A little less than five years ago, Anker released a Bluetooth speaker called the Soundcore Motion Plus that turned out to be quite popular because it delivered surprisingly good sound for its fairly compact size and $100 price. In some ways, Anker’s new Soundcore Boom 3i is the spiritual successor to that speaker. It’s similarly shaped but has more of an outdoor adventure slant with Anker calling it “built for the wild” and billing it as the first Bluetooth speaker with playback in water, as it floats and “auto-corrects” to keep the speaker drivers facing upward just above the surface.
I’ve been using the Soundcore Boom 3i for the past few days and have mainly been impressed with it, but the speaker is a lot easier to recommend to CNET readers when Anker told me that if I applied the code BOOMTEST1 at checkout at Soundcore.com I’d get $45 off the black model, dropping the price to $95. Meanwhile, the code BOOMTEST2 gets you $40 off either the blue or yellow model.
As you’d expect from a speaker that promotional photos show strapped onto a kayak (it does have a detachable carrying strap), the Soundcore Boom 3i is fully waterproof and dust-resistant, with an IP68 rating. Anker takes things a step further, touting the Boom 3i as “5X” saltwater-resistant. “While typical speakers may rust in under five months, Boom 3i stays corrosion-free for up to two years of beach, boat and seaside use.”
You shouldn’t expect audiophile sound from a mono Bluetooth speaker of this ilk. But for the most part, the Soundcore Boom 3i gives you what you want from a portable Bluetooth speaker from a sound perspective. By that I mean it plays loud for its size — it weighs about 1.8 pounds and measures 8.3 by 3.1 by 3.3 inches — plus it puts out a reasonable amount of bass and has fairly respectable clarity. You can find speakers that sound a little more natural, but these types of rugged portable speakers aren’t designed for critical listening.
The speaker has some colorful LED lighting on each side.
I used it outdoors and inside in a few rooms, including a bathroom (it does make for a good bathroom speaker), and it was able to fill smaller rooms with sound. You can tweak the sound with the equalizer settings in the Soundcore companion app for iOS and Android and play around with the settings for the built-in beat-synched LED light show, which I kept turned off most of the time. You can also pair two of these speakers up in stereo mode and get significantly better sound.
I tested the speaker’s playback in water by dropping it in my bathtub. (Once I get to a pool, I’ll drop it in there.) It indeed flipped over, so the speaker drivers were facing up, and the music kept playing, though the audio got a little garbled when a little wave passed over the speaker, and the drivers started spitting water out.
One of the problems with Bluetooth devices is that Bluetooth doesn’t transmit through water, which is why you have to load MP3s into memory when using wireless headphones while swimming (you can’t stream music to the headphones if you’re head is underwater). I don’t know where the Bluetooth antenna is on this speaker, but presumably it’s on the side that stays above the surface when the speaker is floating.
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The Soundcore Boom 3i not only floats but auto-corrects to an upright orientation.
You can actually activate a Buzz Clean mode from the app that makes the speaker vibrate and shed dirt and particles, like sand after a day at the beach. After finishing the Buzz Clean, you can then rinse off the speaker to get it truly clean.
The speaker also has another interesting feature: Holding down the “BassUp” bass-boost button for 5 seconds sets off a 96-decibel emergency alarm — Anker says it’s clearly audible at up to 100 meters — with flashing red LED lights. You can hit any button to turn the alarm off.
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Battery life is rated for 16 hours at moderate volumes, which is decent for a speaker this size. It’s also worth pointing out that the Boom 3i has a Bluetooth range of 100 feet, which is better than the more typical 33 feet you get with many Bluetooth speakers.
The Soundcore Boom 3i in black, which is only $95 with the discount code.
