My Soundcore Mini 2 Review

[Tank]

This little speaker is a dream wonder all in its own. It is small, robust and packs a decent punch. Sure one speaker by itself isn’t as loud as I would like it, but when two are paired together it gets really loud and you can position them for that stereo sound. In my brief video I demonstrate the speaker in and around my swimming pool, sorry the pool isn’t all sparkly as I am just setting it up for spring/summer.

This speaker is made of metal, has a metal upper body and the lower 1/4 is rubberized. On this rubberized part you will find the power button, a volume up and down, A play/pause button, and the bluetooth button for fast easy pairing. I tested only 1 speaker for a week, and just yesterday I got the second speaker to test them in stereo. Now one speaker is loud, but not loud enough for me…but given its size I cannot complain as its plenty loud when its right next to you. When paired together, the speaker seemingly comes to live with a monstrous roar…yes i am exaggerating a bit but it gets really loud and I can hear it decently as I walk away from the two speakers a considerable distance. If one was so inclined to use both speakers at a different location instead of together, they will remain paired up to about 68 feet and then they start disconnecting from one another. As you can see in the picture I had one speaker next to me and the other I had all the way at the end of the aisle which was almost 70 ft away, now this is direct line of sight so you may experience disconnects when trying to pair through walls.

I did test the distance while I was at work and given the environment I work in, these speakers did an amazing job filling such an open space with music and granted the bass is a bit lacking, it is notably present in some songs and isnt muffled at all.
The second speaker is on the box on the cart…its just a tiny black speck, lol

Here are the rest of the pictures I took as well as my video of the speaker I didnt do a time lapse of the speaker being in the pool for 20 minutes but I did have it in there. the water was just too cold for me to keep putting my hand all the way in to check on it. I also did a few dunk/splash test when I first put it in the water. Let me know what you think…Again sorry for the dirty pool, my glasses are transition so they tint on their own, and Im sick so again I apologize

[amada.haro]

Nice review! Thanks for sharing!

[ndalby]

Good review there @elmo41683, certainly looked a tad nippy at the pool

[Tank]

Yea I honestly wasn’t gonna do the video but I figured pictures just wouldn’t do it justice. And yes it was very cold, the thermometer was reading 34 degrees farenheight.

With the speaker being made if metal I was worried it would damage it being in the water for so long, but surprisingly it barely got colder than from what it was initially. I will say though, that if you do get the speaker wet or submerged, make sure to give it a good shake upside down. I just went to charge them up and found water was inside the upper speaker part.

[professor]

Good set of vids and photos.

How does the two speakers cooperate?

From your video is implies you pair one speaker with the phone and the 2nd speaker with the 1st speaker and so the 1st speaker re-transmits?

Is it stereo or two mono when two?

[Tank]

Sorry I left that part out.

To pair the two speakers hold down the value tooth emblem/button until the light turns white, which is roughly 3 seconds. Now turn the second speaker on, and hold down the bluetooth button until the light also turns white. In a matter of seconds from doing so it will pair with the first speaker and it will give you a nice whirring sound/and a ding when they connect to one another.

Both speaker seemingly play the same rate, and as far as I can tell that’s basically two mono speakers just splitting the sound between them.

[ndalby]

Curious about this myself (which a second option would have been good for testing). The way I was looking at it was that the second speaker is the slave of the primary by pressing the BT button for 3 seconds. Now when a stereo stream was sent to the Mini version 1 it was essentially down sampled to mono (or truncated stereo) but with this setup the primary would split the stereo signals to left and right and play to the relevant channel to the slave speaker (likely left) to give true stereo, rather than a fake stereo setup.

Perhaps @AnkerOfficial or @AnkerTechnical can confirm to help other who might want to cover in their reviews…

[Tank]

After having another listen, with both speakers separate it does seem one is slightly off from the other so it would appear it’s playing in stereo. But I cannot test this as I do not have any equipment to see if it’s true stereo sound or just the delay between the two speakers due to the bluetooth connection

[ndalby]

Do you have a BT enabled laptop/PC and Windows? You could pair the ‘primary’ with windows, second with the primary then use Audacity etc to split channels of a stereo music source…would be way to see if left and right go specific speakers…

[professor]

Can you detect any lag as you daisy chain phone - speaker - speaker?

I thought it might be using that new BT v5 multiple paired concurrently feature? You seem to be saying this is a feature just in the speaker not reliant on the phone?

[ndalby]

I thought it might be using that new BT v5 multiple paired concurrently feature?

The speaker BT version is 4.2 EDR+…

[Tank]

Thanks, I just downloaded audacity and it was able to split left and right. So it Does play true stereo sound, seemingly the only lag I got was with my second phone. On my main phone there’s is no lag.

@nigelhealy the only lag I had was with my second phone. Pairing to the phone is near instant, as is turning the second speaker on and it automatically goes into paired mode. Turning off one, turns both speakers off as well.

[ndalby]

Cool, so it does seem to be a master / slave setup in true stereo mode…kudos buddy…

[professor]

I don’t understand. So when you connected two speakers, the phone saw there were two speakers? Screenshot of phone?

[Tank]

Sorry for the misunderstanding, only 1 is paired to the phone and the second one is paired off the first speaker. When both are paired together only 1 still shows on your phones bluetooth connection.
I’m not sure how the codec is handled internally, but it is able to split the signal into two separate channels so you have left and right

[Serg1023]

Nice video review and shoot 34 degrees it’s almost 70 degrees in the area i live in California

[professor]

Does the phone change from seeing a mono speaker to a stereo speaker or does the phone just not have any detection whatsoever and its one Mini 2 is one mono and two Mini 2 is stereo is the totality of how it appears?

[namroc22]

Was that dmx? Sounded like you were bumpin dmx

[Tank]

My phone only shows 1 connection as seen below

And this is what it shows in my settings for it

[Tank]

Why yes, yes it was
DMX- Lord Give Me A Sign, and Let Me Fly