There’s a well-worn law of consumer electronics: the further you push into “Pro Max” territory, the more you’re paying for marginal improvements that most people don’t need. This Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max earbuds review finds the new buds challenge that rule in an interesting way.
The earbuds inside the case are identical to those in the $169.99 Liberty 5 Pro I reviewed yesterday — same drivers, same ANC, same battery life, same call quality. What you’re paying an extra $60 for, almost entirely, is the case. But it’s a truly remarkable case.
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max earbuds review
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max rely on the Thus AI chip for crystal-clear calls, plus stellar sound quality. The wireless charging case includes a large touchscreen with AI note-taking capability.
- Case with AMOLED display and AI Note Taker
- Great sound and noise cancellation
- Find My compatible
- Not into AI stuff? Go with Liberty 5 Pro.
Released on May 21 alongside Liberty 5 Pro, Pro Max sits at the top of Anker’s earbud lineup for the first time. Think of it as Soundcore’s answer to AirPods Pro 3, competing on features and value where it can’t quite compete on seamless ecosystem integration.
(See also: Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro: Brilliant earbud call clarity [Review])
Table of contents: Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max earbuds review
- The case that changes everything
- Built-in case mic and speaker
- AI note taking in practice
- Everything Liberty 5 Pro offers and then some
- ANC performance
- iPhone compatibility and connectivity
- Battery life
- Sound quality
- Should you choose Pro Max over Liberty 5 Pro?
- Specs at a glance
- Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro earbuds review: Verdict
The case that changes everything
Photo: David Snow/Cult of Mac
Liberty 5 Pro’s case features a narrow touchscreen strip on the front that displays battery levels and lets you swipe between sound modes. It’s useful. Pro Max takes that concept and scales it up dramatically: the entire lid is a 1.78-inch AMOLED touchscreen. There’s no Soundcore logo on the lid — just the display, edge to edge. It’s noticeably sharper and brighter than the strip on the standard Pro. And the interface it runs feels closer to a smartwatch home screen than a charging case.
From the home screen, you can swipe left and right to move between ambient sound modes — ANC, Transparency, Normal — or to cycle through EQ presets. Swipe down from the top and a Control Center opens, with toggles for Bluetooth, screen brightness, Dolby Audio and more. Swipe up from the bottom and you get a full feature list: face-to-face translation, wallpaper settings, a remote camera shutter and the headlining addition, AI Note-Taker.
Built-in case microphone and speaker
The physical design of the case uses the same slide-open mechanism as Liberty 5 Pro, with a similar square-ish footprint. It stands a bit taller to accommodate the larger display and its additional internals. The case has its own built-in microphone and speaker, and maintains an independent Bluetooth connection to your iPhone separate from the earbuds.
That independent connection is what makes the AI Note-Taker possible, and it also enables a more natural implementation of face-to-face translation. You wear the earbuds while the other person speaks into the case microphone, and your translation comes through your ears without anyone having to share hardware.
One small gripe: the touchscreen’s responsiveness occasionally lagged in testing, requiring a second or third swipe before an action registered. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it does interrupt the otherwise slick experience. The case is also a tad heavier than the Pro’s at 74 grams versus 57 grams — still pocketable, but noticeably more substantial.
AI note-taking in practice
Photo: Soundcore
The AI Note-Taker is Pro Max’s most distinctive feature, and it works better than you might expect from a first-generation implementation. To start recording, you tap the record button on the case’s touchscreen. A large red button makes it easy to find even mid-meeting. You can press the pairing button on the case during recording to flag important moments, which get highlighted in the final transcript.
Once you stop recording, the audio transfers automatically to the Soundcore app and the system generates both a full transcript and structured meeting notes. Transcription accuracy in testing was comparable to what you’d get from Gemini transcribing a Google Meet call — which is to say, reliably accurate for clear speech in quiet environments, with the usual stumbles on proper nouns and crosstalk.
If you’re someone who sits in back-to-back meetings, conducts interviews, or takes notes during calls, this genuinely saves time. It’s not a feature for everyone — if your day doesn’t involve a lot of recorded conversations, you will barely touch it. But for those who do, it’s the kind of tool that quietly becomes indispensable.
The case’s independent Bluetooth connection means recording works whether or not your earbuds are in your ears. You could leave the case on your desk during a meeting, earbuds in your bag, and it will still capture and transcribe the conversation. That’s a thoughtful detail.
Everything Liberty 5 Pro offers and then some
Photo: Soundcore
Because the earbuds are identical to Liberty 5 Pro, the core listening and feature experience is the same — which is to say, very good. The Soundcore app gives you HearID (a personalised hearing test that builds a custom EQ profile), an eight-band manual equalizer, four presets, Dolby Audio with head tracking, wear detection and Easy Chat. The latter automatically switches to transparency mode and lowers your music when it senses you’re talking. Anka, Soundcore’s on-device AI assistant, responds to “Hey Anka” for hands-free playback control, weather updates and general queries.
Real-time language translation is here too, continuously translating spoken languages through the earbuds with minimal lag. Face-to-face translation mode handles back-and-forth conversations — and as mentioned, Pro Max’s case microphone enables a more elegant implementation where one party uses the case and the other uses the earbuds, rather than passing a single device between them. The AI features run locally on Anker’s Thus chip rather than requiring a cloud connection, which keeps responses fast and avoids battery drain.
And as with the base Pro model, call quality is excellent. Soundcore announced in April 2026 that Liberty 5 Pro was certified by Guinness World Records for the highest objective speech quality score (G-MOS) for true wireless earbuds — and since the Pro Max uses identical earbud hardware, that claim carries over. In my real-world testing, the earbuds performed very well on calls. Voices come through clearly, and background noise is handled effectively by the eight-mic array and AI-based Clear Calls processing.
ANC performance
Photo: Soundcore
Adaptive ANC 4.0 drives the noise cancellation on both the Pro and the Pro Max. The eight-microphone array processes audio 384,000 times per second. It continuously adjusts the cancellation curve to match your environment. Low-frequency engine noise on planes and trains is handled particularly well. Office chatter and ambient voices are reduced substantially, though not eliminated entirely. Five manual ANC strength levels are adjustable through the app, and an Adaptive mode tunes itself automatically.
As with Pro, enabling ANC does subtly color the sound — there’s a slight bass bump at higher ANC levels. It’s not offensive, but audiophiles might want to compensate with the EQ. Transparency mode sounds natural and unprocessed, making it easy to hold conversations without removing the earbuds.
iPhone compatibility and connectivity
Photo: David Snow/Cult of Mac
Both Liberty 5 Pro and Pro Max connect over Bluetooth 6.1 with support for SBC, AAC and LDAC. On an iPhone, you’ll connect via AAC — LDAC is Android-only. The sound quality over AAC is excellent. It can be difficult to distinguish from the high-def LDAC on typical streaming sources.
Multipoint supports connections to up to three devices simultaneously, which is useful if you move between iPhone, iPad and Mac throughout the day. Connections are manual — you won’t get AirPods-style automatic switching between Apple devices.
Apple Find My support is built in, which is a meaningful addition for iPhone users. The case’s independent Bluetooth connection doesn’t interfere with earbud connectivity; both maintain stable links throughout.
Battery life
Battery life is identical on both the Pro and the Pro Max. Soundcore rates each at 12 hours with ANC off and 6.5 hours with ANC on. Combined with the case, that’s 50 hours without ANC and 28 hours with it active. A five-minute charge delivers four hours of playback.
The case charges via USB-C or Qi wireless charging. Given the larger case and its additional hardware (built-in mic, speaker, separate Bluetooth radio), it’s notable that Anker has maintained the same rated battery performance as the Pro — the case capacity is simply larger to compensate, apparently.
Sound quality
The default sound signature is bass-forward, which suits a lot of listeners but may feel heavy on bass-heavy genres. A few minutes in the Soundcore app sorting out the EQ — or just selecting the Balanced preset — resolves this and reveals a well-rounded sound with good midrange clarity and clean vocals. Treble extension is present without being harsh.
The AI Sound Enhancement feature, which claims to restore up to 65% of quality typically lost to Bluetooth compression, produces a sound that feels detailed and full for an AAC connection on iPhone.
Should you choose Pro Max over Liberty 5 Pro?
Photo: Soundcore
The $60 premium over Liberty 5 Pro buys you the larger AMOLED display, AI Note-Taker, and the case’s independent microphone and speaker. As noted in Liberty 5 Pro review, the earbuds themselves are completely identical, and so are the ANC, battery life, audio quality and core AI features.
The decision essentially comes down to one question: do you record and transcribe conversations? If you attend meetings, conduct interviews or regularly take notes from spoken material, the AI Note-Taker alone is worth the difference in price. If your daily life involves none of that, the larger touchscreen is a pleasant upgrade but not a transformative one. And Liberty 5 Pro offers everything else at $60 less.
Specs at a glance:
- Price: $229.99
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 6.1 (AAC on iPhone)
- Water and dust resistance: IP55
- Battery life: 6.5 hrs ANC on / 28 hrs total
- Noise canceling: Adaptive ANC 4.0
- Eight-mic array
- Case features: 1.78-inch AMOLED display, AI Note-Taker, mic and speaker
- Find My support
- USB-C + wireless charging
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max earbuds review: Verdict
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max rely on the Thus AI chip for crystal-clear calls, plus stellar sound quality. The wireless charging case includes a large touchscreen with AI note-taking capability.
- Case with AMOLED display and AI Note Taker
- Great sound and noise cancellation
- Find My compatible
- Not into AI stuff? Go with Liberty 5 Pro.
★★★★★
Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max is a genuinely impressive product, even if its value proposition is narrower than Liberty 5 Pro’s. For iPhone users willing to invest $229.99, it delivers excellent earbuds, competitive ANC, outstanding call quality and a feature suite that rivals the AirPods Pro 3 in several respects — at $20 less than Apple’s flagship.
AI Note-Taker is the standout differentiator. It’s a practical, well-executed feature that earns its keep for anyone whose work involves capturing spoken information. The AMOLED case screen is genuinely satisfying to use, even accounting for occasional responsiveness hiccups.
What you give up versus AirPods Pro 3 is ecosystem integration — automatic device switching, native Siri depth and the seamlessness of hardware Apple has tuned specifically for its own software. That gap is real. But for the features and sound quality on offer, Liberty 5 Pro Max makes a strong case for itself as the most capable third-party option available for iPhone users right now.
David Snow, an expert on Apple hardware and software, writes on a variety of technological and cultural topics for Cult of Mac. They include Apple news, technology buying guides, and features about computer setups and Apple TV shows and movies.
With 30 years of experience covering technology and other subjects, he has written and edited for numerous print and online publications, including CMP Media, TechTV.com, CNET, Wired News, Red Herring magazine, Law.com, The National Law Journal and Law Technology News magazine. Among other roles, he served as executive editor of the Law.com network of websites and editorial director, technology, for ALM Media.
Snow graduated with a B.A. from Syracuse University with majors in magazine journalism and psychology. While there, he worked as a reporter for The Daily Orange newspaper and associate editor of Equal Time magazine.
Founder of the blog At the Waterline, he can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) via @atthewaterline and on Mastodon via @dsnow.
