Wireless earbuds have improved so much that good sound and noise cancellation alone aren’t enough to stand out these days.
Soundcore’s Liberty 5 Pro Max from Anker innovates by transforming the charging case into a mini smart device. It packs in a 1.78-inch OLED touchscreen and the headline feature: an AI note-taker.
The charging case has a built-in microphone that can record in-person conversations, meetings and interviews, though not from phone calls or video conferencing software.
Once recorded, the Soundcore app transcribes the audio, identifies speakers and generates a summary with key points.
As someone who attends media briefings and conducts interviews, I find it useful as it doubles as a digital voice recorder with transcription features. This frees up your smartphone, conserving battery life.
The AI provides a summary with the core message, main arguments and points for reflection. It breaks down central themes, speech points, emotional tone and action items.
The Soundcore app provides more detailed summaries than basic AI transcribing services like Otter. Even so, it’s not perfect; it can’t distinguish between people speaking over each other and sometimes gets names and proper nouns wrong.
The basic package includes 300 free minutes per month. Additional minutes, valid for two years, can be bought. Six hundred minutes will set you back R200, 6,000 minutes will cost R2,000.
A Pro subscription costs R300 a month and provides 1,200 minutes per month alongside other premium features.
The touchscreen case supports custom wallpaper, which displays battery life for each earbud and the case, visible on the lockscreen.
You can access menu items like face-to-face translation, AI note-taking, music controls, ambient sound, AI sound enhancement, sound effects and more. There’s also a remote camera shutter.
Like a smartphone, if you swipe down, it has shortcuts for Bluetooth, Dolby Audio, volume, brightness, settings and so on; interaction feels intuitive.
The earbuds offer hearing modes like normal, adaptive, transparency and active noise cancellation (ANC). I’ve used them for music, podcasts, phone calls and in-flight entertainment. They’re comfortable, don’t fall out and sound great.
There’s also a HearID optional AI personalisation feature that creates a unique hearing profile or equaliser tailored to your ears.
I typically use AirPods Pro 2 on flights for ANC. Comparing the two, the Liberty 5 Pro Max is good, but doesn’t block out the hum of the plane as well as my AirPods.
The earbuds come with five tip sizes, three ear fins and a charging cable. The Liberty 5 Pro Max is powered by an AI chip, has eight microphones for calls and offers up to 12 hours of playback with ANC off and up to 50 hours from the case. It supports pairing up to three devices.
It would suit anyone who attends a lot of meetings, webinars and the like. The touchscreen case is clever (but bulky), the sound quality is good and the AI note-taker, though not flawless, gets most of the job done. You’ll need to decide if you want to subscribe for additional minutes or features.
Available in black or gold, the Liberty 5 Pro Max costs R4,999.
Cool factor: 5/5
Usability: 4/5
Value for money: 3.5/5
