Qlearsoul One-S All-In-One Turntable Reviewed

QlearSoul have produced 2 excellent budget-conscious turntables detailed recently in these pages. They reached out recently offering a sample of the One-S, the latest in their line and an apparent evolution of the One-Q I reviewed previously. The One-Q was a great option for those looking for an all-in-one turntable, let down only by its lack of anti-skate. Is the One-S any better?

I certainly prefer the styling, with a cloth grille and neater controls. Upgrades over the One-Q include a tone control and a Bluetooth output. The sound system gets an upgrade too including a pair of 15W woofers and 10W tweeters. Passive crossovers are used so those are likely peak output specifications for the drivers themselves. RMS output power is actually 18W per channel (into 4Ω) in Bluetooth / line mode and 5W per channel in phono mode.

The belt-driven platter is die-cast aluminium and runs at 33.3 and 45RPM speeds. It is belt driven by a brushed DC motor, and I noted that the motor pulley is in fact machined aluminium. The motor is also quiet and the speed was well-adjusted from the factory. Unfortunately there is no means by which to access the motor speed controls without removing the base of the turntable. You are provided a felt slip mat, with a Qlearsoul logo on one side. The logo is a textured material so I prefer to use the mat inverted.

The turntable is mounted on a sub chassis isolated by springs from the main unit, to mitigate the effects of vibration from the internal speakers causing feedback. The tonearm is an 8 inch straight arm with pre-mounted AT3600 cartridge, tracking from the factory at 3.5 grams. The effective length is 215.5 mm, with a 200 mm pivot to spindle and 15 mm overhang, and a 25-degree offset resulting in an alignment fairly close to Stevenson though using non-standardised null points. A two-point alignment protractor is included in the box should you wish to upgrade the cartridge yourself.

The arm housing is plastic, though the pivot bearings are metal. There is some play in the arm pivot which is a bit of a shame, but it’s not as sloppy as some less expensive turntables. The cartridge uses a standard 1/2 inch mount at least, and though the fixed headshell is plastic it does have a usefully long finger lift which is comfortable for manual cueing. The arm lift feels robust and is nicely damped, lowering the arm gently to the record.

Unfortunately the One-S, like the One-Q, has no anti-skate! At these higher tracking forces, the lack of anti-skate will cause uneven record wear particularly to the left-channel groove wall. I would go as far as to encourage Qlearsoul to issue an update to the model to include the anti-skate feature, given the obvious quality of the rest of the turntable.

If you only play records once on occasion this is not a major issue, but if you play the same discs repeatedly and regularly the excess wear will be more noticeable. I did ask about this, and Qlearsoul said: “Even without an anti-skate mechanism, this turntable has been carefully optimised for balance and sound quality”. Still it is so cheap to add even a fixed bias with a spring that it should be there.

The included counterweight has a graduated dial and setup is as simple as balancing the arm, adjusting the dial to 0 and setting the weight to 3.5 grams, the recommended nominal tracking force for the AT3600 cartridge. If you’d rather track lighter, you can fit the higher compliance ATN91 styli originally intended for the AT91 cartridge, and track at 2 grams. Likewise the turntable will accept Audio-Technica’s ATN3600LE elliptical upgrade, the many aftermarket upgrades from LP Gear, and the XTC extended contact upgrade from IPT, though given the lack of bias I probably wouldn’t go to the expense of the latter. The counterweight includes a set screw to lock it in position, though the required hex key is not supplied.

The ONE-S supports the SBC Bluetooth codec with supported sample rates up to 48 kHz. It supports mono and joint-stereo encoding, loudness mode, 4/8-band support, 16 blocks in mono mode and 4 / 8 / 12 / 16 blocks in stereo mode with a bitpool range of 16 to63. These specs are meaningless to most users – essentially it’s a basic Bluetooth implementation but one that sounds perfectly acceptable within the constraints of a self-contained speaker system.

Unlike the One-Q the One-S does Bluetooth output too, transmitting to external headphones or Bluetooth speakers for wireless convenience. Bluetooth output is especially useful given the emittance of the headphone socket in favour of the tone control.

Pairing occurs automatically when the turntable is on and a bluetooth receiver is in range and impairing mode. I was able to pair the turntable with my Edifier STAX Spirit S3 headphones, and the bluetooth receiver of my Topping D90LE DAC without issue. The volume controls on your headphones or Bluetooth speaker are used to control the volume of the Bluetooth transmission, and the turntable’s tone control has no effect on the Bluetooth output.

Speaking of the tone control, it is of the type you might have found on a basic Boombox in that its maximum setting boosts the treble, and its minimum reduces the treble giving the impression of higher bass impact. It’s subtle and, if I’m honest, not particularly useful. The system sounds best in its central, flat position and is never lacking in treble. If anything a bass control might have pushed some extra bottom end out of the small cabinet, especially in Bluetooth mode where you’re not running a turntable directly above the speakers, but the single tone control is what we have to work with.

Elsewhere on the control panel are the function selector (33, 45 and Bluetooth), the combined power and volume control, and the stop / start button for the turntable. In Bluetooth mode, pairing is indicated by a series of tones. Only one device can be paired at a time. Holding the start button disconnects the current device, indicated rather amusingly by the Windows XP screen lock sound. I haven’t heard that tone in years.

The turntable features auto stop, whereby after 3 minutes of low output the turntable will stop spinning. There is no specification for the precise noise threshold at which the auto stop will fail to trigger, nor did Qlearsoul provide one, but it does trigger if the stylus is left to track the runout groove of an LP. I didn’t encounter any instances where it triggered falsely during quieter passages of music, so I would say it is well implemented. Though perhaps the direction could be reduced to 30 seconds which seems to me more than enough.

Lastly you get a hinged dust cover that itself is excellent quality, though the hinges less so. Leave the cover closed for a while and on opening it again the hinges make some off-putting creaking, cracking, crunching noises. They also clip into the dust cover, so the cover can’t be removed easily which is a common audiophile practice to reduce its microphonic effect. More robust, easily removable hinges would be nice to see.

You get a power supply specific to the country of sale, an adapter for jukebox singles with large centre holes, and documentation with video guides available on the QlearSoul website and Youtube channel. Upon registration you receive a free 36 month warranty for peace of mind, the standard unregistered warranty is 24 months.

How does it sound? Pretty good actually. This is an all-in-one with speakers positioned in close proximity, so don’t expect miracles or stereo separation. It’s also a fairly small cabinet, and the speaker enclosures within smaller still, so you’re not going to get earth-shaking bass. However the cabinet is made from MDF, as are many hi-fi loudspeakers, and there is more than enough bass for a speaker system that is sitting directly below a sensitive record player. The chunky isolating rubber feet do a great job of isolating the turntable from the surface it’s sitting on, so it won’t cause sympathetic resonances in your sideboard.

It does sound better in Bluetooth mode than used as a turntable. The increased output power available in Bluetooth mode is quite obvious, and the system can produce an impressive volume if you ask it to. It’s more than enough to fill a small to medium room, even in the reduced power phono mode. In Bluetooth mode the sound is crisp and clear, with a forward midband that projects the sound into the room rather like the micro hi-fi systems of the ‘90s and early ‘2000s did.

The turntable itself has respectably low noise levels and is well isolated from the speakers. Stereo separation is good across the board, especially when paired to a set of Bluetooth headphones, and the limitations of the AT3600 (which is an excellent cartridge) are flattered. It is a very pleasant-sounding turntable, with a hint of end-of-side sibilance but nothing serious. The lack of anti-skate does lean the stereo image somewhat on some pressings, particularly those with heavily modulated grooves such as louder modern rock albums or dynamically squashed LPs from the ‘loudness war’ era.

To summarise, this is another great effort form QlearSoul. It offers everything you might want in a modern one-box record player, taking up very little space but still managing respectable sound quality. The convenience Bluetooth output is a welcome bonus, giving you wireless streaming to your favourite headphones or to Bluetooth speakers within range.

The inexcusable lack of anti-skate deprives the One-S of my unreserved recommendation, limiting its potential. But if you only play records on occasion, would simply like to hear a few old treasures again, or want a high-quality, retro Bluetooth speaker that can spin the odd disc, this may well be the product for you. Given the choice between the One-S or the plethora of ‘suitcase-style’ turntables cluttering the market (and soon the landfill), I would take the One-S without hesitation. Thinking of getting your kids a Crosley this Christmas? Buy them a One-S instead.

You can purchase the One-S from Amazon or Qlearsoul authorised retailers. Purchasing via my Amazon link will earn me a small amount of commission at no extra cost to you.