REVIEW: Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max

John ReillyJune 3, 2026

It’s rare that a pair of earbuds genuinely surprises you. After spending years testing everything from budget Bluetooth buds to flagship Sennheiser and Bose hardware, you tend to develop a fairly reliable sense of where a product sits before you’ve even finished the unboxing.

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max, however, managed to catch me off guard in a few genuinely meaningful ways. These aren’t perfect earbuds, and at €249 they’re entering some seriously competitive territory, but there’s a strong case to be made that Soundcore has built something that deserves to sit alongside the big names, and in one key area, surpass them entirely.

Design & Build Quality

The first thing you’ll notice is the case, and it demands your attention. Rather than the usual passive plastic shell with a small LED indicator, the Liberty 5 Pro Max arrives with a 1.78-inch AMOLED display on the lid that is, frankly, a bit over the top. But here’s the thing: it actually works.

The screen is sharp, responsive, and legitimately useful for navigating features like the AI note-taking function and quick settings without needing to open the app. It sounds gimmicky until you use it daily and realise you’ve stopped reaching for your phone as often. The glass covering the screen is also fairly sturdy (as you can see by the unfortunate chip marks on the case) after I accidentally dropped the case during my review.

The build quality of both the case and the earbuds themselves is solid, with a premium feel that doesn’t invite comparisons to budget hardware. The earbuds are lightweight in the ear and the fit is secure without being uncomfortable over extended sessions.

If the top ‘silicon flap’ section on each earbud is a bit too much and hurts your ears after long periods of wear, Soundcore have included a replacement piece so you can remove the rubber piece and insert this replacement section to help the earbuds fit better in your ear. IP ratings are decent, nothing to worry about in the rain or at the gym.

Software

The Soundcore app is comprehensive to the point of being slightly overwhelming.

There are multiple tabs across the bottom of the interface covering everything from equaliser settings and ANC modes to something called Soundspace, which gives you access to a selection of meditation soundtracks and a collection of Calm’s Sleep Stories, free for a limited time.

You can also build your own ambient audio mix from an extensive library of sound effects, which is a genuinely nice touch for focus work.

There’s also Anka, Soundcore’s own AI companion, which you can call upon directly through the earbuds. The breadth of options available here will delight the enthusiast user but may feel a little daunting if you just want to put on some music and get on with your day.

Usability & Features

Let’s get to the headline act: call quality. Soundcore landed themselves a Guinness World Record for call quality with the Liberty 5 Pro line, and having put these through weeks of real-world testing across Dublin city centre, I can see exactly why.

I tested taking calls while walking past active construction sites on the quays, wandering through busy markets, past event speakers pumping music at volume and through the usual chaos of a crowded city street.

Both my wife and other people on the other end of those calls independently commented that I sounded like I was sitting in a quiet office. That’s not marketing language, that’s a genuine result. The 10 sensors across the two earbuds, combined with Anker’s new Thus AI Chip, are doing something genuinely impressive here. I’m keen to see what else Soundcore or Anker decides to do with that chip in future products.

The ANC performance is extremely competitive. I wouldn’t quite say it edges out the Bose QuietComfort Ultra earbuds, which have been my daily driver for the past year or so, but it gets very close and in some environments the gap is negligible. The transparency mode is notably natural sounding, with very little of the robotic or audio artifacts you sometimes hear on mid-range earbuds in this space.

Easy Chat, which is Soundcore’s branding for speech detection, is quick. Noticeably quicker than anything I’ve tested in this category, again thanks to the on-device processing speed of the Thus Chip. Start talking and the volume drops, transparency kicks in and you can hear yourself and the other person clearly. All good. The only caveat is that it’s quite sensitive: a few coughs can trigger it, and if you’re the type who sings along to your music (you know who you are), you’ll want to disable it. Speaking of which, if you disable LDAC, which I’d recommend as it caused some connectivity inconsistencies during testing, you can connect to up to three devices simultaneously, which is genuinely useful if you’re bouncing between a laptop, phone and tablet throughout the day.

Then there’s the AI note-taking feature, which is built directly into the charging case itself and operates independently of whether your earbuds are in your ears. I’ve used it across several meetings now and the results are impressive, but not flawless. The transcription accuracy is solid, but distinguishing between more than six speakers in a meeting still needs some development before it’s fully reliable.

As you’d expect, there’s a subscription layer attached to the AI note-taking features. Users get 120 minutes of free AI recap credits as an introductory offer on top of the 300 minutes detailed in the comparison table.

If you need more than that (and honestly, if you’re in more than 300 minutes of meetings a month, the note-taking might be the least of your problems), a Pro subscription unlocks 1,200 minutes of monthly transcription alongside additional features including Ask AI, which lets you highlight any word or phrase in a transcript and get a detailed explanation or description of it.

The Pro tier also opens up app syncing, with Notion as the first official third-party integration and more platforms apparently in the pipeline.

Battery

At 6.5 hours of playback with ANC enabled, the Liberty 5 Pro Max isn’t breaking any records for stamina. That’s a pretty decent rather than exceptional figure for 2026. Where the battery story gets genuinely interesting is the fast charging: five minutes in the case gives you four hours of playback from completely dead earbuds.

That’s a number worth highlighting. If you’ve ever rushed out the door having forgotten to charge your earbuds the night before, you’ll appreciate how much difference that makes in practice.

Conclusion

The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max isn’t trying to be all things to all people, but it does pack an extraordinary amount of genuine functionality into a surprisingly polished package. The ANC is among the best I’ve tested outside of Bose’s flagship offering.

The call quality is, without exaggeration, the best I’ve experienced on any pair of true wireless earbuds, full stop. The AMOLED case is OTT but practical. The AI note-taking is promising, the app is feature-rich, and the Thus Chip feels like the beginning of something.

There are caveats: the subscription model for extended AI features, the sensitivity of Easy Chat, LDAC connectivity inconsistencies, and battery life that’s solid rather than standout. But taken as a whole, this is a serious product from a brand that has outgrown the budget bracket entirely.

Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max Pricing & Availability

The Liberty 5 Pro Max is available directly from Soundcore’s online store and Amazon for €249 and from retailers including Very for €279.99. The earbuds are available in Midnight Black and Titanium Gold.

Their smaller sibling, the Soundcore 5 Pro are also available for €179 on Amazon with the main differences being the lack of AMOLED screen on the case and not AI Note Taking capabilities built directly in.