After spending the last couple of weeks with the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro earbuds including on our trip to New York City, I’m fully convinced that these earbuds not only destroy Apple’s new AirPods 4, but they’re actually better than the much more expensive AirPods Pro 2 in a couple of very important ways. And if you don’t believe me, I’ll explain how in this article, but first, I want to go through some of the really cool features that you get with the new Liberty 4 Pro.
First of all, the Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro earbuds come with a really unique case that I haven’t seen anywhere else, with a neat little sliding mechanism that reveals the buds on the inside as well as a smart display that shows you relevant information like the charge levels on the case and earbuds themselves, or even things like the active noise cancellation level. But the best part is that you can not only see the display through the top case when closed, but you can actually control various settings using the touch bar on the front, which works surprisingly well for finding the perfect level between the transparency and active noise cancellation modes. In holy smokes, the noise cancellation is absolutely insane on Liberty 4 Pro earbuds, even better than Apple’s best AirPods Pro 2, but I’ll get into my airplane experience later in the article.
Back to the case, it’s got a USB-C port on the back for charging, it also supports wireless charging and comes in three colors, glossy black, glossy light blue, which I have, and white.
What’s really neat is that with the Soundcore app, you can actually go in and customize everything about Liberty 4 Pro buds including upgrading firmware, customizing the stem controls and adding more settings to the smart display like spatial audio controls, find device for if you lose a button you need to find it, and even remote camera which will take a photo right on your iPhone, which is really cool.
The thing that really blew me away was actually the sound quality, because Liberty 4 Pro earbuds get incredibly loud, much louder than the AirPods 4, and even louder than the AirPods Pro 2 while not distorting or blowing out, keeping the vocals sounding natural. I honestly wasn’t expecting Liberty 4 Pro earbuds to sound so good, but I guess Soundcore put some really good speaker drivers and tech into them, like support for high-res audio with the LDAC codec, as well as an advanced ACAA acoustic architecture, a digital crossover for peak driver performance, a titanium coated tweeter, and a 10.5mm bass driver, which that right there was my favorite part.
The bass on Liberty 4 Pro earbuds is just nuts. It was so incredibly loud and deep, so I decided to compare the bass to the new AirPods 4, and it was a night and day difference, absolutely destroying them. And then I put in the AirPods Pro 2, thinking that there would be a small difference, and to my surprise, the bass once again on the Liberty 4 Pro was better. So I found myself re-listening to a bunch of songs in my library just to enjoy better quality music with better bass, and by the way, Soundcore has a bunch of EQ customization settings in the app, which lets you turn the bass up even louder if you want with the bass booster EQ, or turn it down with bass reducer, as well as a bunch of other EQ modes which you can customize, or you can make your own custom EQ from scratch. And that is something that you can’t do with Apple’s AirPods, and the Soundcore app even has a Hear ID preference test which helps you find the right EQ mode if you’re unsure.
What shocked me even more was the noise cancellation, which uses 7 sensors, 6 sound, and 1 barometric, which is specifically for air pressure shifts during flights which is quite cool, and you can actually switch to this mode in the app and see the air pressure in the cabin, and Liberty 4 Pro earbuds will automatically adjust the ANC to account for all of that, including Soundcore’s adaptive ANC 3.0 tech, which constantly monitors the ever-changing environment and recalibrates noise cancellation every 0.3 seconds.
On our flight to New York City last month, I compared the noise cancellation on Liberty 4 Pro earbuds to Apple’s AirPods Pro 2, testing them back and forth multiple times, and I was blown away that Liberty 4 Pro earbuds actually do a better job. I noticed that when I used the AirPods Pro 2 and watched a movie on the flight, I would hear some noises and people chatting in the seats behind me, and it was quite annoying, and the Liberty 4 Pro’s completely got rid of that noise, as well as more of the airplane’s lower, deeper noise.
The AirPods Pro 2 are $250, while Liberty 4 Pro buds are $129.99 and they get louder, with much better bass and actual EQ customization, as well as all the other features like the smart display and the touch bar.
The nail in the coffin is actually the battery life! The Liberty 4 Pro buds will give you 10 hours compared to only 5 on the AirPods 4 and 6 with the AirPods Pro 2. On top of that, you get up to 40 hours with the charging case compared to 30 on both of those AirPods models. They also support super fast charging, which is 2x faster than the previous models, with 5 minutes of charging giving you 4 hours of playtime.
The Liberty 4 Pro earbuds are actually very comfortable to wear, also featuring wearing detection so music pauses when you take them out of your ears, and you can press the stem to pause and play with one press or two presses to skip songs, three presses to go to the previous song, or long press to switch between ANC modes, and you can customize each one of these settings for each ear in the app, which also has a ton of settings like save volume, dual connections, fit test, find device, and much more.
All in all, I’ve been extremely impressed with the Liberty 4 Pros and I’m really shocked at the feature set and performance you get for only $129, which is by the way the same price as the new AirPods 4 which don’t have wireless charging and they don’t have active noise cancellation at all. And the even better $179 AirPods 4 with ANC have much worse noise cancellation than the higher end AirPods Pro 2 which have a seal design, and those are also worse than the Liberty 4 Pros which is the best out of them all. So I’ve must mention that I haven’t been this impressed in terms of overall value by a set of wireless earbuds in a long time, so great job Soundcore. With that said, hopefully you enjoyed reading this article, and let me know your thoughts on the Liberty 4 Pros down in the comments section below.