and it broke. The thing basically collected dust for 6 years because I never felt like it cleaned the records at all. In fact sometimes they sounded worse afterwards. I've tossed around the idea of getting a good automatic machine to see how that goes, but I'd rather put my money elsewhere if It is going to be another dust collector.