Soundcore has become an established partner in the earbuds game. They have got cheap, budget and premium category earbuds to offer for a wide range of customers. The Liberty series is neither cheap nor expensive, but it can make you feel like you have premium earbuds. In the Liberty series, their newest member is the Liberty 4. There is no Pro title here even though the price is 150 USD, so we can expect that a more expensive Pro version will hit the market soon. There has been controversy over the sound quality of the Liberty series earbuds, especially the pro models with fancy Astria Coaxial Acoustic Architecture. I will clear your doubts in this article and then you can decide which one should you buy or is the Liberty 4 worth the money.



Inside the box
The presentation is pretty nice and gorgeous. It will definitely give you a premium experience. In the box, you will get what you need to get going. There is a nice USB Type-C cable, silicone tips of 4 sizes (S, M1, M2 & L), the charging case, Liberty 4 earbuds and some paperwork. This is quite good as they’re not skipping on the charging cable.


Design and build
There used to be Liberty Air, Liberty Air Pro, Liberty and Liberty Pro. But soundcore isn’t main­taining the sequential release of these buds properly. Previously, Liberty & Liberty Pro buds had a non-pencil style like the Liberty 2 & Liberty 2 Pro. But this year the Liberty 4 is totally different with a true pencil-style design, which kinda got polished and refined over time. So simply they took the design of Liberty Air 2 pro, did some pretty significant further development and changed the name to Soundcore Liberty 4.

This one should have been named Liberty Air 3 pro. It seems like they’re changing their course, which will be pretty clear soon when they will bring the next versions. I like the design of the Liberty 4 earbuds. They are not that big, I mean the hub where the main electronics are including the battery. The pencil or the stick part is also within an acceptable length. The natural slightly decreasing slope to the lower housing from the main hub is kinda cool looking, to be honest. It has silicone tips, a nice contour & shape which is what you need for a comfortable design. The build is also solid with high-quality materials. You can see the attention to detail around the driver enclosure. I will give it an A for the design and build.


Fit and Comfort
The fit and comfort is as good as they look. So you now know that I like the design, look and feel. Similarly, they are very comfortable to wear. You will be able to keep them in your ear for a longer period of time. Listen, these buds will not stay secured in your ear while working out as they don't have ear hooks. But they are good enough for small workouts and walking. These Liberty 4 buds are not heavy or outside heavy, so they will not move that much if you start jumping like some other bulky & heavy-looking earbuds. I think the weight is nicely balanced or at least balanced well. So if you wear them, you will definitely enjoy them for sure.


Controls and MICs
Liberty 4 is true wireless stereo and you get two modes here called mono and shared. So that means you can use both earbuds or either of them for music and call while the other one is getting charged up in the case. The earbuds support touch control, which is what we expect from a premium earbud at this price. But the question is how good the implementation and user experience is! These earbuds adopt sensitive touch-control technology so that you can comfor­tably adjust music playback/pause, volume +/-, skip tracks, siri functions and call answer/end with squeeze. These controls are really useful, and they work just fine most of the time.

The mic quality is pretty good for its price, some earbuds don't even have this level of clarity but cost twice the price. In a quiet environment, the mic recording sounds good enough with nice clarity but they have a little bit of noise. Good news is, the noise doesn't affect the overall quality of the sound that you will hear. In a noisy environment, they don't really hold their ground that well, like a more expensive earbud but they're quite unique and special at 150 USD.


Sound Quality
Listen, here is what you need to understand – the reviewers I trust said that these Liberty buds with Astria Coaxial Acoustic Architecture (ACAA) tech­nology have a very bass-heavy and treble-heavy sound signature, which is what a v-shaped frequency res­ponse looks like. Personally, I don’t like the v-shaped sound either. These buds are good for bassheads. I like a balanced sound to start with then tweaking it with EQ. The good news with Liberty buds is, you get an app with custom EQ as well as a ton of additional features that I'll discuss in the features section.

In the Astria Coaxial Acoustic Architecture, soundcore implemented two dynamic drivers on a single earbud, which is crazy. So bass is handled by one driver, mids & highs are by another driver. This simply makes the separation of lower and higher frequencies a lot more cleaner. The sound quality is good but it’s not gonna satisfy everybody with its default soundcore signature sound. By default, it has a ton of sub-bass and a lot of details & clarity.

It may sound harsh to you because of a treble-heavy sound. But the crispy sparkly shimmering sound is there. The sound is not particularly refined well enough like more expensive buds. As the bass is very rumbly, the mids get lost while listening to bassy tracks. So the mids are recessed and the overall sound is v-shaped. This is not an accurate reproduction of sound. You may need to use the EQ and I strongly recommend you to explore what is available in the app.



The spatial audio experience is pretty cool. This tech kinda tracks your head and movements. So if you turn left, you will hear sound coming from your right side. Similarly, if you move your head down, you will hear the sound changing its course from center to up. It works like other spatial audio supported audio devices.


Features - Heart Rate
The most amazing thing I love about soundcore is that their soundcore app is full of advanced cutting-edge features. After Apple and Sony, now they added the spatial audio experience feature in these buds. Another crazy cool feature is heart rate monitoring on Liberty 4 earbuds, which I think makes soundcore probably the first to implement this feature. These are two of the main cool features added this year that are gonna be the talking points of these buds.

But what I like is the support for LDAC codec, which is a high-quality codec capable of trans­mitting hi-res audio even over Bluetooth. So on top of these they also have latest Bluetooth, ANC, Type-C charging and water protection. Another awesome feature is the Bluetooth multipoint connection. This one is such a handy feature. You need to take advantage of the soundcore app. The Heart Rate sensing feature opens up a lot more fitness options for you in the app.


Adaptive Noise Cancelling
This is not a strong point in Liberty 4 buds. The ANC (Active Noise Cancelling) is more like Adaptive Noise Cancelling. So with the better fit and what feels like a slight update to their HearID software, it certainly feels like an upgrade in the ANC department for the Liberty 4. It’s not that strong like the AirPods Pro but it can bring down the noise floor significantly. You may feel like you’re hearing muffled voices when you’re around people. Not a good result for loud environments. The transparency mode is also pretty average.


Battery backup
Battery life is pretty decent but not on the higher side. You'll get 9 hours and a total of 27 hours with every crazy feature turned off, just plain music without ldac at around 50% volume – 2 more full charges with the case. With ANC on 7 hours and with Spatial Audio on only 5 hours of playback time on a single charge. It will vary significantly depending on your usage. So, for a pretty compact comfortable earbud, I will say that it does a decent enough job. More features make them less efficient – you get more lose more.



Conclusion
If you really care about the sound quality look for Sennheiser Momentums, AirPods, Pixel Buds, Earfun Free Pros (oluv’s) and Lypertek Tevis. These buds sound more natural and accurate with a richer sound signature. Without the custom EQ, I will only recommend these to bassheads & party boys who just want thumping bass & loud music. Don’t get me wrong these have got plenty of details but not throughout the whole frequency range. But luckily you can adjust the sound with the eq. I will say, at 150 dollars these buds have it all.

I hope you have got enough information after reading this article. If you have the money or you want to upgrade from older soundcore earbuds or you like a v-shaped sound signature, then you should try these buds. I highly recommend these to people other than audiophiles. If you want to take a look at the official specs, then you can easily do that by clicking next link that is colored to visit the official webpage of Anker Soundcore Liberty 4.

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