First off, for disclaimer purposes, I received my Anker Soundcore Motion+ for review. That said, I did put it through its paces. Here’s what I got after I was done:
The Motion+ is a good, portable size, maybe 2-2.5 lbs. I’ve been using an older Anker Premium Bluetooth Wireless Speaker as a travel speaker, and you can see from the picture that it’s not much bigger than that.
It fit nicely into the backpack I tend to take to work, though I would have liked some sort of hard-shell case to protect it.
The literature included says that the Motion+ is IPX7-rated, and it feels like it is based on the grippy surface covering the speaker. I ultimately didn’t test that feature, largely because I tend not to try to get a lot of water on electronic things I want to keep (wait, is that a spoiler?).
I’m one of those people that still uses an iPod and a CD player, so I used an auxiliary (AUX) cable quite a bit in my testing. The charging and AUX cable flap is of a good quality, and doesn’t seem like it’ll fall out soon.
The sound grabbed me from the moment I first played music on this speaker. Compared to other speakers I’ve seen at similar (and higher) price points, this one is really clear. The high and mid ranges are incredibly clear and crisp, and the Motion+ does a really good job of filling a room with sound, especially given its size.
The bass is clean, not buzzy like I’ve heard on other speakers. I admit that I’m not a huge fan of a lot of bass, so I tended to turn off the Bass Up feature, but even when I tested it, the sound is incredibly clean and clear. I’ve heard a distorted buzzing in similar speakers because they seem to be “weighted" too much toward the bass ranges, but I never encountered that with the Motion+.
Battery life is outstanding! Straight out of the box, I got more than 15 hours, then I ended up closer to 17 hours until the red light started flashing after my first full charge. It’s likely that my results were better since I did more AUX cable testing than Bluetooth streaming, but either way, the numbers are good.
This is admittedly nit-picky, but I never noticed an audible tone play like my pictured Premium Bluetooth Wireless Speaker gives when the battery was close to being exhausted, and I missed it. If you’re paying more attention to the music than the battery, this would be a welcome addition.
Overall, this is a very impressive speaker for its size and price point. The sound is clean, especially the bass ranges, and I found the battery life to be excellent. It’s being greedy, I know, but I wish that I would had received two of them, because I would love to hear what the speakers sound like in the True Wireless Stereo Pairing mode, especially to see how that works with my CD player and iPod.
