Anker’s latest wireless earbuds, the Soundcore-branded Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max, sport improved noise cancellation, personalized sound and the company’s new AI-powered Thus chip for audio processing. They also hold the Guiness World Record for “Highest Speech Quality Score,” which will help them stand out in the consumer market.
The Liberty 5 Pro series also showcases the next step for Anker and Soundcore as the company expands with its own custom silicon. To find out more, I spoke with Anker’s Jocelyn Qian about the new approach to audio quality, on-device AI, and the upgrade to the charging case.
Smart Isolation: How Anker Rebuilt The Wireless Earbud
Active Noise Cancellation is no longer a luxury reserved for flagship headphones and earbuds. Recent surveys indicate that ANC adoption is an important factor in enhancing productivity, especially in open-plan offices. That’s a challenge for the traditional approach that digital signal processors would take. That screened out background hums and consistent noise, but could never cope with dynamic audio spikes.
This is the challenge that Soundcore’s new technology looks to address. “Instead of only trying to remove noise, we started focusing on how to better recognize and isolate human speech,” Qian laid out, noting the raft of microforms and bone conduction sensors in the Liberty 5 Pro. This is not a simple specs bump, but a change in how Soundcore is approaching the noisy chaos in the real world.
The Soundcore Thus Chip: Why Anker Built Its Own Brains
At the heart of the new ANC technology is Anker’s custom-designed Thus chip. “We actually spent three years building this foundation for Anker,” says Qian. The Thus chip is not solely for the Liberty 5 Pro series. Thus is a significant multi-year investment to develop proprietary silicon, which moves Anker from a component assembler to an architecture player. That should help them choose their own destiny rather than be limited by the latest darling of the supply chain.
It’s notable that the Thus chip has debuted in one of the smaller audio form factors. “If we can make it work in such tiny headphones,” Qian says, “which have problems with heat and also battery, it can work with many other bigger products.” With the wireless earbuds validated, the way is clear for Soundcore to bring Thus into larger product categories.
Forbes’ contributor Mark Sparrow has taken a closer look at Liberty 5 Pro series and the benefits of the Thus chip, noting the advantages of the neural net for ANC: “Instead of shuttling model parameters between memory and processor, Thus embeds the computation directly inside NOR Flash memory cells… NOR Flash-based compute-in-memory requires just a sixth of the physical footprint of SRAM-based alternatives, making it a viable technology for the tiniest of devices. “
Anker’s Screen On A Case: Gimmick Or Real Utility?
The Liberty 5 Pro and Pro 5 Max come with a new physical interface, a display and touchscreen controls on the charging case. Qian explains the thinking, “You don’t need to open your phone and go to the app and then change the settings.” It is certainly technically accomplished, but is it practical?
The idea that, rather than taking your phone out of your pocket to open the Soundcore app to get all the settings, is a noble one, but it’s replaced by taking your carry case out of your pocket, unlocking it, and then getting to all the settings. There is utility here, but is it enough to justify buying a brand-new set of headphones?
The key difference between the Pro and Pro Max models is in the charging case, with the Pro Max case adding AI note-taking abilities. This includes transcript and translation features, but as PCMAg’s evaluation notes, this is not free. If you want to make full use of this ability, you’ll need to pay an ongoing subscription fee of £15.99 per month for the Pro membership here in the UK, or an unlimited account for £224.99 per year. That’s a significant hit on the total cost of ownership if you lean into the AI notes, especially when comparably priced AI subscriptions offer a much wider feature set over more devices.
Anker’s Soundcore Blueprint: Products Over Tech Labels
“Consumers are no longer impressed by technology labels,” Qian concludes, “they really want to know whether the product improves their lives.” The Liberty 5 Pro series is Soundcore’s answer to that challenge, bringing recognisable features and introducing new ideas into the hardware design.
It also represents a new direction for Anker’s Soundcore brand, as it seeks to integrate artificial intelligence techniques without sparking consumer backlash. The new ANC techniques are an audible sign of progress; the new silicon shows Anker’s commercial hunger, and the additions to the carry case highlight the ongoing physical innovation in the wireless earbuds space.
