Soundcore Liberty 5
MSRP $130.00
“The Liberty 5 goes back to the basics (and nails them).”
Pros
- Great sound
- Very effective ANC
- Excellent transparency
- Great for calls
- Long battery life
Soundcore’s Liberty 5 wireless earbuds are, in many respects, exactly what I’ve come to expect from the Anker-owned brand. They’re a midrange set of noise-canceling buds that do almost everything you could ask of them, and at $130, they’re still very affordable, especially when you compare them to Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 ($249).
Soundcore says it has made several improvements over the previous model, including the company’s best ANC system so far. On the other hand, some features have been pulled: There’s no longer head-tracked spatial audio or heart rate monitoring. Here’s what you can expect from the Liberty 5.
IP55).
You get a choice of four colors, and inside the box is a short USB-A to USB-C charging cable, along with a generous five sizes of silicone eartips (six if you include the preinstalled mediums).
Soundcore has kept the pressure-based squeeze-to-click gestures on the earbud stems that it introduced on the Liberty 4 (which are similar to the controls that Apple uses on its AirPods 4 series). Soundcore added a swipe gesture for volume control on the Liberty 4 Pro, but the Liberty 5 still uses squeeze-to-click for volume adjustments.
Galaxy Buds Pro 3 for exactly that reason.
The Liberty 5 are no exception to this generalization. With the default eartips, I found them very easy to wear for long periods. And just in case you’re unsure of which eartips to use, the Soundcore app will help you find the ones that ensure optimal ANC and sound quality (only you can tell if they’re also comfy enough).
I really like the squeeze controls. They offer a precision you just can’t get from touch controls, and they’re accessible even if you’re wearing gloves. Thin gloves. They’d be a bit easier to use if the stems were tubular instead of flat oval, but that’s just nitpicking on my part.
The controls are fully customizable within the Soundcore app, with four gestures per earbud (single-, double-, triple-click, and a long-press option). There’s even an optional smartphone camera trigger option, but strangely, it can only be associated with the single-click gesture.
New for the Liberty 5 is the option to mute the mics when on a call with a single click. It’s handy, for sure, and you get a confirmation tone immediately, plus one every 20 seconds while you remain on mute. Just keep in mind that there’s no other confirmation of your muted status — iOS’s phone app won’t adjust its mute button state to match the state of the earbuds.
Helping out with music control are wear sensors, which almost instantly auto-pause and resume your tunes when you remove or replace an earbud.
With Bluetooth 5.4 and Google Fast Pair, connecting the buds is a breeze on Android and iOS. Wireless range is about average: 20-30 feet indoors, depending on obstacles, and further if you’re outside, and I didn’t notice any dropouts during my testing.
Bluetooth Multipoint works very well, and I’m thrilled that Soundcore has adjusted its app so that you can see all of your previously paired devices, letting you select the ones you want to be active. Even better: Soundcore has fixed a limitation where you had to decide between Multipoint and LDAC codec support. Now you can run both simultaneously, something that competitive models from EarFun (e.g, Air Pro 4) can’t do.
However, the Liberty 5 (in fact, all Soundcore products so far) lack Bluetooth Auracast compatibility. If that matters to you (and I think, increasingly, it will matter to all of us), the EarFun may be worth a look.
