# New Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max Wireless Earbuds Review

> Source: <https://irishtechnews.ie/new-soundcore-liberty-5-pro-max-wireless-earbuds-review/>
> Published: 2026-07-23 11:00:38+00:00

In today’s TWS world, just sounding good, it seems, is no longer enough. Sets are now coming with AI features such as real-time language translation, active noise cancellation and personalised sound profiles. Just three of the many features which the set we have been taking a look at for the last few weeks comes packing.

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max Wireless Earbuds are jam-packed with a whole host of AI-powered features aimed at improving your listening experience, helping you make clear calls and improving your productivity.

## What’s in the Box?

Inside the box you get the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max Wireless Earbuds, the smartcase, a selection of silicon eartips, a number of “ear fins” which are used to secure the earphones in your ear (more on that below) and a USB-C cable for charging.

## Design and Fit

The Liberty 5 Pro Max Wireless Earbuds are quite small and light, weighing in at just 5.5 grams.

There is a large flat surface on the outside face which has touch controls built in. On the other side, you have a number of different ports, sensors and microphones spread around the device and, of course, the replaceable silicon ear tip.

The top of the device has a rubber-type “ear fin” used for securing the device in your ear. Once you have inserted the earphones in your ear, you rotate them so the ear fin secures against the antihelix, so when combined with the silicon ear tip, you have two points of contact to hold them in place. It is straightforward to use, and it provides a lasting and secure fit with little need for adjustments.

The lightweight and slim design means it is easy to wear the Liberty 5 Pro Max for extended periods without any discomfort or fatigue. Even when travelling on a plane and snoozing, I experienced no issues, as there are no sharp edges or bulges to hurt your ears if you lean on them.

The smart case is opened by sliding the screen upwards, and this reveals the space for charging the earphones. The case has a USB-C port for charging.

## Liberty 5 Pro Max Specs

- Price on Soundcore EU at time checked: €249.99
- Colours shown: Midnight Black and Titanium Gold
- AI chip: Anker Thus AI Chip
- Case display: 1.78-inch AMOLED smart screen
- AI note-taking: AI recording, transcription and summary
- Recording limitation: Records in-person, in-room audio only; does not capture online meetings, video calls or phone calls
- Free transcription allowance: 120 free transcription minutes monthly
- Drivers: 9.2mm wool-paper diaphragm drivers
- Sound profile: Hi-Fi sound with wool-paper diaphragms
- Personalised audio: HearID 5.0 + AI Sound Enhancement
- Spatial audio: Dolby Atmos with head tracking
- Noise cancellation: Adaptive ANC 4.0
- ANC: 100% more effective than the previous flagship, compared with Liberty 4 Pro
- Noise processing: 8 sensors + Thus AI Chip processing 384K+ noise signals per second
- Call setup: 8 microphones + 2 VPUs + AI large model
- Calls: Designed for clear calls in 100 dB+ noisy environments
- Voice control: 20 built-in offline commands
- Voice command languages: English, German, Japanese and Chinese
- Playtime with ANC on: 6.5 hours from earbuds / 28 hours with case
- Playtime with smart features enabled: 4 hours from earbuds / 17 hours with case
- Fast charging: 5 minutes charge = up to 4 hours playtime
- Bluetooth version: Bluetooth 6.1
- Multipoint: Yes
- Triple-device connection: Supported
- Water resistance: IP55
- Earbud weight: 5.5g each, without case
- App support: Soundcore app on iOS and Android
- Web portal: Supports workflow management through web portal with “Ask Anka” AI assistant

## Features

As I mentioned in the intro, the Liberty 5 Pro Max has an extensive list of features. The first one you are presented with is the case, which has its own AMOLED touch-screen and UI, pairs with your phone in addition to the earphones to unlock further features and can be used to adjust settings, control what’s playing and change sound profiles on the fly.

You can swipe left or right to bring up different screens to control each function. The touch input works well, and there is no lag using any of the functions on the case.

**AI Note Taking**

And this leads on to the next feature with the case, which is AI note taking. It might be easy to dismiss this as a bit of a gimmick feature, but in reality, it works amazingly well and anyone who has to regularly take minutes at meetings will absolutely love this feature.

With a double tap of the button on the back of the smart case, the case itself starts recording audio from your meeting. Once the meeting is over, you connect the case to your smartphone via Bluetooth and the recording transfers over and is analysed by the AI built into the Soundcore App.

The app then provides a transcript of the meeting, labels the different speakers and provides a summary of the key points discussed.

I put this to the test several times using varying-sized rooms with different levels of background noise, etc and it worked pretty flawlessly. I think one of the most impressive displays of its accuracy was when I recorded my kids discussing a history project they were working on about the Battle of Tenochtitlan in 1521.

The transcript clearly picked up each voice, but it also accurately picked up the correct words, even when my kids were struggling with the pronunciation of names and places they hadn’t come across before. Once they had finished reading out the different passages, they also then had a summary provided of everything they had discussed.

For recording interviews as we often do for podcasts and features or for general minute taking during office meetings, this is a really nice feature to have built into your TWS and the service works very well.

It is worth noting, though, that if you plan to use this feature extensively, after 120 minutes of recordings, you will either have to subscribe to a service or purchase packs of extra minutes.

**Adaptive Noise Control**

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max uses an array of 8 microphones to continuously monitor both external and residual in-ear noise and adjust the noise cancellation curve in real time as conditions change.

Many sets make similar types of claims, but very few perform as well as this set for ANC. There are a number of different modes available which can be selected by the touch controls on the earphones themselves and further fine-tuned within the app. The main modes are “Adaptive”, which adjusts the ANC based on your surroundings, “Transparency”, which allows outside sounds through clearly and “Noise Cancellation”, which allows a manual adjustment across a range of 1 to 5 and also allows you to enable wind noise protection and a mode for when you are commuting.

I have mainly used the manual settings and the transparency mode during day-to-day use, and I mapped the long press on the earphones to toggle between the two. I found that, for me, when I was in the office and there was a lot of background noise and noise from the HVAC, the number 4 setting in manual worked best.

It provides you with a nice, quiet environment if you just want to use them for that purpose, and it also allows music to play clearly at low volumes. It is simple to switch to transparency mode then if someone comes up to speak to you, and there is no need to take the earphones out.

Recently, when doing some gardening at home, I rented a strimmer and thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the ANC turned up to its max. Before starting the strimmer, I put the Liberty 5 Pro Max in my ears and manually turned the ANC to 5, and as I was outside, I turned the wind noise protection on.

I started the strimmer and went about my business cutting the grass. I could hear the strimmer at a very low level, and as the wire cut the grass, I could hear the familiar sounds, but it was pretty quiet, and I was satisfied with the level of ANC. It wasn’t completely silent, but that was good so I could still have an idea of what was happening with the strimmer.

Just as I was finishing, I had some grass to trim on the roadside. I took out the earphones as I wanted to be able to hear cars coming and step in. I started up the strimmer, and only then did I realise just how much noise the earphones had been blocking out. The strimmer was incredibly noisy to the point it should only be used with earplugs! Before this, I thought the ANC was good, but it was truly impressive to see how well it worked with such a loud and variable noise.

**Voice Controls**

The Liberty 5 Pro Max has a feature, which when enabled within the app, allows you to give voice commands without the need to use trigger words before it works. So there is no need to say “Hey [insert service name here!]”, wait for that to be recognised, and then issue your command. The result being much faster responses to your voice commands.

There are 20 commands built in which allow you to do things like accept or decline calls, skip or pause tracks and change the volume or ANC mode. It works quite well, but it has a cost to the battery when used, as the mics are always listening for a command. When you are in an environment where you don’t want to take out your phone, it can be quite useful, and I would only see it being used in this way due to the extra battery drain.

**Clear Calls in High-Noise Environments**

Powered by the THUS AI Chip, Liberty 5 Pro Max uses a neural-net AI model together with the 10-sensor matrix to help separate the speaker’s voice from surrounding noise, ensuring the speaker is clearly heard on the other end of the call even in complex, dynamic environments.

The bone conduction sensors within the array detect the physical vibration of the speaker’s voice, enabling the system to help capture and transmit voice clearly even at lower volumes in moderately quieter settings.

So, marketing speak aside, in reality, the hardware and software combined here result in you being heard quite clearly on calls, no matter the environment and when combined with the ANC, you can also hear the other person on the call easily.

During a recent call on a quite gusty day, I rang a colleague who happened to also be outside during the call. While the sound quality from their side was heavily affected by the wind noise, he asked me if I was in the office as we spoke!

Another example of this working well was when I was in the departures area of a busy airport taking a call and I apologised to the person on the other end as there was a very noisy motorised trolley about to go by carrying equipment, and I paused until it passed. When I came back on the call, the person had not heard any sound at all on their end, and the call had remained completely quiet.

While it may be easy to not pay much attention to the various features a set like this has, the hardware and AI being used to keep these calls clear from noise, enables the Liberty 5 Pro Max to provide a quiet call experience for you and the person you are speaking to, even in the hustle and bustle of an airport or while being buffeted by strong Irish gusts!

**HearID 5.0 for Personalised Sound**

From within the Soundcore App, there is a section called HearID which offers a number of ways to adjust or enhance the sound from the earphones.

**Exclusive Sound Effects**

This is probably one of the more interesting options available. The app plays you a test track seven times with a slightly adjusted “A” or “B” version, which you have to listen to and select which you prefer. At the end of the process, it suggests a personalised sound profile which can be applied to the IEMs.

For me, it suggested increasing the upper mids slightly and a further increase in the treble region.

You can listen to the test track and compare both profiles and see which you prefer. These aren’t night-and-day differences. It is subtle, but it is noticeable, and it is a nice feature to have. It is starting to appear in more TWS sets now but usually at a higher price point.

It allows you to fine-tune the sound to your ears rather than picking from predefined profiles.

**Curated Sound Effects**

Speaking of predefined profiles, that is exactly what Curated Sound Effects is. Soundcore have created 5 profiles which include “Soundcore Signature”, “Soundcore Balanced”, “Clear Voice”, “Powerful Bass”, and “Calm and Soothing”. I don’t think they need much explanation. Their effect is quite evident, and there is a function to allow you to create more profiles if you so choose.

Out of the different options, I mainly left the Soundcore Signature profile applied as it suited my tastes most.

**AI Sound Enhancement**

AI Sound Enhancement, as its name may suggest, uses AI to help improve low-quality audio. The feature warns you when you activate it that it will run down the battery in your earphones more quickly, so it is something I guess you could use in certain circumstances to improve some audio you are listening to and then toggle it off afterwards.

When activated, you can hear a difference, but you can notice that there is some sort of digital signal processing being applied.

**Dolby Audio**

Ok, so another feature that needs no real explanation. You can toggle Dolby Audio on or off and select whether it uses a “Fixed” position or uses “Head Tracking”.

If you are listening to music or using an app that can take advantage of it, the effect is very noticeable. There is more of a 3D sense to the soundstage created and more of a sense of space from front to back as well as side to side, but it does add echo and reverb-type effects to the sound.

**Soundspace**

Not a function of the [earphones](https://irishtechnews.ie/?s=earphones), but worth noting nonetheless, is Soundspace. This is a section of the app which has a number of sounds available to download and play, aimed at creating background sounds which can help you focus or relax. Some of them have an ASMR feel to them, while others would be helpful when trying to go to sleep, etc.

I really like this feature. I find the sounds very helpful when you have a busy mind and just want to concentrate on one task or wind down on the commute home.

**AI Assistant**

Inside the app, and available through speech using your earphones, is an AI assistant called Anka. This is not a full-on LLM or anything like that, but it is something that can help you to adjust settings on your earphones or give you information about the product.

One of the main reasons to use it would be for the real-time and face-to-face language translation features that are available.

The earphones can, in real time, translate conversations you are listening to into your own language while giving you the text of the conversation in both languages within the app.

To test it out, I found a video on YouTube which was aimed at helping you learn Spanish. The video had two people speaking in Spanish to each other, while at the bottom of the screen you see the written Spanish and the English translation.

The Liberty 5 Pro Max did an excellent job of picking up the language correctly and of giving the correct English translation. There is a slight delay as it listens, then translates and plays back audio in your ears, but it works really well and would be really handy if you attend events abroad and want to understand what is being said in the native language.

There is a section called “Contextual Learning” which gives you common phrases in the source language you selected in both text and spoken audio. Nice if you are trying to touch up on common phrases before you land somewhere, I guess.

The AI note-taking we covered above can be accessed from here too, and there is a “Coming Soon” section with the promise of new features to come.

While this isn’t something that at the moment offers too many more features, it is a single point where all of the many settings can be accessed, and you can find them by requesting rather than having to browse through menus endlessly.

## How Do They Sound?

So, after going through that long list of features, I hear you ask, how do they sound? I would say that the Liberty 5 Pro Max have a consumer-friendly tuning with a bass boost. They produce a clear and detailed sound for a TWS set and are very easy to listen to.

Bass quality is very impressive for wireless earphones. Even with the bass boost, they never sound boomy or loose. The bass is nicely textured, but it does hit hard when needed and does a good job of creating some rumble with its sub-bass. These TWS sets have quite small drivers and are limited in the amount of power they can use, so I was left quite impressed with how good a job the Liberty 5 Pro Max does with bass.

Compared against other TWS, the Liberty 5 Pro Max has a natural and accurate sounding mid range. Strings and pianos are handled very well. Vocals sound accurate, but the limit of detail available on a TWS set becomes evident if you are used to listening to music on higher quality audio equipment. I don’t think people buy wireless earphones expecting the highest levels of detail and resolution, and the Liberty 5 Pro Max perform very well when compared to other wireless sets.

There are decent levels of detail in the treble range, but it is fairly reserved overall. You can hear cymbals clearly, but there isn’t the same level of energy here as there is in the low end, so the bass is more dominant overall.

Overall, the sound quality is very good, and there are many different ways to adjust it to your taste if required.

## Conclusion

I have taken the Liberty 5 Pro Max everywhere with me over the last month or so. I have been on the road a lot, so they have been on several flights and trains, and I found them to be an excellent set overall. The ANC, when required, is excellent, as was the transparency mode, which allowed me to listen to music but still hear gate calls or tannoy announcements in train stations when needed.

Battery life is good, and if you top up the case every night when you are travelling, you will never run out of battery.

There’s a huge selection of features included in the overall package too. Between the earphones, the smart case and the app, Soundcore have covered just about every feature you could need. Will you use them all? Some of them, like the personalised sound profiles, are probably ones you will use once and then never go back to again, but features like the clear audio on calls and the different active noise cancellation options are things you will benefit from every day.

They are very easy to get a good fit with too and are comfortable to wear all day, and if, like me, you travel a lot or spend long hours in an office with earphones in, it is a real plus point.

The Liberty 5 Pro Max are available now from the Soundcore [site](https://www.soundcore.com/eu/liberty-5-pro-series?ref=) directly and from [Amazon](https://www.amazon.ie/soundcore-Wireless-Note-Taker-Whisper-Clear-Cancelling/dp/B0GWLN2Y14/?th=1).

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