Soundcore’s Liberty 5 Pro Max packs a touchscreen smart case and an AI note-taker for $230

Soundcore just dropped two new flagship earbuds at Anker Day in New York City, and these aren’t your typical iterative refresh. The Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max are the first products to use Anker’s co-developed THUS AI Chip, and they’re swinging at AirPods Pro and Galaxy Buds Pro in a way Soundcore really hasn’t before.

The Liberty 5 Pro just snagged a Guinness World Record for call clarity, and since the Pro Max uses the same earbuds, both technically count as the World’s Clearest Earbuds for Calls. That’s a bonkers claim, but Soundcore backed it up with third-party testing against 14 global flagship competitors using the ETSI TS 103 106 standard. The Liberty 5 Pro hit a G-MOS score of 3.76, beating every other earbud in the test, some of which are sitting in your ears right now.

What’s actually new here

The secret sauce is a 10-sensor matrix. Eight mics catch ambient noise, two bone conduction sensors detect the physical vibration of your voice through your skull, and the THUS chip runs a neural net to separate your voice from absolute chaos. If you’ve ever tried to take a call from a packed coffee shop or busy street, you know how often that fails.

Adaptive ANC 4.0 also gets a serious upgrade, processing audio 384,000 times per second and offering 2x deeper noise cancellation than the Liberty 4 Pro. HearID 5.0 builds a personal EQ from a hearing test, AI Sound Enhancement claws back up to 65% of the detail Bluetooth compression normally murders, and voice commands respond in 0.91 seconds without bouncing off the cloud. Dolby Atmos with head tracking is here too, along with LDAC, Bluetooth 6.1, IP55, and multipoint for three devices.

The case is where the Pro Max really earns the upcharge. The Liberty 5 Pro gets a 0.96-inch TFT mini touchscreen, but the Pro Max bumps that to a 1.78-inch AMOLED and adds an AI Note-Taker that records meetings straight to the case. No phone needed. Double-tap the back button, and the Soundcore app transcribes everything, identifies speakers, and extracts action items. Both models also support AI translation, with the Pro Max doing so via the earbuds or the case.

Battery is 6.5 hours with ANC on and 28 hours total. Five minutes of charging gets you four hours of playback, which is genuinely useful when you’re running out the door. They also support wireless charging.

The Liberty 5 Pro is $169.99 in four colors, and the Liberty 5 Pro Max is $229.99 in Titanium-Gold or Black. Both are available today on Soundcore.com, Amazon, and Best Buy. Soundcore is also offering a 30-day Try Before You Buy program in the US with no upfront cost, which honestly says a lot about how confident they are.

Liberty 5 Pro