The Liberty 5 Pro succeeds the Liberty 4 Pro from 2024 and the budget Liberty 5 that launched last year, according to Trusted Reviews. That same review lists the standard Pro at £150 against £200 for the Pro Max, a £50 gap between the two models.

One reviewer put a sharper number on the value gap: the Liberty 5 Pro costs nearly $100 less than most of the earbuds that reviewer otherwise recommends at the top of the category, according to Dublin Post, about two weeks ago. That comparison comes from a reviewer who says they've personally tested more than 50 pairs of wireless earbuds, a career claim rather than an independently verified credential, per Dublin Post.

Beyond price, the earbuds carry an IP55 rating for resistance to dust and light rain and work well on both iPhone and Android devices, according to WIRED.

WIRED tested the earbuds against fire truck sirens, a busy highway overpass, a crowd of New York City commuters, and a loud café; none of it reached the other end of the call, according to WIRED. The reviewer's voice stayed "loud and clear" throughout, and callers repeatedly asked some version of "You don't hear that truck?" during testing, per WIRED.

Dublin Post's review, published the same week, describes a near-identical set of environments and reaches the same conclusion, using language close enough to WIRED's account that it reads more as two publications reporting on the same experience than as a fully separate trial. Where Dublin Post adds something distinct is a rival comparison: against the Apple AirPods Pro 3, Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen), and Shokz OpenDots 2, all three sounded worse for call clarity in that reviewer's testing, according to Dublin Post.

Android Central ran a more controlled version of the same test. Recording on a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra against 80 decibels of simulated airplane-cabin and traffic noise, the tester found the audio waveform went completely flat the moment they stopped talking, with the microphone picking up none of the background sound, according to Android Central, seven weeks ago. During an actual 45-minute commute, a friend on the other end of a real call said it sounded like the reviewer was sitting in a quiet room, the same review reports.

That tester called the result what they believe to be market-leading call quality, a personal judgment rather than an industry ranking, per Android Central. What Hi-Fi?, about two months ago, reported similar results from its own call testing: traffic, wind, and birdsong were barely audible to the other party, though voices came through sounding "a little artificial and robotic."

Taken together, WIRED's real-world calls around New York City, Android Central's recorded-noise test, and What Hi-Fi?'s independent call assessment all point the same direction, and Dublin Post's account, while closely mirroring WIRED's, adds a rival comparison of its own. That's stronger evidence than any single glowing review, even if it stops short of a standardized lab test run against every competitor on the market.

The hardware behind it is a 10-sensor array paired with Soundcore's Anker Thus AI chip, which fuses the chip's CPU and memory into a single configuration for more efficient processing of audio and calls, according to What Hi-Fi?. Soundcore also credits the Liberty 5 Pro with a Guinness World Records title for speech quality, a claim several reviewers repeat. The supplied reviews attribute that claim to Soundcore itself; the research gathered for this piece doesn't independently verify it against Guinness's own listing.

The evidence above is specific to voice microphones on calls. General active noise cancellation, the kind that blocks sound for music and podcasts, is a related but separate feature, and reviewers are less unanimous about it.

ANC strength adjusts from one to five through the case or the Soundcore app, according to Dublin Post. That reviewer rated the ANC itself as top-tier, noting only the Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds (2nd Gen) and Sony WF-1000XM6 blocked noticeably more noise in their testing, according to Dublin Post. Trusted Reviews reached a similar verdict, calling the ANC "top-tier" for the price, while What Hi-Fi? was more reserved, describing it simply as "decent."

Music playback is where the reviews genuinely split. What Hi-Fi? titled its review around "mediocre sound," while Dublin Post described the default tuning as bass-heavy. WIRED took a friendlier view, calling the earbuds comfortable and noting only that they "sound good."

Reviewers point to a few adjustment tools: five preset sound profiles, including one reviewer's preferred "Soundcore Balance" setting, an eight-band equalizer, and a personalized HearID mode that tunes output based on a short listening quiz, according to Dublin Post. Dublin Post describes these as ways to adjust the sound rather than a change to the earbuds' underlying tuning.

What's established: WIRED and Trusted Reviews report $170 and £150 as the Liberty 5 Pro's price in the US and UK, with the Pro Max priced £50 higher. Multiple reviews, using different testing setups, each found the earbuds unusually good at suppressing background noise on calls, though Dublin Post's account overlaps closely enough with WIRED's that the two shouldn't be counted as fully independent confirmations. What Hi-Fi? and Dublin Post separately flagged the music side as the weaker part of the same product, one calling the sound "mediocre," the other describing the default tuning as bass-heavy.

What isn't established, based on the source material gathered here, is whether any retailer has discounted the Liberty 5 Pro below those reported prices, and if so, by how much or for how long. The reviews cited above report pricing at the time of publication; the source material gathered for this piece doesn't include live pricing or price-history data for this model.