Spirit Dot 2 - My Personal Review & Experience

Hey guys hope everyone had a nice weekend! This is my Spirit Dot 2 review that I wanted to write over the weekend but thought I would just wait for leaderboard to end. I got these earbuds in the July leaderboard. These earbuds are priced at $80 on Amazon and Soundcore websites (USA) but often go on sale so wait until you see them on sale to buy. Anyway, enough of that so let me start the review.

Let me start by saying that I’ve owned these for about 3.5 months now and am surprised in good and bad ways.

Let me start off by giving some quick specs found on Amazon:

  • Thumping Bass
  • IPX7 Waterproof Protection + SweatGuard Technology
  • 5.5 hours of playtime on a single charge, extended to 16 hours with the charging case
  • A 10-minute charge will give you an hour of listening with USB-C charging

In the box comes the standard Anker/Soundcore Happy/Not Happy card, Manual, 5 sizes of EarTips and 3 sizes of AirWings, USB-A to C charging cable, and the earbuds themselves (of course).


Comfort
These earbuds are quite small and come with several ear tips and wing sizes. The combination that work for me is smallest ear tips and wings but even with the smallest wings, my ears start to hurt after a while. This isn’t because they are uncomfortable but because my ears are just a little too small (see the highlighted portion in the photo below) to fir the earbud comfortably. My ear hole opening is also slightly too small for the smallest ear tips as well.

image

Secondly, this isn’t technically comfort related but more of ease of use. The earbuds don’t have a 1 tap or 3 taps option and you can’t change volumes from buds either. This is slightly inconvenient but I can personally live with it.

Sound Quality:
I really like the sound from this little earbuds. The bass is definitely something that surprised me a lot when I first listened to them. The surprising part is the amount of bass considering the size. The bass itself is pretty clean and doesn’t distort anything else. I’m no audiophile or any kind of expert in sound but I felt the range of sound is pretty wide too. I use these for YouTube videos, movies, and songs of varied genres. The clarity on these is remarkable and similar to Apple’s wired earbuds (which is the best I’ve experienced to date). There is a little distortion at louder volumes (about 80% or over) but I normally don’t listen to songs at volumes over 30%.

1 thing to note, however, is that my unit has quite of bit of white noise/hissing sound. Even after several resets, there was no way to reduce the volume background hissing sound. If you have this problem you could always reach out to customer service but in my case, since they were reward for monthly leaderboard, they didn’t have a warranty so customer service couldn’t help either. The sound quality score in my books drop because of the hissing sound so something Soundcore should work on to avoid having disappointed customers.

Last problem I have with these is that when I try to attend meetings/lectures on MS Teams and Bluejeans, the earbuds stop outputting volume after some time. The earbuds don’t disconnect but the sound just goes off. This doesn’t happen with Flare Mini, Life 2, or even JLab Studio bluetooth headphones so something that’s wrong with these earbuds.

Mic Quality
The mics on these are pretty bad. Maybe it’s my unit only but the mic doesn’t pick up my voice properly and I see volume drops when recording on my iPhone 7. Here are the clips from Spirit Dot 2 and my iPhone 7 for comparison. If you listen to the recording, you’ll notice how my sound is muffled in segments which makes it difficult for person on the other end to hear me. I obviously didn’t fluctuate my volume :joy: so it’s definitely the earbuds.

Battery Life and Charging
And finally the last section of this review is battery life and charging. I drained the case and earbuds completely to see the time it takes to charge completely. Using the USB 3.0 port on my laptop and cable provided in the box, the case and earbuds charged from nil to full in 1 hr 45 mins. When earbuds are out of battery and you put the case on charger, it seems to charge the earbuds first and then the case. This is probably to make sure you can use your earbuds while the case is charging.

In terms of battery life, my usual disclaimer applies here. Keep in mind that I listened to music, and used it for Youtube and shows. The battery life claims by Soundcore are based on volume set at 60% volume. I don’t listen to anything at 60% volume so the numbers you’ll see are not unexpected. From the charging case, I got 2 full charges and additional 25% to 33% charge. This allowed me to drain the earbuds from 100% to 0% thrice since I started off with full battery on buds and case.

During the first drain test, I got 6 hrs 18 mins on right earbud and 6 hrs 53 mins on the left. That is 48 mins more on right and 1 hr 23 mins more on left than claimed times. This also shows that there is 35 mins difference between primary and secondary earbud.

During the second drain test, I got 6 hrs 42 mins on right earbud and 6 hrs 10 mins on left earbud. This time I started left earbud before right so it connected to my laptop, making it primary.

Finally, during the third drain test, I got 7 hrs 37 mins on right and 7 hrs 53 mins on left. Am I surprised by the times? Yes, a little because the third test gave massive numbers but not because I got over the claimed times. Also, I realized that was a lot of information so let me wrap it up now.


That concludes my review for the Spirit Dot 2. Would I recommend this to someone? Possibly but would really depend on who’s asking and for what usage. The battery life overall is a downside since they only have 5.5 hrs claimed on 1 charge and 16 hrs total with the case. The Life Dot 2 offer much higher battery life at lower price point so maybe that’s something I could recommend instead. The downside to those is that they don’t offer touch control instead it’s a button that you have press in which makes the earbuds dig in your ear. In short, if you are considering these then keep certain things in mind and ask questions on Collective if you’re confused. I hope my review helps some of you out.

I’m sorry for the late review but my classes just ended and only have 2 finals left so had some free time to write this review. If you reached this far, thank you for reading and let me know if I missed something.


My Other Reviews
Anker Soundbuds Slim Review
Anker Soundbuds Slim Problem
Flare Mini Review
Anker PowerExtend 12 Strip Review

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Wow, thank you for your extremely comprehensive review.

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I tried my best :smile:

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Great review. Sucks you have a hissing/ white noise issue, I don’t notice any noise from mine.

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Nice review, I also have these earbuds but still use my Liberty air 2 more

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Thorough review @Shivam_Shah , good job :+1:

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Thanks guys @ndalby @Unnamed @Mike2468

@Unnamed I remember you saying yours didn’t and your mic wasn’t having the same issues as mine either. Really wish they could figure out a way to make each unit the same so 1 person doesn’t have a bad experience when they could’ve had the same good experience as say someone else

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Nice review sorry to hear about your hissing sounds

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Thanks @ktkundy! Yea kinda does suck. Do you have any of those issues on you Dot 2 or X2? And the mic issue as well. Got that on your earbuds?

nope i don’t as of right now thankfully. its funny you posted this review cause I was working on my spirit dot 2 review as well over the weekend but finals are hitting hard so it got pushed off :joy:.

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That’s good to hear. Good luck on the exams! I have a final on Tuesday so thought I would get this done earlier and maybe @Hannah will consider this for Thread of the Week :joy:

It’s a great review, thanks for sharing! And good luck with your finals :grinning:

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Nice review of a good product. Well done.

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Thanks! I’ll definitely need a lot of luck on 1 of my finals :sweat_smile: