I have to say that I've not been bothered personally with changing records. Manually actually works well for me in that I can change to whatever is the whim of the moment, rather than being locked on decision I made, say, 3 hours ago...
I actually prefer fully manual turntables, too. There are audiophile arguments that can be made--and have been made--such as "every dollar goes to performance". But the cold, hard practical issue for me is that if I return the arm manually, I have the arm lift up, and I know for certain it is up. If the turntable does it, the arm lift is down...and there is the risk that I won't be thinking, and casually drop the cartridge down onto the next record. (Even turntables that are fully automatic are not immune, since there are many times when I want to play a specific track, which means manually positioning the arm.)