A couple weeks ago, Mike posted an article about his search for the best field-portable amplified speaker.
His top pick was the Anker Soundcore Mini.
I must say: he was spot-on!
I know Mike well enough to trust his evaluation, so I purchased an Anker Soundcore Mini quite literally as I was formatting his article for QRPer.com.
It arrived via Amazon, but I had such a busy week, I didn’t get a chance to truly test it until this weekend when I hooked it up to my Elecraft K2 in the shack. I feel like the K2 has a very decent speaker, but the Anker is even better.
This afternoon, I did a POTA activation at K-6856 and, to properly test the Anker Soundcore Mini, I paired it with my Elecraft KX3.
While the KX3 is one of the finest field radios on the market, its built-in speaker isn’t its strong suit. The audio is pretty anemic (especially if you’re K4SWL and do real-time, real-life activation videos–!) 🙂 Truth be told, it’s one of the reasons I don’t take the KX3 to the field more often. I’d rather not do a separate audio recording (line-out) then harmonize it in post-production.
I used the Anker Soundcore Mini for the full activation and it worked beautifully. I love the audio, the size, the run time (something like 14 hours per charge, supposedly), and the overall build quality. I’ve never been disappointed with Anker products and I feel like this one is a great value at $24.99 via Amazon (affiliate link!).
Thanks so much for the suggestion, Mike!
FYI: the field report and video of this activation will be posted in three weeks or so!