Anker - Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Noise Cancelling Earbuds - with Guinness World Records-Certified Call Quality - Black

This review is for the new Anker-Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro. To be clear, I own some very high-end earbuds. Some cost more than twice the cost of these earbuds, so when I had the opportunity to pick these up, I was very anxious to see if the claims and YouTube reviews I’ve seen are even close. Honestly, how can earbuds, which retail for under $200, compete with earbuds costing significantly more. Read on to see if they do. Soundcore, is a sub-brand of Anker Innovations headquartered in Shenzhen, China, officially established on April 25, 2018. The brand’s origins trace back to 2014, when Anker began selling Bluetooth speakers and headphones on Amazon. To be honest, I don’t think they were taken very seriously by the major players when they started. But they are now the king of the “Value of Diminishing Returns” today. In other words, you can spend far more money on earbuds, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to significantly better sound or features. To think this much technology and sound innovation is possible at this price range is nothing short of extraordinary. The earbuds come nicely packaged and include the charging case, earbuds, ear-tips in XXS, XS, S, M and L and warranty information. You also get three optional fins, to better anchor the earbuds in your ears. Stylistically, the earbuds themselves are stem design, with touch controls. They are IP55 Dust and Water resistant, but not waterproof. A short USB A to USB C cable is included, but come on Anker, it’s 2026. The cable should be USB C to USB C and like me, I suspect not many people use USB A charging. Fortunately, I have a drawer full of USB C cables and charging plugs. Out of the box, the ear-tips and installed fins fit my ears perfectly and provide a great seal. You should take the seal test in the Soundcore app to confirm (which I did), and it confirmed the seal was perfect. When I get new earbuds, the first I do is charge them. The Liberty 5 Pro can use either wired USB C to charge or Qi-Wireless charging. Then I downloaded the Soundcore app (scan the QR code provided), sign in and set up an account, then slide the charging case open and open Bluetooth Settings on your phone and tap them there to connect. You can connect these earbuds to three different devices, with two of them connected simultaneously to facilitate easy transition between devices. The charging case to be honest, is cool. There are two different versions of the Liberty 5 Pro earbuds. There’s the Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max. While the earbuds and sound are identical on both earbud options, the 5 Pro Max has a charging case with a full AMOLED touch screen on the top of the case, with more touch controls than the 5 Pro. But I didn’t need the extra features as the 5 Pro does everything I need for less money. The charging case of the 5 Pro does have a digital screen on the front of the case, which lets you see the battery levels and adjust several options such as sound settings/equalization, Bluetooth connections, etc., without having to open the app. You can even take a photo on your phone by tapping the photo capture button on the case. Having a built-in remote control for your phone’s camera, can be quite useful. The Soundcore app, is a geek-fest to be honest. There are loads of preset equalization options and you can even use an easy sound test for Classical, Pop or Rock by listening to a sample of music, choosing between two options for 7 different tests and then select that as your preferred EQ. There’s a Multi-Band Parametric Equalizer if you feel you need to customize sound more, but it took me a while to figure out the + option opens the EQ. It would be more intuitive if they just put a button with EQ on it to get there. There are also multiple curated sound effects in the HearID section in the App, plus AI Sound Enhancement, which uses Artificial Intelligence to transform low quality audio into something closer to high resolution sound. There’s also Dolby Atmos which is supposed to create a 3D listening experience (in content which is coded for Dolby Atmos), but to me was a bit more gimmick than what I expected. In terms of Codec, the earbuds support AAC and LDAC. AAC is for iPhone, and there are Android phones which support LDAC (if you could hear the difference, which I can’t). Not many earbuds offer the option to simply tell them what you want them to do. But the Liberty 5 Pro’s do. You can tell them to Start Playing, Pause Audio, Previous Track, Next Tract, Increase Volume, Decrease Volume, Answer Call, Reject Call, ANC Mode, Adaptive Mode and Transparent Mode. How cool is that? The earbuds touch controls work amazingly well. And you can program them in the app to be what you want them to be. In terms of Battery Life, with ANC on, you can get up to 6.5 hours on a single charge, or 12 hours of play without ANC. The charging case offers up to 28 hours if you use ANC and up to 50 hours if you don’t. And you can quick charge for 5 minutes, which will give you 4 hours of play. Bluetooth on the earbuds is 6.1 Standard which uses less power than previous Bluetooth Standards and there is no latency whatsoever, which is great if you watch videos. ANC is quite good. In comparison to my more expensive earbuds, it’s quite close and I’ve used these in some loud environments, and the environment disappears and the music takes center stage. I will say that ANC alters the sound a bit, but not in an objectionable way. It’s just tuned differently with ANC on. The standout feature of these earbuds is call-quality. Anker has introduced the world’s first AI Chip, they call THUS, powered by 8 sensors and the chip can process 384,000 signals per second, which blocks outside noise for total silence for the person you call. And it works better than anything I’ve used. People simply can’t hear the noise around you and are beyond surprised to learn you’re using earbuds. Even my considerably more expensive earbuds can’t compete. All this amazing technology and now it’s time to talk sound. The Liberty Pro series of earbuds employ a 9.2mm driver. That’s not as large as the drivers in my more expensive earbuds, but the sound is quite good. I’ve put these through loads of genres, from Classical, to Rock, Pop, Jazz, Heavy Vocals and they can handle pretty much anything you like. Of course, having multiple equalization options means you can make them sound the way you want. But even with no equalization, I found their sound well balanced, with a bit more emphasis on bass. Vocals are front and center and they can handle complex music, like full Symphonies. They did a remarkable job with Camille Saint Saens Organ Symphony. Here’s where the “Value of Diminishing Returns” comes in. Do they sound like my earbuds which cost more than twice as much? No. But they sound remarkable for the price of admission, and they can be worn for hours comfortably with technology, like call-quality which is simply unmatched at this price point. If you don’t own any other earbuds, you’ll think these are fantastic, because they honestly are. These are remarkable for so many reasons and to think they can do all the amazing things they can do for less than $200 is beyond remarkable. They sound great. They look great. They’re comfortable and they offer features more expensive earbuds don’t. Soundcore has upped their game and then some!

I also have the Soundcore Liberty 4 version of these earbuds, and I like them for the ease of use and sound quality. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro series takes that up a notch. Lot's to appreciate here not the least of which is the comfort and sound quality. I'll get to the sound and comfort in a minute, but one of the things I really love about these ear buds is the case itself. The cases that most other ear buds come with these days are very disappointing. They tend to have to be used in the vertical position, but they usually have rounded bottoms that don't stand up by themselves (which is a big fail). The Soundcore Liberty series understands that issue and corrects for by using a more horizontal approach. Combine that with the slide open lid and angled front panel display and you get a very well thought out and usable charging case. At a glance, the front panel will show you the charge level of not only the case itself, but the left and right bud charge level. It's really nice to be able to see how much charge I have when I want to use them. Other brands leave you hanging in this respect and make you use their app to find this information, which is probably something most people don't even bother with using. I like that there are lots of different size tips and fins to help fit them to a wide variety of ears. Fit is usually overlooked by a lot of brands but without a good seal, there's no chance of hearing good bass response and the Adaptive Noise Canceling features go right out the window. I always end up using the largest tips to get a tight seal. I didn't use either of the two fin sizes and chose instead to use the non-fin blank insert. For me, the fins didn't add anything in the way of stabilizing the fit. That's nothing against the Liberty 5 Pros, it's just about the shape of a persons' ears. The take away here is that pretty much anyone can get a comfortable fit with the options they include. If you're new to wearing earbuds, take the time to experiment with the different tips and fins. Good fit is everything when it comes to enjoying earbuds. The sound quality is quite good. Out of the box, I had too much bass for my liking and once I found the EQ in the included app I was able to boost the higher end and bring the bass sound down to clean and punchy. I was able to get good sound pressure levels out of them, and I enjoyed all the different genres I listened to. The fit was also good and I was able to wear them through my hour long workouts with no trouble. They stay in place nicely and are easy and straight forward to put in. I've used other brands that I ended up constantly needing to monkey around with in order to get the best fit, but the Soundcores are very easy to put in correctly the first time. The noise canceling feature works really well and you have your choice of selecting the Adaptive Noise Canceling, or manually selecting the level of noise cancellation that works best in your situation. There are also selections for “Normal” and “Transparancy” (which lowers the music volume when the buds sense you speaking to someone). These settings can be chosen in either the app or on the built in display on the case (which is actually a touchscreen). I don't normally get a lot of calls during my workouts but I did try out the call features. The most beneficial one being the call clarity. This is mostly due to the AI Thus chips in each earbud. The AI helps to separate your speaking from your local environments background noises. The AI is also responsible for the ANC and works well to allow you to clearly hear what your caller is saying. Also, through the app you can have the AI set up the way music will sound to you. The AI will play you two snippets of music from a genre you like, and have you select which sounds best to you. Then it modifies the sound and plays you two new choices, etc.. It does this seven times. At the end of this exercise, the sound you hear “should” be the best sound for you. Basically, this works “ok”. But at the end of each test (and I did it three different times), I always went back to the EQ sittings I had set up earlier. Which by the way, you can save lot's of different sound profiles if you like to customize the sound for different types of music or artists. The only caveat is that you need to log into the app to do this. At the end of the day, there are very few earbuds I've given a great review. I've reviewed quite a few from a wide variety of brands. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pros are not the absolute best ear buds I've ever listened to, but they can sound really great if you take the time to set them up properly. You can achieve clear vocals and cymbals while also getting rich bass and punchy sound without any muddiness. Soundcore has obviously put a huge amount of effort into creating a set of earbuds that emphasize great sound, comfort and ease of use. And they do this for a price that's way below the price of all of their major competitors. I've always liked the Soundcore brand for this reason. The Liberty 5 Pros are also super easy to use and even though there's a lot going on behind the scenes (mostly thanks to the ANC and AI features), they make the user experience very simple and easy. And that to me is the sign of great technology.

Being a headphone and music enthusiast spanning 7 decades now and a member of the online Headfi Headphone Community for many years will hopefully give my real world thoughts on these Anker Liberty 5 Pro ANC/IEMs (Adaptive Noise Cancelling/In Ear Monitors) credence with all of you. To make things easier, I shall just call them the Liberty 5 Pro from now on. I am quite familiar with a Anker's offerings and have always found them to be durable, well built products and the Liberty 5 Pro keeps that tradition going! For those wondering how ANC does what it does, adaptive noise cancelling works by using microphones to pick up background noise and instantly generating an inverted sound wave (i.e., an "opposite" or 180° out-of-phase signal). When these two sound waves collide, they cancel each other out in a process called destructive interference and voila! No more background noise. Or close to it. I downloaded the app, performed the necessary updates to the Liberty 5 Pro and begin familiarizing myself with some of its features. Firstly, I am no big fan of IEMs but these were comfortable enough for me to wear and use the first day for just over 4 hours. The first tested feature was the ANC. The Liberty 5 Pro easily quieted a bathroom fan so next I went outside and gave it the Diesel Truck Test! I was very impressed and to be honest this is the first ANC equipped Headphone or Earbud to actually block the noise of my diesel truck when I am standing right next to while it is running! Well done, Anker! The key to this is the superb ANC coupled with the well fitting tips of these Earbuds. They permit up to approximately 80% or so noise reduction!! In a word: Outstanding! I then tried out the A.I. Translation. If all I wanted to translate from was Spanish to English, it would be good. Alas that no matter how I tried via A.I. "Anka" (the assistant!) or drop down menus or searching online help, I couldn't change the language from Spanish to anything else which is a pity because it claims to be able to translate "over 100 languages". I bet it can, but it won't let me do anything but Spanish to English and the little drop down arrow for selecting languages doesn't work either and "Anka" was of no help on this problem. I activated voice control/commands and "Anka" hears me but she cannot change anything nor give me any help to do so and voice commands to change the language being translated do not work with her at all. This is done in the Smart Voice Control section of the application. For the record, "Anka" did fine with helping me to play music. The case has an illuminated display that although small can be easily read and you can select things like ANC and Dolby from it but in all honesty I prefer to do so from the app on my iPhone as it is much more intuitive/easy! If you're not using "Anka", turn her off as it just eats battery. Aside from that, The Liberty 5 Pro are very good at reproducing music as that along with answering phone calls is what I primarily use my iPhone 16 Pro Max for. I don't watch TV, movies or YouTube on it. I have a big screen TV for that! There are four Ambient Sound modes available: Noise Cancellation - Adaptive - Normal & Transparency. My favorite when outside walking and it is windy, is...Noise Cancellation coupled with turning on Wind Noise Reduction. That works really well, trust me on this one! It will also remove the noise of a fan in a room. It's pretty good. The Liberty 5 Pro also has a Dolby Audio Head-Tracking feature. It did nothing for me. Next I tried the 4 "Curated Sound Effects" and found them to be subtle but nice. There are "Soundcore Signature", "Clear Vocals", "Powerful Bass" and "Calm and Soothing". Given the feature rich abilities that you may or may not wish to activate, the Liberty Pro 5 can last up to 12 hours without ANC. With ANC the battery may last up to 6 hours and with A.I. added, up to perhaps 4 or so hours. My testing delivered 13+ hours without ANC or A.I. on but I also listen at very low levels for situational awareness and to protect my hearing. These would be the ideal ANC Earbuds to use on airplanes. They removed the sound of my diesel truck so I have no doubts they will make air travel a quiet pleasure! If translating from Spanish to English is a top priority then I can say these are highly recommended. But, my reality was frustrating when trying to change the language being translated to anything else. So then I give these a very recommended rating and 4 out of 5 Stars. Either my pair and/or the downloaded application were faulty or I am just not being nice enough to "Anka" as she couldn't help me on this. No harm I am certain I will find the answer soon and that does not stop me from saying the Anker Liberty 5 Pro are more than worthy of owning and using!

I've been using the Soundcore Liberty Pro 6 for around a week now. For what these cost I think they're competing with Sony and Bose at this point. These are amazing earbuds that deliver great sound and features at a price point that doesn't break the budget. The fit on these earbuds is excellent. You have several different tip sizes and wing tips to choose from. The wing tip will tuck slightly under part of your ear but aren't always needed. These fit my ears perfect and don't stick out annoyingly. They look like a little bean. No issue with wireless charging and usb charging is extremely fast. 5 Minutes of charging gives you 4 hours of playback. There is a screen on the front of the case that indicates case battery percentage, and a battery percentage for each earbud. Awesome so you don't have to go to an app or wonder if they're going to die waiting on the dreaded "battery low" notification. Bluetooth must have changed within the past year or so. My old earbuds sometimes disconnect from the phone for no reason at all. I'm starting I must have been out of the game too long because the Liberty Pro 5 literally connects as soon as you open the case. I couldn't believe it. Flawless. The sound quality on these is right up there with the Bose I normally use. They deliver clear vocals and good detail but are slightly more bass heavy than previous Soundcore models I've used. There is a built in customizable EQ that does a hearing test on you and then enters the sound profile that best fits what you are using them for. You can also Call quality is actually unbelievable. I did my usual lawnmower test while I was wearing these and my wife could hear me clear as day with the gas powered mower running. The call came thru crisp and easy to understand. They apparently use newly developed AI features to get this quality. My wife couldn't believe it, now she want the Liberty 5. ANC is right up there with my go-to Bose earbuds. There are several different settings obviously, and all can be accessed by programming the tap settings on the earbuds, on the app or on the outside of the case. The adaptive setting feels like it adjusts to the changing sounds around you. To be completely honest transparency mode doesn't feel quite as transparent and magnified as other earbuds. There is also a smart voice control you can turn on where you can go literally hands free and just tell the earbuds what you want done. Just say "Hey Anka, answer call" or "Hey Anka, transparent mode." and it confirms and does what you've told it. A few other features to note are Find my support, IP55 rating and bluetooth multipoint. I'm not going to lie, I've tried alot of earbuds in my life from budget to the Bose and Sony and everything in between. These are the best I've had in my ear and they've set the standard moving forward for all the other brands. I'm likely going to be getting another set of these for my wife, they're really that good.

I cannot rave enough about the soundcore liberty 5 pro true wireless earbuds. From the design, which is original and functional, to the incredible (and I mean incredible) call quality they offer. Right out of the box, I really liked the simple, yet unique way the device opens, which is a slide rather than a life that almost all wireless earbuds have these days. The earbuds themselves also have a .96 in TFT touchscreen build into the case itself! While not the only device to offer this feature, I found this solution to be easy to use and very functional. You can change sounds modes, perform ANC adjustments, and check out how much battery is left all from this touchscreen. You also get different size tips which one would expect since everyone’s ear is different. For battery life, I found the 6.5 hours with ANC on to be pretty accurate. They also state this increase to 28 with the case, which recharges the buds. Overall, this is one of the best, if not the best, earbuds for overall sound quality and productivity. With the use of technology (10-sensor matrix, 8 MEMS microphones and 2 bone conduction sensors), you get class leading ANC that produces excellent sound on both ends of the call. I have not had one person complain about my background noise even when out and about running errands in a loud environment. Whether you are taking a casual personal call, or presenting in a work meeting, you will have next to zero issues with call quality.