Soundcore Flare 2 – Black

Great speakerPros.- Type C Charging- Great Sound ( A little louder and a bit more bass than the first flare.)- The lights look way better than the first flare.- Power button is on the top so its easier to turn on compared to the first which has it on the back.- Being able to turn it off from the Souncore App.- I don’t like getting my speakers wet but it is IPX7 so that’s a plus.- Great if you’re only planning on buying one.Cons.- No stereo mode- Battery for me was bad, I only got about 5 to 6 hours at 80 to 100% Volume. (With the lights on)

I’ve been wanting Bluetooth speakers that I can connect a dozen or more together for parties. When I saw this pop up on Linus Tech Tips on YouTube, it was like someone answered my prayers. I ordered 6 of these and I’m very pleased for the most part and I will rate this as a 4 out of 5 stars.The good,The sound quality is great, and being that it is also has an adjustable EQ in the app, makes it very nice. The batteries seem to power these for about 8 hours with the lights doing their thing. I am getting closer to 10~11 with the lights off. This is about halfway up on the volume control, and I’ve not turned it up higher, because these are surprisingly loud. The base boost does work really well, but it is not necessary if you are using the EQ.The units all feel SOLID, and in fact, I’ve actually tossed them all onto the floor of my son’s room, which is carpeted and then played the Call of Duty grenade toss to wake up my son. Trust me when I tell you this, these things cranked up with CALL of Duty will wake up any sleeping teenager. Lucky for him two of these was for him.These absolutely work fine in the shower, in fact, I’ve discovered that my son sings in the shower, we can hear him through the walls. The have worked fine in the rain storm as well, I had zero issues with water getting all over them. I’m very satisfied with that feature.Pro Tips—Linking them together is easy, but, connect only one of them to your phone or tablet or laptop via Bluetooth, otherwise they will all connect automatically to your devices. This will make it much easier to sync.The bad…These speakers appear to charge via USB-C only, however it does not appear to function as a speaker that a PC sees, which is a bit of a disappointment. I have some PC’s that don’t have Bluetooth at the shop, so it would have been nice to be able to connect these as desktop speakers. This is a missed opportunity for Anker. Also, we have new speaker phones with 4 USB-C outputs for connecting external speakers, and unfortunately, these don’t work. Another missed opportunity.It is really difficult to see the buttons on the top of the device; they should have made them with thicker, or is its bigger icons that you can at least feel what is it. Anker should paint them a color like white, or hell make them illuminated from below. I’m starting to form the muscle memory on where the buttons are at based on where the rubber piece and logo is on the sides. I should not need to memorize that.The UglyThe lights, the different patterns are very limited to really about four settings. I wish I could have more control over the colors, and the patterns. The app does not give much customizable options. Also, if these were able to connect to the PC’s, it would have been great to sync these up to the RGB in my computers.The application is very limited, and really the best feature is the EQ. In fact, other than the EQ, I’m hard-pressed to justify having the app installed.Audio delay… when watching video’s… I’m on fiber optics at my house and at my work, we have multiple trunks into our building. I’m on very high-end laptops and some very power work stations and gaming rigs. If I’m watching videos there appears to be about a 1.5 second delay in audio. This was not meant to be PC speakers. My cell phones and tablets have about a 2 second delay with the audio from the videos on YouTube, Twitch, Vimeo, Netflix or TikTok. Granted, this is very nice for just listening to music, which is what this device is intended for, but don’t expect to see synced up audio with video.