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The over-ear headset rules the roost for gaming at a desk but peel yourself away for a moment to touch grass or, more likely, play Steam Deck in bed, and a set of earbuds comes into their own. I’m being pulled away from wearing chunkier headphones in favour of slim in-ear designs these days, and it’s feature-filled earbuds like these Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro from Anker that are doing it.
I’ve been using the Liberty 4 Pro for a variety of uses over the past few weeks: trips to PC Gamer towers, travel further afield, and playing games on a couple of handheld gaming PCs. The Liberty 4 Pro buds have been superb for all of it. That’s thanks to the huge amount of control I have over every aspect of these earbuds.
It’s not new to have handy controls on the earbuds themselves. A way to quickly answer a call, play, pause, skip… you’ve probably used earbuds before, I don’t need to explain this. Like many other earbuds before them, the Liberty 4 Pro offer the same sorta thing. It has little touch capacitative tracks on the edge of both left and right earbuds that double up as a button. Slide your finger up either earbud, the volume increases. Down, it decreases. Click it, a track pauses. Double click, skips.
The Liberty 4 Pro does something I really like, however. It lets you mix up all of that.
Liberty 4 Pro specs
Driver: 10.5 mm bass driver and titanium-coated tweeter
Frequency response: 20 – 20,000 Hz
Connectivity: Bluetooth
Water/dust resistance: IPX5 (splash proof)
Controls: Touch controls on each earbud + case
Battery life: 10 hrs (7.5 hrs w/ ANC enabled) + charging case 40 hrs (30 hrs ANC enabled)
Active noise cancellation: Yes, six microphones + barometric sensor
Price: $130/£130
Through the Soundcore app on my phone, you’re free to change what each swipe or press does, and this extends to each individual earbud. You can play it safe with both earbuds matching your ideal configuration, or have one earbud dedicated to my audio and the other open your phone’s voice assistant and deal with calls.
The anarchist in me wants to set triple press to answer a phone call and double press to hang up on one bud, and the exact reverse on the other. Though I’m much more the type of person to leave most button presses empty and just keeping things simple. ‘Damn you, live a little’ I say to myself as I set my safe and simple shortcuts in the Soundcore app.
This level of customisation means you’re not locked in with clunky controls, even if the earbuds are set up that way out of the box. I’ve had earbuds in the past that have weird buttons for opening AI assistants or changing audio presets, and which I’ll occasionally press by accident—not here. The Liberty 4 Pro does actually come with a long press to change ANC/Transparency modes as standard, but I’ve turned it off to avoid such a situation happening.
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Another feature I’ve disabled right away is the wearing detection. When enabled, this pauses any media when you take an earbud out, but as someone that lives in fear of unknowingly blasting my music to everyone around me due to a time as a child when I did that (both my headphones were playing and my phone speaker, and I was on public transport, and I was an emo teen), I like to turn it off. Anker lets me do that in the app.
The only downside to all these control options on both earbuds is that it’s easy to accidentally press the touch controls when taking the earbuds in and out of your ears. This has led to a few moments where I’ve cranked the volume up a little too high just while trying to fit the buds in my ears.
I should say before we go any further: the Liberty 4 Pro sound great. I’m really impressed with these little earbuds. The bass is weaker than a chunky over-ear headset, that’s a given, but I listen to a lot of drum and bass and it’s not a complete wash out. You’re definitely missing out on the lower bass lines and ‘oomph’ but there’s plenty of clarity throughout the range, with deep and high vocals coming through clearly.
The good news is you can tweak these earbuds further to your liking in the Soundcore app.
The equaliser tab offers a wide selection of audio profiles to choose from. There’s one for every genre of music and more. After trying out most of them, I’ve found the profile provided by ‘soundcore Signature’ is the best for use across games and listening to music. It strikes a good balance between punchy highs and decent bass response (for earbuds). Though there are a few other options…
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If you’re a certified audio tweaker (that’s tweaker, not… never mind), you’ll want to dive into the custom EQ option. You can set the EQ a variety of ways and across a bunch of profiles (I reached four custom EQs before deciding that’s probably enough for most people).
Audio nerds will be pleased to hear it’s possible to enable LDAC mode for higher quality streaming over Bluetooth (though at the cost of power consumption), but you’ll need to pair it with some high quality streaming software or files, such as Tidal or Apple Music. Even though I’m a pretentious Tidal user and do care about high quality streaming most of the time, I find I don’t notice the difference between standard and LDAC while using these earbuds—perhaps it’s the tiny drivers covering up all the nuance but give it a go and see for yourself.
LDAC is only good for Android phones, however, so your Windows-based handheld or desktop won’t benefit without a third-party driver.
That same third-party driver will let you run aptX Low-Latency, too, which can drop latency over Bluetooth a helluva lot. That’s good for gaming. Though for handhelds, it’s just a standard connection, so is a little laggier than a dedicated 2.4 GHz dongle. No worse than most BT headphones, at least.
Then, there’s HearID. Now I’ve used a system like this before on a Corsair headset through iCUE, and I was as impressed with it then as I am now. It works like this: you are played a song clip over and over, and each time you select whether you prefer profile A or profile B. That factors into the next clip, then the next, and by the sixth one, you’ve landed on an EQ you ostensibly prefer to most others. Mine ended up with a little more bass than treble. I still prefer the soundcore Signature profile but HearID isn’t half bad.
Lastly, there’s spatial audio. I don’t love the quality dip from the spatial audio presets, as the mids get all muddied and I don’t get a sense of openness at all. What’s strange is the head tracking mode, which means when you turn your head, the sound remains ‘in front’ of you at all times—essentially knocking the balance towards the earbud in your front-facing ear. It’s odd, and a bit of a novelty to try once.
All of this tweaking can carry over whether you’re playing music off your phone or using a handheld gaming PC or other device. So long as you’re connected to the Soundcore app. So I’ve been using the earbuds on the Ayaneo Flip DS and using the Soundcore app on my phone to adjust the EQ.
I’m not the type to change equaliser frequently but you can also drag a few EQs into the top window for easier access in the app.
With sound and controls just about covered off, what’s left to talk about except the case, which comes with an OLED screen, and the ANC.
Starting with the case, it offers a larger battery capacity to keep the buds juiced up when not in use. According to Anker, it offers around 40 hours of battery life. The company also notes the earbuds get around 10 hours, though that’s without Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) enabled. With ANC enabled, it’s more like 7.5 hours.
I’ve used these earbuds for a couple of weeks now and I’ve only had to charge the carrying case one time. For most of my time with them, I’ve slid the case up to reveal two fully charged earbuds. I rarely see them dip below the 70% mark most days. I have noticed the battery drain accelerate with ANC enabled, however, and I am a little concerned about whacking ANC on full blast on a long plane journey. I think you might find that battery goes quick. At least they charge extremely fast.
Though these buds are designed to deal with plane journeys, with Anker including a barometric sensor to help deal with air pressure changes, I’ve sadly not been able to test that myself just yet. I’ll let you know if I find these buds to be particularly flight-friendly down the line.
Listen to the microphone on the Liberty 4 Pro here (and sorry I say ‘Pro’ weirdly):
What I can attest to right now is the ANC quality. It’s extremely good for a pair of compact earbuds. Whack ANC up to 10, either in the app or using the touch controls and OLED screen on the case itself, and you can mostly cut out the tired hum of a city bus. Importantly, the ANC is good at removing the sound of fans whirring, which is especially useful if you’re playing on a handheld gaming PC. I’ve paired these buds to both the Steam Deck and Ayaneo Flip DS and the battery runs out on the handheld long before the buds, even in ANC mode.
Buy if…
✅ You want to customise your buds: The Anker Soundcore app is pretty much a must-have here, as it contains heaps of ways to make these earbuds your own, including EQs, ANC, and on-bud controls.
✅ You want decent ANC: For earbuds, I’ve been really impressed with how much noise these are able to cut out. It’s easy to adjust between ANC and transparency too, though I hardly use the latter myself.
Don’t buy if…
❌ You want something straightforward and simple: While you can adjust the Liberty 4 Pro to suit your needs in the app, you could ditch the app, controls, ANC, and EQs altogether with a cheaper pair of buds.
These are also good earbuds for sports. They’re light (too light for my scales) and stay firm in my ear holes. I’ve been using them extensively while on my bike trainer, and they’re yet to dislodge themselves yet. I’m also testing out their IPX5 water resistance rating too, with the amount I’m sweating on the darn thing. Moving on…
One thing the Liberty 4 Pro are not good at is microphone quality. For obvious reasons, earbuds aren’t able to easily sit in front of your mouth for more directional audio pickup patterns to be used. As such, they’re straining to hear you, and only you, from a distance, and even a few microphones to try to counteract unwanted noise can’t save the quality. I don’t sound too hot reading our mic test script through these buds.
I’m also a little scared of losing one of the earbuds and having to buy a whole new set but I won’t put that on the Liberty 4 Pro. No, rather these buds should make a great addition for Steam Deck or Windows handheld. I’ve been using them pretty extensively for this purpose and I’m yet to lose one, scuff the case, or have the connection drop out. Providing you promise not to lose one, $130/£130 seems like a pretty good deal.
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Kurt Indovina
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