Anker might be known for its smartphone accessories like chargers, cables and such, but it also manufacturers some rather impressive speakers and headphones. Its latest speaker comes in the form of the SoundCore Boost, continuing that SoundCore line with a speaker that puts out even more sound, and even more bass at a very low price. We’ve been using the SoundCore Boost for a few weeks now, and have some thoughts on this new Bluetooth speaker from Anker, so let’s have a look at this speaker and see if its worth the money.
The build quality of the SoundCore Boost is what you’d expect from Anker, and that’s top notch. The majority of the speaker has a nylon finish, which allows for 360-degree sound. With the top and bottom being a soft-touch plastic material. Which looks good, however it does collect dust quite easily. The top of the SoundCore Boost is where you’ll find all of the buttons, which includes a power button, volume buttons, play/pause and then a toggle for BassUp which is an Anker patented technology included in this speaker. There is also a battery indicator next to the power button, that is made up of four LED lights, to indicate how much battery is left. On the opposite side is the NFC logo, showing you were to tap your phone to tap it easily and pair it.
The SoundCore Boost is rated for IPX5 waterproofing, which means it can be taken to the beach or the pool without any issues. And because it is rated IPX5, the ports are covered on the left side. There you’ll find a PowerIQ USB-A port for charging your phone while listening to music, there’s also a micro USB port for charging the speaker, and then a line-in, in case you don’t want to use Bluetooth for streaming music.
Coming to the audio side of things here, the SoundCore Boost has 20W of high-fidelity audio. Now to put that into perspective, the SoundCore 2 which Anker also recently announced, only does 10W of audio. So that’s double the volume and it really shows. It uses dual drives and twin subwoofers to do this. The BassUp technology that we talked about earlier, provides some very solid lows, and that’s at any volume. This can be toggled on/off pretty easily, since it’s not something that everyone will want to use on their speaker, that’s a nice touch by Anker. Now the mids and highs are also pretty good, even though Anker is focusing on the lows here with BassUp, the mids and highs are nice and clear and there’s nothing to really complain about there. Overall, the audio is pretty impressive for a sub-$100 Bluetooth speaker.
Battery life is another important area for speakers these days, since this is a portable speaker. Anker quotes that it can last 12 hours of playtime, which translates to about 250 songs. Now we didn’t time the amount of time it worked for us, but it does last right around 12 hours, if not a tad bit longer. The 12-hour time is actually pretty popular among Bluetooth speakers these days, with most of them lasting around 10-12 hours, especially speakers that are this size.
Now down to the most important question about the Anker SoundCore Boost, should you buy it? Definitely. Now audiophiles out there may want to get something from Bang & Olufsen, Bose, or another high-end audio brand, but there’s no reason not to get the Anker SoundCore Boost if you just want some good sounding audio out of your speaker. It offers NFC, waterproofing and long battery life, in addition to some very powerful audio. There’s really no downside here with the SoundCore Boost, and it even has a great price tag, normally priced at $79.99 although Anker does typically put its speakers and other products on sale from time to time. You can find the Anker SoundCore Boost exclusively at Amazon.
Buy the Anker SoundCore Boost
