The Lowdown
The Soundcore Motion+ is a portable, battery-powered Bluetooth speaker with a wired input, and when you plug DJ gear into it, there’s no noticeable latency – something we’ve found in almost no other speaker like it. It’s loud enough and sounds good enough for practising and small house parties, and you can buy it pretty much anywhere. At $109 / £109 / €92, it’s the affordable, easy-to-find DJ practice speaker we’ve been looking for, as long as you only use one.
Video Review
First Impressions / Setting up
Why we bought an old speaker
Many beginner DJs are drawn to battery Bluetooth speakers for practice – they’re cheap, portable, and probably knocking around in the household anyway. In theory, as long as any given model has a wired input – needed to plug DJ gear into – it’s a good choice. The problem in practice though is that nearly all of them have latency, even when wired.
That’s because they’re built to link up with other speakers in ‘party’ mode, and the processing that keeps all of that in sync adds a delay, even if you’re only using one. Latency makes DJing really hard, because what you hear always lags behind what you do.
Until now, the only portable, battery-powered speaker we’ve recommended is the Minirig 4, which is great but boutique, expensive and hard to get. So when one of our students told us their Soundcore Motion+ had no latency, I was interested, if a bit sceptical. Beginners often think their speaker has no latency, and then an experienced DJ hears it instantly.
I ordered one anyway. It isn’t new: the Motion+ first came out in 2019, and this version has been around since a revision in 2022. But it’s still widely available.
Plain but well made
It’s a long, thin wedge about the length of your forearm, matte black with a rubbery finish, and quite heavy at 1.05kg. Two rubber feet keep it steady on the table. Behind the grille are two tweeters and two woofers, with a passive radiator on the back for the bass.
A sealed flap on the right-hand side hides the USB-C charging socket, the 3.5mm input and the on-off button. On top there’s a multifunction button, volume, Bluetooth and a BassUp button, plus a microphone for calls. It’s plain, functional and professional looking, and I like it.
To plug in DJ gear, you need a cable with a stereo (TRS) mini jack on one end and whatever your gear has on the other, usually twin RCA.
In Use
The latency test
Plugged into our DJ gear, the Motion+ had no noticeable latency. That’s what we bought it to find out, and it passed.
Its wedge shape also means it sits nicely behind your DJ gear, angled up towards you.
Sound and volume
Over Bluetooth from a phone, I was impressed with the sound. It’s loud for its size, and I couldn’t make it distort however hard I drove it.
Leave BassUp switched on. With it on, you get as much bass as you’d expect from a speaker this size. With it off, it’s too tinny for anything but speech radio. There’s also a Soundcore app for tuning the EQ, though we didn’t test it.
It’s loud enough and sounds good enough for practising, and you could press it into service for a living room party with a few friends. It isn’t loud enough for anything bigger.
Anker quotes 30W and a frequency range of 50Hz to 40kHz (its figures, not our measurements). I never worry about that stuff, though. I just use my ears.
Battery and charging
Anker rates the battery at 12 hours. Published tests put it at around five or six hours at full volume and about 10 at half volume. Charging takes about four hours, according to Anker.
One speaker only, for now
You can pair two Motion+ speakers for stereo, but we haven’t tested that, and it could add latency. So for now, I’m only recommending using one. We haven’t tested Soundcore’s newer Motion speakers either, so this recommendation is for the Motion+ only.
Conclusion
One of the biggest problems beginner DJs have is finding a speaker that works for DJing and for everyday use, from the bedroom to the beach. The Motion+ is loud enough, sounds good enough and, crucially, has no noticeable latency. It’s affordable, and you can buy it pretty much anywhere.
It’s for any beginner or bedroom DJ who wants one portable, battery-powered speaker to practise on and use every day. It’s not for you if you need to play to more than a handful of people, or want a stereo pair (at least until we’ve tested one). We’ll certainly be using it in our training and in our studio when we need something quick to monitor our work.
The alternatives
The Minirig 4 is still a fantastic portable speaker with no noticeable latency, but it’s boutique, pricier and harder to find. If you don’t need portability or battery power, a pair of small powered monitors such as the Pioneer DJ DM-40D or M-Audio BX4 will do the job at home.
The Soundcore Motion+ is the affordable, go-anywhere DJ practice speaker we’ve been looking for. Just use one, and leave BassUp on.
