Soundcore is renowned for producing quality products at a competitive price. The Liberty 5 Pro, released earlier this year, have been highly rated and won various accolades, including a Guinness World Record, so we tried them to see if they live up to the hype. 

Liberty 5 Pro: What are they?

The Liberty 5 Pro wireless noise-cancelling earbuds are one of the newest additions to Soundcore’s Liberty range. These mid-range earbuds have the compact, elegant feel of a more premium product, with each earbud taking a sleeker, more compact form than similar rivals. 

Soundcore includes 5 different-sized silicone earbud tips and different fins that tuck into your ear’s antihelix, ensuring a good fit and the best experience every time you use them. The earbuds might be more compact than the previous version (38% smaller, in fact), but they still have highly responsive touch controls on each bud. You can accept or reject calls, change the volume and skip tracks at the touch of a button, or set up custom commands for different presses and slide actions.

Liberty 5 Pro earbuds

Setting up the earbuds is incredibly easy. You can quickly pair the buds via Bluetooth, but if you downloaded the Soundcore app to your phone, you open up several extra controls and options. Once paired, they will connect automatically to your phone each time you take them out of their case.

What features do they offer and what’s the sound quality like?

Liberty 5 Pro earbuds boast excellent noise-cancelling ability, making long flights and trips on public transport more relaxing. Active noise cancellation is noticeably better than on the Liberty 4 Pro, and we thought that was pretty good. 

With well-fitting ear tips preventing sound leaking, the Liberty 5 Pro earbuds deliver good sound quality and clarity, and you can further enhance the sound with adjustments in the Soundcore app. Take the hearing test and make tweaks to match the music you listen to, and you’ll enjoy excellent sound quality you can easily adjust if your hearing or musical tastes change.

Soundcore includes a series of sound modes to make your music sound better, with some more effective than others. The Signature sound set up hits quite well, with other modes pushing vocals, bass, and so on. Dolby Atmos adds depth, and an interesting head tracking mode that keeps the centre of sound physically in front of you, even when you turn your head. An AI optimsation mode is less successful, with no obvious difference – perhaps that’s more useful on low quality recordings.

Rather than a single noise-cancellation mode you can turn on and off, Liberty 5 Pro offers several levels, from Transparency, which blocks some sound but lets voices through clearly, to full noise cancellation which blocks virtually all environmental noise. If you use earbuds in a variety of settings, spend some time exploring the modes and levels in the app or by using the touch buttons on the earbuds to find what works best for you, or just leave them set to Adaptive and let the software figure it all out for you. 

Where Liberty 5 Pro really excels is with the clarity of voice calls. No matter how much noise there is around you, the call is clear for both the caller and the recipient. You don’t need to raise your voice to be heard; the earbuds isolate your voice and filter out background noise. 

What’s the battery life like?

With such impressive sound quality and noise cancellation, there has to be a compromise somewhere, and for the Liberty 5 Pro, it’s battery life. With noise cancellation on in normal mode, battery life is around 6.5 hours from a full charge. Throw them back into the case for a quick recharge, and a 5-minute blast adds a few more hours. 

Liberty 5 Pro earbuds in case

Ramp that up with the most active noise-cancelling setting while playing music, and that drops back to around 2.5 hours. 

For general, everyday use, it won’t pose much of a problem, but if you’re a long-haul traveller, that could be a little wearing, and it does fall short of some rivals in the same mid-range category, albeit with less effective noise cancellation.

The case holds around 28 hours of charge, so if you manage them well, you can still maximise usage on a long-haul flight, but you’ll have to drop the noise-cancellation level. 

How do they charge?

Each time you place the earbuds back into the carry case, they charge. The case has a built-in battery that can hold up to 28 hours of power before you need to connect it to the mains via a USB cable. 

Liberty 5 Pro lid closed showing charger levels

The LED screen on the front of the case tracks the charge levels of both the earbuds and the case. While the lid is closed, a dial shows the rough levels, so you can see at a glance whether they need charging before you leave home. Slide back the lid, and the dial shows a percentage charge rate for a more accurate picture. 

Liberty 5 Pro: The verdict

The Liberty 5 Pro true wireless earbuds are a step up from the previous iteration and provide a lot of tech for a reasonable price. The noise cancellation is good, and the sound quality is excellent, but the Liberty Pro 5 really shines in voice calling. 

If you make a lot of hands-free calls, then these are the earbuds for you. Voices are crisp and clear, even when you speak quietly, thanks to the 10 sensors packed into each earbud and the Anker Thus AI chip, which pulls in voice data to process sound effectively. 

Battery life is a compromise, but with fairly quick recharge times, it is only a minor inconvenience in most cases. 

The Soundcore app is slick and easy to use, with regular updates to keep everything running smoothly. If you have other Soundcore products, you can access them all in the app, keeping everything well managed and easy to find. 

The Liberty 5 Pro earbuds are a great piece of kit that use the latest technology to deliver the best possible experience while staying affordable. Music purists might want a little more from the sound, but for those wanting good sound, great noise cancellation, reliable comfort, and a reasonable price, these hit the nail squarely on the head. 

Tested: Liberty 5 Pro wireless earbuds
Price: £150
Average Joes Rating: ★★★★☆

Sam Huff
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