Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 Truly Wireless Headphones Review

The Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 are fairly traditional-looking truly wireless headphones. They’re a little on the bigger side and stick further outside of the ears than the smaller Samsung Galaxy Buds+ Truly Wireless, but they’re also a long way from being annoyingly cumbersome or bulky. The buds feature a primarily glossy plastic construction, though the center caps are made of a matte speckled material that adds a bit of contrast.

The Anker Life Dot 2 are decently comfortable. They enter pretty deeply into the ear canal but don’t exert much in the way of pressure, so they shouldn’t be too irritating to wear throughout long listening sessions. They come with a pretty broad selection of ear tips and stability sleeves, so finding a comfortable, secure seal shouldn’t be too hard.

They have a somewhat disappointing control scheme that can take some time to get used to due to their one-button layout. Functions comprise pausing and playing music, track skipping and rewinding, and accepting or rejecting phone calls, which are achieved through hold or tap commands. Unfortunately, there are no volume controls. A single tap on either bud pauses and plays music, but also answers calls while a 1s press rejects them. Meanwhile, a 1s press on the right bud skips forward and a 1s press on the left one rewinds. Mobile voice assistants are activated via a quick double-tap on either bud. Thankfully, a beeping audio prompt is heard when inputs are registered.

The Anker Life Dot 2 are exceptionally portable. They’re small enough to fit into your pocket and have strong magnets in each bud to keep them together. That said, their included charging case is a little on the bulky side.

These headphones come with a good charging case. It feels solid and looks somewhat premium, with dense construction and glossy plastic interior. The large battery inside is advertised as providing 100 hours of total playback, but that comes at the cost of portability.

The Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 feel well-built. The buds are made of high-grade plastic and are rated IPX5 for water and sweat resistance, though that isn’t something we test for. Their charging case feels quite sturdy, so it should take a few drops and bumps without sustaining much in the way of damage.

The Anker Life Dot 2 are quite stable in the ear. Once you find the right-sized stability sleeves and ear tips, they create a pretty tight seal in the ear and shouldn’t fall out, even during high-intensity workouts.

• Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2 headphones
• Charging case
• 5x Ear tips
• 3x Stability sleeves
• USB-C Charging cable
• Quick start guide

The Anker Life Dot 2's sound profile is reasonably well-balanced overall. Bass is overemphasized across the range but very flat, which adds some thump and rumble to your favorite EDM and hip-hop tracks without much in the way of boominess. Mids are reproduced very accurately, so vocals and instruments should also be clear and present, but a dip in the treble range slightly dulls some finer details.

The frequency response consistency is superb. So long as you’ve attached the right-sized ear tips and sleeves, you should be able to achieve a practically identical listening experience every time you wear them.

The Anker Life Dot 2 have very good bass accuracy. It’s overemphasized but very flat across the range, so there should be enough thump and rumble to please bass-hungry listeners without sounding overpowering or boomy.

Their mid-range accuracy is excellent. It’s quite flat across the entire range, so vocals should sound full, clear, and present. While a small dip in the middle of the mid-range nudges vocals slightly toward the back of the mix, this shouldn’t be too noticeable for most listeners.

The Anker Life Dot 2’s treble accuracy is decent. While vocals and instruments should sound reasonably bright and airy, a dip in the low-treble range veils some finer details.

The peaks and dips performance is very good. There aren’t too many severe shifts throughout the range, though a dip in the mid-mid range recesses some vocals and instruments while an even steeper drop in the low-treble range causes a loss in clarity and detail.

The Anker Life Dot 2’s stereo imaging performance is very good. Their weighted group delay falls entirely beneath the audibility threshold, ensuring tight bass and transparent treble. The L/R drivers are remarkably well-matched in regards to frequency, amplitude, and phase response, so they can model the location of objects in the stereo field with reasonable accuracy. That said, these results are only valid for our test unit, and yours may perform differently.

These headphones have a terrible passive soundstage, which is normal for closed-back in-ear headphones. They completely bypass outer-ear interaction and employ a closed-back design, creating an extremely closed-off listening experience that causes sound to perceived as coming from the inside of your head rather than in front of you.

These headphones don’t have any virtual soundstage features.

The Anker Life Dot 2 have good weighted harmonic distortion performance. While some distortion is present at higher frequencies, it still falls within acceptable limits and shouldn’t be noticeable overall.

These are the settings used to test these headphones. These results are only valid when using these settings.

The Anker Life Dot 2 do a good job of passively blocking out ambient noise. They perform quite well in the mid and treble range, so you shouldn’t have to crank up your music to drown out chatting coworkers or the high-pitched hum of a nearby AC unit. That said, some sound in the bass range might sneak in, so you'll probably hear the rumbling of bus engines if you wear them on your commute.

The Anker Life Dot 2 deliver incredible audio leakage performance. You should be able to listen to your music at very high volumes without worrying about disrupting people nearby, even in a quiet room.

These headphones have an integrated microphone.

The recording quality of the microphone is okay. While your voice should sound clear and almost completely distortion-free to those on the other end of the line, it might also be lacking body and detail.

Like most truly wireless Bluetooth headphones, the Anker Soundcore Life Dot 2’s microphone struggles to isolate speech from ambient noise. These might not be the best choice if you frequently make calls in loud or crowded environments.

These headphones offer a decent battery life of 7.3 hours. That’s much less than the Samsung Galaxy Buds+ Truly Wireless’ 13-hour battery life, but that’s somewhat mitigated by the fact that they have a case that provides just under 100 hours of charge. There’s no master bud, so one can be used while the other charges in the case. They also have a standby timer, turning off the headphones after two minutes of inactivity. Anker indicates that a 10-minute charge yields 90 minutes of playback in their promotional material, but we don’t test for this.

These headphones don’t have a companion app.

The Anker Life Dot 2 are Bluetooth 5.0-compatible but unfortunately don’t support multi-device or NFC pairing. While their latency on PC and mobile devices is too high to play video games or stream videos without noticeable audio lag, some apps do a better job of compensating for this, so your experience may vary.

The Anker Life Dot 2 are Bluetooth-only.

These truly wireless headphones can’t be used wired.

These headphones can only be used for PC gaming via Bluetooth, and aren’t PS4-compatible. Their relatively high latency makes them a poor fit for gaming anyway.

These headphones only support Bluetooth connections. As such, they aren’t compatible with Xbox One consoles.

The Life Dot 2’s case holds enough charge for almost 100 hours of playback, but doesn’t have any inputs.