4 months of testing
“Great earbuds for listening to podcasts or audiobooks while walking or body building in mild or warm weather ! “
Did you read this ? Yes, that is it. I don’t feel that other options are viable. This is what I bought it for, so I find that it serves its exact purpose and I have absolute no problems with these earphones.
The batteries are cheap in it, so the 7 hour projected battery life probably will go down for you too to stabilise at 4,5 – to 5 hours. I don’t mind as I always have a battery-bank with me and it recharges in like an hour. Micro USB is okay, you can find anywhere anytime. Even if you forgot yours at home, you can buy one for 99cents in any shop.
The buds are okay and you have like 4 pairs. XL / L / M / S. I am kind of between sizes though. The original cheap Samsun AKGs little buds are inbetween the size M / S of the Anker. They are perfect. They are also stickier. The Anker ones are not that sticky. You can replace them with a quality silicon bud easily.
It is a quite big earphone with a relatively heavy cable, very dominant on the control side. This is why it is not suitable for running. While it would kind of stay in the ear due to the silicon inner ear hook, the cable would jump around and gather on your right side. The control side would come out eventually.
No good for cycling either unfortunately. The phones are too wide and stick out from your ears. There is too much drag and over 20km/h, you got the blow-in-the-telephone effect. You can hear nothing.
For the gym or the park while doing pull-ups or bench press work, it is great though. I did not say cross-fit or parkour. It will come out during impact and bouncing.
It is only IPX5 rated. It means, that it can resist for 12.5L of normal temperature of water per minute flowing on it from any direction from a 6.3mm nozzle for at least 3minutes.
I translate this for you. There are test models what resisted this. Don’t sweat in it, don’t swim in it, don’t use it in rain or too damp temperatures. Close the charging slot well when using it.
The Plantronics Bacbeat Fit is IP57. That is quiet resistant against solids (5), but rated a high 7 against water, what represent a 1meter 30minute submersion. Go with that if you train hard and needed a balanced non bouncing earphone. It will cost you 50more bucks.
Sound quality is great for books and podcasts. Music is catastrophic with it though. I use a very old cable based Philips studio headphone what is a standard for me. Anker is not designed for that.
It has two magnets what stick together. I love it. Great while hiking. Hook it around your neck. Listen for an hour of audiobook. Hook again around, keep on going.
Pressing the mid button long powers up the babe. I paired it up straight away with an S9+ an S7, an IPAD Mini 2016 and a MacBook Pro 2014. No issues. Cannot pair with multiple devices in the same time ! Why would you do that any ways. Volume up and down works with all three mobile devices, not the Mac.
That is it. I use it for bike messenger work on little breaks. When it is boring and there is not a lot going on. All good with it and it keeps going strong. No issues. 5/5 for the Anker SoundBouds Slim+ (A3401). I am not comparing it to a 200€ Bose ! I am not listening to music of high beats. The 5/5 is a utility rating, not an overall score against other devices. I also lost 3 pairs of earphones this year. All of them were 8-9 euro ones. This is the most expensive with its 22.99 price, from Amazon of course. It looks and feels okay for the price and will see how the 6month and the one year mark passes. I will update this if anything goes down ! Either ways there are 18 months of warranty backed by amazon.
Boundless Runner 
Leave a Reply