With the beach season on the horizon, Bluetooth speakers are popping up again. Anker has followed suit with their Soundcore Icon series of speakers. The Icon is the bigger of the two, with the Mini being a lot more compact.
Soundcore Icon
The Icon features BassUP technology. Along with an over-sized elliptical driver that work together to power the soundtrack to your adventure. This makes the overall speaker sound amazing, and really fill out open space.
There’s a detachable strap lets you wrap and hang it anywhere. Railings, trees, clothes, bikes, or anywhere else you can think of. I can then hang this by the pool or even above the bed,
It goes for up to 12 hours from a single charge. Meaning you can charge it at night and then have a full days worth of music before its time to come home.
This also features IP67 water resistance and floats while it plays. SO it is perfect for pool parties, or baths. The shockproof addition means I can drop it all over the place and it will stick keep rocking.
Soundcore Icon Mini
The Icon Mini has a rather a pebble-like shape, sports similar materials & construction to other more recent speakers in the revamped SoundCore line-up. Consisting of a soft rubberised feel main body and mesh metal front (not certain how long the branding will last though), the Icon Mini comes in measuring at 95 x 76 x 32 mm with a weight of 208g, making the Icon Mini just over 50% larger but over double the weight of the Nano (54mm x 54mm x 28mm / 80g).
Along with the fresh design comes a fresh power on/off sound, which kinda reminds me of a water droplet motif, fitting as the speaker is now packing an IP67 rating (something which was always missing but wanted on the Nano), so your good against dust, dirt and full submersion in water (up to 1 meter). With more real estate on the body, the standard array of button controls from speakers in the SoundCore (or most BT speakers) lineup are present, making for easy definition and control away from your phone.
The Icon Mini sounds much louder & fuller with noticeably improved bass. This is likely due to either a passive radiator, restructured internals or improved driver. In the hand you can feel quite a bit of pulse when bass-driven tracks are in play. The improved bass though I found to be a bit of a negative as well. With some genres sounding a bit muddy especially at high to full volume. Those who like their podcasts though will find it a nice boost.
Arriving part charged at 70%, the claims of 8hrs use from a single 3hr charge seem accurate. With 1-2 hours usage out of the box only slicing off 15%.
Finally check out our other audio reviews.
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