Love the beautiful premium looks, portability, beat driven RGB lighting effects and sound. The Flare is a 6W x 2 speaker with a 4400 mAh internal battery featuring Bluetooth v4.2 + EDR. Comes with a short Micro USB cable and User Manual.
The Soundcore Flare oozes quality with it’s canvas material surface, rubberized touch controls & RGB LED lighting at the base of the speaker. Once you Power On the Flare, it goes into Bluetooth pairing mode (you’ll hear an audible tone when powering On/Off or when pairing). The Bluetooth symbol on the back of the Flare flashes white. I connected mine to both my Samsung S8 phone and iPad Air 2. Both connected flawlessly and both can be used back & forth. Long-press the Bluetooth button to connect other devices. Long-press the Power button to turn it Off. You can even connect the Flare to another Flare for what Anker calls “True Wireless Stereo Pairing Mode”. I don’t have two Flares so I can’t test this interesting feature.
The top of the Flare is rubberized with responsive buttons to control Volume, the Bass Up button, center Multi-function button and Light Effects button. The Multi-function button will allow you to Play/Pause music, Answer/End calls, Reject calls, switch between Speaker & Phone, put call on Hold and activate Siri or other voice-controlled software. On the rear, there’s also an AUX Input jack and a Micro USB port for charging which is covered with a weather resistant rubber cover. The AUX jack allows you to connect any source with a 3.5mm audio jack. The bottom base is also rubberized for non-slip use. Waterproof up to 3 feet for 30 minutes.
Anker offers an app called Soundcore which will allow you to control the speaker, add other Flare speakers, update the firmware (my speaker came with the latest firmware), apply an equalizer with presets, apply Bass Up and cycle thru the LED lighting effects.
The sound is very loud, with “everywhere” 360 degree sound. It’s a bit on the bassy side. Not as crisp as my JBL Flip Bluetooth speaker, but very good sound overall. I wish it was supplied with a carrying case & that the highs were a bit crisper. Here is a very short comparison video between the two: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-T3KrI0vxWZgtvpL_sBdsNGx-XPUa1Mf
Despite these small caveats, I recommend the Flare for it’s portability, craftsmanship, great looks, interactive RGB lighting and very good sound!
