Liberty 2 Pro - Pros and Cons

#1

I was very excited going into today’s announcements. I haven’t bought any true wireless headphones yet as I’ve been kind of waiting for the products to mature, but I’ve had my eye on the Liberty Air (v1) for a bit, and I decided one of the new Soundcore releases would probably be my first.

  • I expect audio quality to be good, especially on the 2 Pros. We’ll have to try it out IRL to be sure.
  • Battery life seems great, as you’d expect from Anker.
  • I’m happy to see 7 options for eartips too - should be able to find comfort for anyone unlike Apple’s hard plastic Airpods.
  • I’m even hopeful that call quality will be good with the 4 microphones.
  • Excited to have USB-C as well as wireless charging
  • Mono mode to use either earbud without the other is a nice perk, though I don’t see myself using it much

But there are three major misses in my opinion:

  1. Price. I find it surprising that everything Anker released today is more expensive than their older models. The Pro is more expensive than Amazon’s new earbuds too. Hopefully it lives up to the price.
  2. Transparency mode. This should be easy to add, given the 4 microphones, right? I wonder if it could be done with a firmware update. I need this when running on city streets - to me it’s a safety feature. Amazon’s new earbuds have this (called passthrough mode).
  3. Multi-device support. My current all-day headphones are an on-the-ear set with a boom mic from Plantronics. They’re great, but I didn’t buy them - I got them from work for conference calls. One thing I love is that I can seamlessly switch between music on my phone and a video call on my computer. I would have loved to see this in the Liberty 2 Pro.

Other things I’m curious to see about

  • How big is the case? It doesn’t look pocket-sized. I’d be willing to sacrifice a bit of battery for a smaller size.
  • Noise cancellation - I find ANC a little weird, and I’m happy with simple noise isolation with decent eartips. Hopefully these isolate noise well. Was interesting to note that the $130 Amazon offering does seem to have ANC.
  • Does it have touch controls? I couldn’t find this info anywhere. Would love to adjust volume, play/pause, or invoke assistant with touch controls. Amazon’s new release has this, and the v1 Liberty Air and Neo had this but only on the right ear.

Curious to hear from others - what are the biggest hits and misses for you?

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#2

Price wise, it doesnt surprise me as they are touting better audio and given the research they put into them they need to reap some of that back. Not to mention if these knock it out of the park then they will be slammed with sales, as they are still a direct competitor to Apple and Sony…sure amazon has some coming out, but they are selling to get access to you more than anything/ they want to well you a service not audio quality.

They did say that transparency mode will be added later via software update, they are refining it to work better.

I have always been able to get most of my soundcore products to pair to 2 devices at once. So I dont see this being an issue for me with these.

And is good, but on in ear earbuds is it really necessary? You already get a great seal and the world is blocked out naturally, so why waste battery on this?
The Libertt Air 2 should have touch control, not sure about the rest

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#3

Oh, that’s good news! Can you point me to a source for this info? I wonder how the software update process will work.

Unfortunately the FAQ specifically says “If you use the two earbuds together, they cannot connect to multiple devices”

#4

They responded in their YouTube chat about the transparency mode.
As for the mjmticonnect, that’s what it says for the pro 2, we dont know what it says for the liberty air 2. And all due respect to them, they said the liberty’s couldnt dual connect and I managed to get them to pair to my macbook and my phone at the same time

#5

Any thoughts as to the design? I had a pair of Bose SoundSport Free Earbuds, and my biggest gripe was that they stuck out of the side of my head, kind of like the Frankenstein Monster. I know this is more of a “vanity” sort of thing, but because the Bose earbuds stuck out so much, it made the earbuds feel heavy, which is what you don’t want when you’re working out.

I’m wondering if these are going to stick out too so I’ll end up walking around looking like I’ve got two mushrooms sticking out of the sides of my head?

#6

I expected that price point based upon the amount of things that were added and changed to make it the updated version. Cost of R&D, marketing, production and everything else come into play, all with keeping a value/profit to them based upon everything.

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#7

@Boots2Passes good question - we’ll have to try them out to know, but given the “coaxial” design I suspect they’ll stick out a bit.

Re:price, I guess the question is who they are competing with. Anker/Soundcore, while a good brand in our eyes, is not so well known. If they consider Apple, JBL, Amazon, etc. their competitors the price makes sense, but those are companies with real market clout. I’ve always thought of Anker as one of best among the value segment rather than the high end segment. I’m willing to spend more on Anker than Aukey, for example, but I expect them to be substantially less than the big brands. We’ll just have to see what the quality of these is like, and whether they are worth the price.

#8

You bring up of some valuable points. For me I’m not all that interested in the Amazon Earbuds. I don’t need Alexa listening to me while I’m listening to music or working out. I get enough of her at home from my Eufy Genie.

I think the new Liberties will be a great unit, I just want to wait and see what others have to say about them.

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#9

I too am concerned with the case size. Looks pretty big compared to airpods & galaxy buds. Thats a deal breaker.

#10

As long as the features support the price jump I am fine with it. Some seem to be direct competition for others like airpods, if prices are the same and features are similar I guess its nice but wouldnt be a deal. If they re much improved and same price its a good deal.

#11

Thanks for the breakdown. :+1:t3:

#12

Thanks for this, Josh. Some really good feedback there.

We’re confident that given the quality of the product and where Liberty 2 Pro’s price is sitting against premium earbud competitors that you guys will be happy, but obviously want to know if you’re not once you’ve tried them.

Also, working with grammy award winning engineers in creating a new level of true wireless earbuds doesn’t come cheap :wink:

(by the way, please refer to us as Soundcore :wink: this is the Soundcore Collective after all)

#13

@Loz can you tell us how come you guys only went with IPX4 rating for these and not the total sweatproof coating found some other products?

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#14

I wondered this also, @tank as I wanted the best audio quality I got them anyway, but I will need a second pair to work out in it seems.

Not that I work out currently, but I plan to lol! I didn’t think of that too much when ordering but at some point I’ll need to get something else for this use.

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#15

Yea I had already planned to get the Spirit X2 because of its sweatguard tech, but would have been great if the Pro 2 had it aswell given the price point

#16

Transparency is a major miss. @loz did say something about the transparency mode coming in a future version or firmware update. keep eyes out for that.

#17

Nice comparison of the Liberty 2 pro

#18

I didn’t see this about transparency mode, thanks.

#19

I hope you do not mind my asking. what do you mean by: “I have always been able to get most of my soundcore products to pair to 2 devices at once.”?
It is so troublesome when I want to go from my mobile to my laptop, or viceversa, because I need to disconnect manually from one device and reconnect manually on the other. Is this the way with Soundcore?

#20

I have had various earbuds paired to multiple devices at one point or another, and sure I have to turn bluetooth off on one device to get it to connect to another but I dont see it as a problem as from my phone turning bluetooth off saves battery life and helps boost wifi signal. So when I want to use the earbuds with say my projector all I have to do us turn the projector on and it automatically tries to connect to the earbuds, so in that case I just pop them in my ear and they autoconnect. When I want to use them with my phone I turn bluetooth on and it typically connects right away to the same earbuds without me doing anything else

almost all soundcore earbuds except the newest ones do not have multiconnect, but its never stopped me from using mine as i described above

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