Anker unveiled two new earbuds at its Anker Day event this week, both built around a new in-house AI chip the company calls Thus. The Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro, priced at $170, and the Liberty 5 Pro Max at $230 represent the brand's most ambitious audio hardware to date, with improvements across noise cancellation, voice calling, and battery life.
According to a review by CNET, the new chip improves performance across the board, and voice-calling quality in particular stands out as genuinely top-notch. Engadget reported that the Thus chip works alongside eight microphones and two bone conduction sensors to separate the speaker's voice from background noise during calls. Anker says the bone conduction sensors help capture the user's voice at lower volumes in moderately quieter settings, and the system offers 20 voice command options with a claimed response time of under one second.
Both models feature Soundcore's Adaptive ANC 4.0, which uses the eight microphones to process audio data at up to 384,000 times per second. The system monitors external noise and sounds entering the ear canal simultaneously, adjusting noise cancellation in real time. Anker claims the new ANC is up to two times more effective than the previous Liberty 4 Pro model and can reduce a broad range of sounds, including human voices.
A personalized sound feature called HearID 5.0 creates a custom EQ profile based on a brief hearing test. With what Anker calls AI Sound Enhancement, the earbuds can recover up to 65 percent of audio quality typically lost through Bluetooth compression. Both models carry an IP55 rating for dust and water resistance, support Bluetooth 6.1, and are compatible with Apple Find My and Google Fast Pair.
Battery life on both models reaches 6.5 hours per charge with ANC on, extending to 28 total hours when accounting for the charging case. Both models support multipoint Bluetooth connectivity.
The main difference between the two lies in their cases. The Liberty 5 Pro case has a 0.96-inch TFT touchscreen. The Liberty 5 Pro Max case features a larger 1.78-inch AMOLED display and includes an AI Note-Taker that can generate transcripts of meetings, identify speakers, and flag action items.
CNET awarded its Editors' Choice designation to the more affordable Liberty 5 Pro, noting that not all users will need the note-taking feature and that the Max case is slightly heavier. Both models are available now.
