Udreamer UD002 Record Player Review

I consider myself a fairly dedicated audiophile, with several premium smart speakers, Apple Music family subscription, Alexa devices to stream said music in every room, hundreds of CD’s burned into my iTunes collection, and am a decent piano player. On a whim, I decided to return to vinyl thinking I was missing SOMETHING. In doing so, I opted for a lower barrier of entry, just in case this turned into a flight of fancy.

For $50USD, I went for the all-in-one Udreamer UD002 3-Speed Turntable Record Player w/Speakers, USB, Bluetooth, and Aux connections from Amazon. Wanting to truly gauge the device, handpicked three vinyl favorites from Amazon as well, Joni Mitchell ‘Blue,’ Bob Dylan ‘The Freewheelin Bob Dylan,’ and Led Zeppelin ‘IV.’ The logic behind these selections was if recorded for vinyl, they should best represent vinyl.

Udreamer was also not by accident. They have a solid review base across their range of models, with some admittedly better than others. As I was sticking to standard 33 1/3 RPM records, a fancier turntable was not needed. Moreover, the UD002 was lauded for its surprisingly solid sound quality via the built in speaker, and thus easy to pick up and play.

Per included images, the UD002 is a visually appealing unit, with a lovely wood exterior, retro style speaker cover, and a nicely built series of knobs, switches and ports. The needle is of a lower quality (be warned), the platter a bit small, and the overall build quality slightly flimsy. This was designed to keep it mobile, and it definitely accomplishes that. A big hiccup is the very short power cord, which can be problematic (and required an extension cord on this end…until I switched to a stand with built in power). Record speed, auto on-off are easily selected by respective buttons.

Like most non-automatic players, needle pressure can be adjusted manually. I wish the wand was better built, but you can’t expect miracles at $50USD.

What I most certainly didn’t expect is the UD002 to be absolutely fantastic. The sound quality is nothing short of amazing. I immediately compared all three records (on-the-fly) to their counterparts in Apple Music on a high end Studio Monitor and discovered something shocking. In the interest of truly building out audio quality in digital (including Lossless) audio, a lot was unintentionally compressed to create more vocal and overall clarity. The records, in contrast, emphasized vocal depth, instrument nuance, and atmospherics (when appropriate). The finger plucking of Dylan, just off-center harmonizing of Zeppelin, and Joni’s hypnotic vocal wavering. I conducted the same comparison test for several other big fans of music, and all shocked for their preference for the vinyl versus higher quality Apple Music version of the same song. They too were amazed at the sound quality of the USD002.

Soon, I expanded the vinyl collection (Amazon has terrific options there too) and it only got better from there. Traveling Wilbury’s, Miles Davis, Billy Joel, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton, The Who, The Beatles, etc. My 7-year-old son is also now a big fan of vinyl, and found himself able to use the UD002 (with a little teaching involved) with relative ease. It made me smile to observe him wanting to lay on a rug and listen to a Grateful Dead vinyl (that he picked out at Target) for well over 30 minutes. My wife is also enjoying Ziggy Stardust background music while in the other room. It’s very rare to have my home filled with music, just because, let alone wanting to sit and listen. Why records now $25-30USD on average don’t feature better quality dust jackets remains confounding. Upgrading these is a must, especially on an unforgiving semi-entry level player.

With this knowledge in hand: my one regret is I didn’t go for a higher end player with a better quality needle, outputs, audio and platter. Also, the Bluetooth is extremely finicky, and even when working, it’s not a speaker I would default to for playing via my phone or Mac. Good for records, not for wider sound use. This also only has one RCA out, which limits bookshelf speaker options.

Final Thoughts

If you’re  an audiophile (aspiring or otherwise) and you don’t possess a record player, for $50USD be prepared to be blown away by the Udreamer UD002. It opens a whole new world of music you never thought a must have until you have it. Consider the audio snob surprisingly impressed!