SMSL PS100 Review: A $29 'Audiophile' DAC - Can't Be Good, Right?

Named Best Value in our Best DACs guide.

It's wise to investigate a product's performance before deciding if its price is reasonable. If it is, then it's a good purchase. If the price is even lower than expected, it's an excellent value. However, this time we will do things differently, as the product we're taking a closer look at is one of the cheapest on the market - which is its biggest selling point.

The SMSL PS100 is a DAC that costs below $30, which can already make some people buy it without giving it a second thought. DACs that cheap are something we rarely see on the HIFI market.

A plastic build with corners cut wisely

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It's a small black box with three RCA plugs sticking out from the back. There's an SMSL logo on the top. Almost every piece is made out of black matte plastic, but on the front they went for glossy black plastic, which is a fingerprint magnet - so if you touch your DACs as often as I touch my cables, it's going to require cleaning pretty often to remain clean.

Speaking of the front, there are individual white LED input indicators plus a single button that acts as an input selector. The button feels okay - I don't think it's going to fail you with normal use.

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We've got four rubber feet on the bottom that are very effective at making it stay in place - unless there's a stiff, heavy cable hanging off of it. Then its weight is just unable to keep up and it's going to float.

Generally, it's made pretty decent. You can hear some rattling inside while shaking it like crazy, but for a product this cheap, you don't expect it to be made out of brass or gold, do you? What's most important is that it doesn't feel like it could break easily - it's just solid for what it is.

They had to cut corners heavily to make this product, and I think that the build quality is where they decided to do that. I would say that they did it perfectly, without sacrificing anything important like the ports' quality too much.

Five inputs, but no fancy Bluetooth codecs

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While we're on the topic of the ports, let's see what inputs it's equipped with.

Going from the left, there's USB Type-C, HDMI, Optical Toslink, and Digital Coax. On the very right side, we've got left and right RCA analog outputs. There's also Bluetooth built in - but no fancy codecs, sadly. Their licensing costs wouldn't allow this device to be so affordable.

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Honest specs, with USB capped at 48 kHz

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Technical specifications listed by the manufacturer mention the output level to be 1.9V RMS, which I think is a bit lower than regular - but it's understandable, since with a higher DAC output voltage and no level control, you could be distorting your amp and have no way of fixing that, since the PS100 has no volume control.

Going down the spec sheet, the total harmonic distortion plus noise (THD+N) is 0.005%, or −85dB. It's not a measurement monster, of course, but for the price I think it's doing very well.

The dynamic range is rated at 96dB. For the sampling rate, the maximum value depends on what we use as the input - with USB it maxes out at 48kHz, and with optical and coaxial it goes up to 24-bit/192kHz, which is very good. Why is there this discrepancy between USB and other inputs? I would assume it's because they wanted to save a little bit on the USB chip, as they can be costly with higher specs.

For the DAC chip, they're using one of the ESS solutions - namely the ES9023.

Decent sound that leaves money for the amp

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Did replacing a high-end DAC with this one make my headphones or speakers sound terrible, unusable, or unpleasant to listen to? Let me surprise you - it didn't.

DACs don't make as big of a difference as amplifiers, and far less of a difference than the actual headphones or speakers. The sound was decent, however - it didn't shine in any aspect. The clarity was fine, nothing spectacular, same for the soundstage and imaging. The bass amount was seemingly increased, but it wasn't more impactful or anything. I experienced a little bit of dryness in the sound, and the instrument separation wasn't too distinct.

But just because this DAC doesn't sound amazing, doesn't mean that it can't make your system sound better. What do I mean? When you have a set, limited budget for source gear (DAC + amp), you could pick up this DAC, saving some money here that you could put into a better amp - which is going to make a bigger positive sonic difference to your audio system.

I believe that's the best thing you can do in a situation like that - saving on the DAC to put more money into the amp, or even better, if possible, into your headphones or speakers.