Review of the Anker Portable Bluetooth Speaker

I get a lot of products to test and review from various companies including Anker which is one of my favorites and I was excited for the chance to test out a new kind of product from them rather than the compact external batteries.  This product was the Anker Mini Bluetooth Speaker 4.0 which is a portable speaker that connects to your devices via Bluetooth.  This speaker is ideal for letting you listen to your shows or music louder than you could from the iPhone or iPad like if you are watching an iPad movie with someone else and are in a hotel room and want the volume to be louder than the iPad can deliver.  It is also awesome if want to work out in a room, but don’t want annoying earbuds in your ear allowing you to run on a treadmill at full speed without dealing with any cabling.

The Anker Mini Bluetooth Speaker boasts the following:

• The latest Bluetooth 4.0 (fully backward compatible) for longer standby time; equipped with a 3.5mm audio jack for non-Bluetooth devices.
• Rechargeable built-in lithium battery offers 8-10 hours of playtime; iOS devices display the remaining capacity in the top status bar.
• Stylish and compact round-drum body slips easily into your bag for use on the go.
• Features clear, full sound and a built-in microphone with CVC background noise reduction for receiving voice calls.
• Package contents: Anker® Portable Bluetooth Speaker, 4ft 3.5mm audio cable, USB charging cable and user manual.

Pairing the Anker Bluetooth Speaker

Pairing the Device is as as any other Bluetooth device, you just set your mobile device into Bluetooth searching and power on the Anker Bluetooth speaker and hold the Play button down for about 2 seconds.  A loud voice will say “PAIRING” on the speaker and the normally blue light will start flashing red alternating with blue.  Once you see the device on your phone, simply pair it there is no password or passcode to pair the Anker Bluetooth Speaker.

The speaker itself fits in your hand and has buttons for volume down, volume up, play/pause/stop and previous and next track.  The interesting thing about the volume buttons is that they control the volume of the speaker itself and do not adjust the volume setting in your iOS device up or down (or at least don’t when using the Spotify music app).

What this means is between setting your mobile device volume you also have the range of the speaker volume and I was able to achieve very loud volumes on this Bluetooth speaker.

The entire top of the device is a speaker and you can feel the whole thing vibrate and shake when you play some bass heavy music.  Though it can’t hit the bass levels of higher quality speakers it does a very decent job for the size and price of the device which is under $30.

Here is the Anker Mini Bluetooth speaker next to the iPhone I paired it with and testing it with some workout tracks and YES the Dragon Blogger listens to Imagine Dragons :)

In Summary

The Anker Mini Bluetooth Speaker packs a pretty good punch for it’s small size and can get much louder than the iPad or iPhone could get on their own with the music sounding clearer and with less distortion while having more bass.  Now there are more powerful Bluetooth speakers with better drivers and stronger woofers but for the price and the size this is the best Bluetooth speaker I have reviewed so far in this class.