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I haven’t been as pleasantly surprised by a small speaker in years. A few issues with Bluetooth reception and the fact that the now-similarly-priced Creative Muvo 2C has deeper bass keep it away from the highest review scores. But a lot of people will fall in love with this tiny speaker, with good reason. The Anker Soundcore Mini is a squat bollard of speaker. It fits in the palm of your hand, and barely takes up any space in a bag.
This little Bluetooth Speaker blows my tower Bluetooth Speaker I used to have & my new larger boxy type because this one has the type "C" Charger (the boxy type has micro USB connection & broke & it's my 3rd one that I bought from a different store!) The carrying case is light too, and charges with the superior USB-C standard – a nice touch that we don’t always get at this price point. It houses a large battery which, with combined charging and usage on the go, enables up to 40 hours of use away from the charger. While using the buds for a standard commute across one week, we found that we never needed to recharge the case itself, having more than enough juice to top-up the buds every couple of days. In a fight between the Soundcore Mini and Creative Muvo 2C, we’re tempted to side with Creative now their prices are very similar online. Slightly deeper bass makes it a shade more fun than the Mini, and its Bluetooth is a little more reliable. The Anker Soundcore Mini is perhaps the smallest speaker I’ve used that can be classed as genuinely enjoyable to listen to. It sounds radically larger than it looks, and puts out serious volume for its size. It's a fast charger also, doesn't take long at all to charge & my Wife & I listen to podcasts every night, or shall I say, we fall asleep with this on & it's still going in the morning..This is probably one of the smallest speakers that we’ve ever seen that still manages to be a joy to listen to. But let’s deal with the most important part first: the Anker Soundcore Mini is a Bluetooth speaker, so you can hook it up to just about any phone wirelessly. It doesn’t care whether you have an Android or iPhone. At max volume, the Soundcore Mini’s mids and bass can distort a little with some music. But we don’t expect perfection at the price, and sometimes you just need that ambitious extra hit of volume. Constructed with durability in mind, the Anker SoundCore Mini is made from high-quality materials that ensure long-lasting use. The cradle is designed to securely hold your device in place, preventing accidental slips or falls. Additionally, it features a non-slip base that keeps the cradle stable on any surface. Just like many Anker products, the metal outer reminds you that you haven’t just bought another piece of plastic junk.
However, plug in a microUSB cable to act as an antenna, long-press the “play” button on the front and the Soundcore Mini starts scanning for stations. You then long-press the volume up/down buttons to change stations. This speaker easily bests the old favourite Jam Classic 2.0. While that larger speaker has a solid 2-inch driver, the passive radiator here substantially lowers the bass floor so your music sounds fuller, beefier, more powerful. At its heart, the Anker Soundcore Mini is the definition of a pleasant surprise. Despite a ridiculously low price tag, it comes with access to both Bluetooth connectivity and aux input, as well as the option to play your music via MicroSD. On the plus side, you do get the option to play music from an SD card too – which is something you don’t find with many Bluetooth speakers of a similar price. Anker Soundcore Mini review: Performance
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To begin with, Bluetooth connectivity is at the stronger end. Using an iPhone 11, we found reception stayed consistent across rooms and through various walls, with no skips or dropouts, and this proved to be the case while on the go too. Pairing is also easy, with the buds connecting immediately to the last device used when removed from their case. And yet, the Anker Soundcore Life P2 buds manage to stand out from the crowd. They have a comfortable, fuss-free design, good sound, decent call quality, and endurance to spare. They can’t offer the highest grade of sound reproduction, but what they do produce does bely their price point and is certainly good enough for the average listener. The most positive praise that can be given here is that the Soundcore Life P2 buds are no worse than a typical phone speaker for calls. In some situations the sound was muffled on the receiving end of a call, but in general they work well for talking on the go, and should be subsequently better for conference calls in a quiet room. Another thing to note is that the Anker comes with FM radio built-in. This is a nice extra connectivity touch. You plug the MicroUSB cable into the device so it can act as an antenna, then you press the play button until you start scanning for stations. The sound comes out of the top, so you can put the Anker Soundcore Mini wherever you like, and access great volume. There’s even rubber feet on the bottom to keep it stable.
There’s a microphone embedded for hands-free calling, and a built-in FM radio, just to catch you off guard. Given the price, we wouldn’t deign to expect Active Noise Cancellation, but we found that the passive noise cancellation was able to keep enough of the outside world at bay without removing one from it entirely. We found passing ambulances, for example, perfectly audible, but the rumble of nearby traffic difficult to make out. Verdict The downside is that the painted aluminium is likely to scratch easily, but if that really bothers you, all you need to do is take better care of it.The Anker Soundcore app for Android and iOS lets you update the speaker's firmware and adjust an impressive nine bands of customizable EQ (or select among the preset options). You can argue that this feature is overkill for a single-driver, 6-watt speaker and that you might not even be able to detect a major difference most of the time, but as I discuss in the next section, the customizable EQ can be useful in some cases. The Bluetooth connectivity in the Anker SoundCore mini isn’t the best. It’s the thing that let us down most when we were conducting this review. Still, for an extra feature that seems to be thrown in for good measure, the FM radio option is a nice extra touch. We just wish that Anker had thought the feature through a little more. The mids are the other surprise. You tend to expect a speaker with a radiator and tiny driver to have bass and treble, and not much in between. But Anker has really tried to add some bulk to the mids.
Though it’s one of the smallest speakers we’ve ever seen, the Anker Soundcore mini blew us away with its functionality, connectivity, and volume.
Anker estimates the Soundcore Mini 3’s battery life to last roughly 15 hours, but your results will vary based on your volume levels. Bluetooth signal is one of the Mini’s few little weak spots. The signal is not ultra-reliable, and occasionally you’ll hear cut-outs, and then what almost sounds like a sped-up portion of audio as the speaker makes up for lost time. This baby is loud & sounds way better in a box or underneath something so the sound has barriers to bounce off of. So to speak. The Mini is not water-resistant either. Anker does make a version with IPX7 resistance, the Soundcore Mini 2. However, it’s twice the price so loses some of the value edge.
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