Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro

The Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro delivers flagship-grade noise canceling and excellent, bass-forward sound at a price that undercuts the big players by a mile. The charging case with its touch display is a genuinely useful novelty. The Achilles' heel is call quality, which is mediocre at best, and some users report finicky touch controls and uneven battery drain. If you mostly care about music and blocking out the world, these are a top-tier value.

Let's talk about what these do best: silence. The 7-sensor vari-angle noise canceling is the real deal. In our testing, it gobbles up low-end rumble from buses and trains with an authority that puts it right up there with the Bose QuietComfort Ultra and Sony's WF-1000XM5. The adaptive part works smoothly too, ramping up or down without any jarring pops or pressure changes. It's a standout feature that genuinely makes a difference on a loud commute. The sound is equally impressive for the price. The ACAA dual-driver setup gives you a crisp, detailed high end without sacrificing the thump down low. With LDAC streaming, tracks have a sense of space and air that you usually don't get outside of much pricier earbuds.

But there's a weak spot, and it's a big one if you take a lot of calls. The mic performance for voice is mediocre, landing in the bottom third of our rankings. In a quiet room you'll sound fine, but introduce any background noise and the AI noise reduction starts to struggle, making your voice sound processed and a bit hollow. It's a strange contrast to the otherwise stellar noise canceling. Battery life is solid at 10 hours for the buds, but some users in our community note it doesn't always hit that mark with LDAC and ANC cranked up, and a recurring gripe is an imbalance where one earbud drains significantly faster than the other.

The elephant in the room is the Sony WF-1000XM5. Sony's earbuds offer a more refined, consistent experience across the board, with better call quality, a more natural transparency mode, and top-tier ANC. If you need your earbuds to be a flawless tool for both music and work calls, the Sony premium is worth paying. The Bose QuietComfort Ultra are another step up in pure ANC performance and spatial audio, but they're also bulkier and pricier. The Liberty 4 Pro gets you surprisingly close to both in noise canceling and sound for a lot less cash.

Then there's the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro. Samsung's buds have a more balanced, audiophile-friendly tuning out of the box and vastly superior call quality. They're the smarter choice if voice calls are a daily thing. The Technics EAH-AZ100 is another dark horse with incredible sound and a more premium build. The Liberty 4 Pro beats them all on sheer feature-per-dollar value, but it's the clear loser in the microphone department. Your choice really boils down to what you're willing to sacrifice: money or call quality.

Pricing on these is a bit of a moving target since they're not sold directly by Soundcore in the traditional sense, but you'll find them ranging from about $110 to $178 across different vendors. Even at the high end of that range, you're getting ANC and sound quality that competes with earbuds costing $250 or more. The Sony WF-1000XM5 and Bose QuietComfort Ultra are undeniably more polished overall packages, but they'll also set you back an extra hundred bucks. If your priority is pure noise canceling and audio fidelity per dollar, the Liberty 4 Pro is a screaming deal.

That value proposition does come with a caveat. You're saving money by accepting some rough edges, specifically around call quality and control reliability. For a lot of people, that's a perfectly fine trade-off. You get 90% of the flagship experience for nearly half the price. Just know that the savings aren't magic; they come from the places where Soundcore cut corners, and the mic performance is the most obvious one.

Soundcore has been on a tear lately, and the Liberty 4 Pro is their latest swing at the premium mid-range crown. You're looking at a set of true wireless earbuds that pack in a frankly ridiculous amount of tech for the money: a 7-sensor adaptive noise canceling system, a dual-driver acoustic setup with LDAC support, and a charging case with its own touchscreen display. It's the kind of spec sheet that makes you double-check the price tag. These are built for the daily grind, whether that's a noisy commute, a busy office, or just drowning out the world with some Hi-Res audio on a walk.

Who's this for? If you want flagship-level noise canceling and sound quality but refuse to pay Sony or Bose prices, you're the target audience. The ANC here sits in the 97th percentile of our entire database, which is a fancy way of saying it's among the absolute best right now. The sound signature, driven by a 10.5mm woofer and a titanium-coated tweeter, also lands in the top tier. But there's a story here beyond the impressive numbers, and it involves a few quirks you should know about before you click buy.

What makes these interesting is the ambition. Soundcore didn't just slap on some ANC and call it a day. They added a touch bar on the case for volume control, a display to see your settings, and a 6-mic array with AI for calls. The whole package feels like a tech demo that actually made it to production. But as we've seen before, ambition can sometimes outpace execution in the finer details, and that's where we need to dig in.

Skip these if you take a lot of phone calls. The mic performance is the Liberty 4 Pro's biggest letdown, and it's not something a firmware update can magically fix. If you're a remote worker or someone who paces around on calls all day, the frustration will outweigh the savings. Look at the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro or Apple AirPods Pro for a much more reliable voice experience.

Also, if you're a stickler for polish and want everything to just work without fiddling, the inconsistent touch controls and occasional battery drain imbalance might drive you nuts. The Sony WF-1000XM5 offers a more seamless, predictable experience. The Liberty 4 Pro is for tinkerers and value-hunters who don't mind a few rough edges in exchange for stellar core performance.

If your world is noisy and your priority is escaping into your music, buy these without hesitation. The noise canceling is phenomenal, the sound is rich and engaging, and the feature set is just plain fun. For a daily train commute or a loud office, the Liberty 4 Pro will make you feel like you got away with something. The comfort is there for long sessions, and the battery, even with its quirks, will get you through a full day with a quick top-up in the case.

However, if you're a remote worker who lives on Zoom calls, or you frequently take calls while walking down a busy street, look elsewhere. The call quality is a genuine liability. In that scenario, the Samsung Galaxy Buds3 Pro or even the aging Apple AirPods Pro are much safer bets. The Liberty 4 Pro is a music-first, calls-maybe-later kind of device, and as long as you know that going in, you'll be thrilled with what you get for the money.