Soundcore Liberty 5 earbuds review

Newest in a lineup of intensely customizable gaming earbuds, the Anker Soundcore Liberty 5 waltzes onto the scene with style and practicality on its side. But with some of the best gaming earbuds coming in at well under its $130/£100 price tag, the Soundcore Liberty 5 is going to have to offer something truly special for its price range in order to make it onto the list, especially versus its plucky predecessors.

Popping the case out of the box, I was impressed with the smooth, matte pebble design. It looks great in white and, although scuffs have become a common sight through weeks of daily usage, it's easy enough to wipe clean. The lid slides up gently (so long as you remember which way up the Soundcore logo sits) to reveal two stemmed earbuds and a tiny button between them for pairing. Simple, aesthetically pleasing, and I only need one hand to open them. That's a bloody good start.

Before getting stuck in, I had my pick of six different sized ear tips. A surefire way to ingratiate yourself to a small ear haver like myself as I'm constantly fighting larger-tipped earbuds. They tend to fall out whenever I smile. Not with these babies. You'd be hard pressed to find a person whose ears don't fit at least one option. Sure, they're not going to mold to your ear shape like the Logitech G FITS, but the Liberty 5 is also half the price and comes with a better spec.

Pushing that customsation to the max, the Soundcore app lets you choose between five levels of Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) in Manual mode, and Airplane or Car in the real-time adaptive AI Transportation mode. I've not had a chance to test it in an actual airplane yet, but there's a notable difference as you scale up to fifth level ANC (Our Jacob has used the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro on an airplane and says it works great, too). It turns droves of passing cars to a whisper, and the rumble of my dehumidifier is completely inaudible. Sadly they don't block out higher pitched sounds like next door's dog yapping, but they do take the edge off.

In the app you can not only change the EQ—with a pretty effective preference test to tune it to your liking—but also edit the on-ear controls. Each earbud has a pressure touch sensor on the stem, making it easy to avoid pressing accidentally, but most importantly both can be assigned multiple controls. There's single, double, triple, and long press gestures, and every single one is mappable to play/pause, previous, and next controls. You can even get it to open your preferred voice assistant, scroll through the ANC modes, or take a photo. The main benefit for me is that I never end up stuck with the back button earbud, unable to skip songs because I left the other one somewhere.

This is something I do a lot, which with my old Amazon Echo Buds meant I would always come back to dead earbuds. Thankfully the liberty 5 lets you power them off when inactive (also editable in-app). I've only had to charge the case for these puppies once in the past two weeks of constant use—and I mean constant. I worked with the Liberty 5 all day, walked the dog with them, and was still able to get a stretch of rain sounds out of them before falling asleep.

With literally five minutes of charging I get just over seven hours of battery life, about four times over until the case itself needs charging… all with ANC turned on. Not to mention that the case charges in five minutes with the little fast charge cable, too. Basically, Anker nailed the battery rating. And sure, the Liberty 5 won't match the Creative Outlier Pro for its immense battery life, but it's got enough to keep you going for weeks at a time.

Take a listen to the microphone on the Liberty 5 in the clip below:

My testing has involved some very loud, very angry listening, which the Liberty 5 handles valiantly thanks to Dolby Audio. Alongside a wide frequency response and LDAC support it delivers warm, versatile soundstage even at metalhead volumes, though earbuds will never match the prowess of the best wireless gaming headsets. The really sad part? No LDAC or Dolby in gaming mode. That's because it would absolutely trample the response times which, when primed, are pretty stunning. Most gamers won't notice the difference, but gaming mode certainly elevates the experience. There's a higher accuracy with clearer footsteps since it leans into the higher frequencies, while moving away from the rumbling lows. It makes me think these would be wonderful for ASMR, though I'm loath to test that out.

As for the mic, you can expect super clear audio recording quality, but with no in-app features to reduce background noise and six microphones, you can hear everything going on in the background over calls. It even picks up all those annoying mouth noises that set off my misophonia. Accurate, then, but some noise gate options wouldn't have gone amiss.

With gorgeous aesthetics, rugged ANC, practical customization, and speedy, accurate sound, there's a lot to love about the Liberty 5. My main gripe as a woman whose clothes often don't contain pockets, is that I can get about five meters away from my phone, behind a single thin wall, before the Bluetooth connection drops out. That's not going to be an issue if you're glued to your gaming monitor, but it's not great for housework. Still, it's the only bad thing I have to say other than the easy-to-scuff matte white case.

It's true you could spend a little extra cash on the shinier pebble-design sister, the Soundcore Liberty Pro 4, but who needs a barometer and a fancy OLED screen when you can have a matte design with the same level of battery life and a wider frequency response, all for less?

Of course, there are cheaper earbuds you might consider as a gamer, depending on what you need. Against our current best mid-range gaming earbuds, the EarFun Air Pro 4, the Liberty 5 is a little more expensive but offers a wider soundstage. It doesn't quite match the Air Pro 4's battery life or allow for wireless earbud charging, though it's hard to find earbuds with this level of customisation and audio accuracy at this price range.