I’ve recently gotten my hands on some Soundcore Liberty 4 NC’s due to not having any earbuds and wanting something to bridge the gap when walking places.
I had a few simple requirements:
- Good Audio Quality, doesn’t have to move mountains, but it should be an alright baseline (and have an adjustable EQ)
- Active Noise Cancelling, I’m easily overwhelmed with noise so having that is essential.
- A decent Transparency Mode to pair with ANC, taking out the Earbuds every time I want to have a short conversation is a no-go.
- Decent Fit, I don’t really like earbuds (my ear shape doesn’t work for a lot of them) so they should fit not feel “plugged” like earplugs usually do.
After doing a bit of research (and subsequently getting _very_ annoyed at sponsored YouTube reviews) I’ve decided on just comparing their features and how well they do on rtings, I ended up narrowing down my choices to the following picks.
- Sony WF-C700N
- Apple Airpods 2 Pro
- Anker Liberty 4 / 4NC
- Samsung Buds2 Pro
Due to not having an iPhone the Airpods were the first to go, I just didn’t want to deal with not having Apple’s proprietary software at that price point.
Next to go were the Sony WF-C700N and Samsung Buds, both were very enticing earbuds, but the jump between the WF-C700N and the WF-1000 scared me. I don’t see how they could lose almost 200€ on the price without some major cutbacks, the Samsung buds went purely because I didn’t want to get locked into Samsung’s (somewhat questionable) ecosystem, I already have a Samsung phone and dislike using their version of Android enough as-is.
After scrolling rtings for what felt like hours, I went with the Anker Earbuds.
To preface my actual review, I am not sponsored, I’m a complete newb when it comes to headphones and wireless earbuds in particular, I just like music.
I will also be talking a lot about the app these earbuds use, as the earbuds are not nearly as useful without it, luckily the app does not require a login.
Audio Quality
First impressions are often deceiving, such is the case with the Liberty 4 NC’s as well, the default EQ profile is very boomy and bass heavy, this was quite overwhelming initially, luckily the Soundcore app has a bunch of premade EQs and a utility to create your own (which feels more like it tests my range of hearing than my musical preference).
I first tried the “Flat” EQ Preset, but even that felt a bit boomy, after a bit of fiddling around I ended up with a modified version of the Acoustic Preset, which sounds a lot more natural to my ears.
As for the sound itself? I’d say these are quite capable earbuds, if you prefer bassier music these will probably do you quite well, for people that prefer a very flat eq however, these might not be the right ones, I heard Sony does quite well in that regard.
I have observed no major difference between using the LDAC and AAC Codecs, if you prefer battery life over a minor increase in quality, I would highly recommend sticking with AAC, they also had a lot less drop-outs than LDAC had.
Noise Cancelling
You’ve probably heard very conflicting thoughts on how well the Liberty 4 NC’s do noise cancelling, noise cancelling is in their name, so they must be pretty good at it, no?
Correct.
I was initially disappointed with the active noise cancelling, luckily Anker’s Soundcore App provides a utility to test the fit of your earbuds, which indicated to me that both earbuds did not fit properly:
Helpfully, the App also provides some troubleshooting steps to rectify this issue, in my case, switching from the standard ear tips to the large ones improved the earbuds fit:
Having done that, Active Noise Cancelling is able to do it’s job and it’s amazing.
You’re sitting in a train and the engine is getting on your nerves? ANC got you.
In the office and your coworkers are arguing about politics? ANC got you.
At a club and the DJ is playing Faded for the 3rd time this night? Shoot the DJ.
Seriously, ANC does an impressive job at filtering out noise, I’ve left it on adaptive and so far it’s been fairly good at recognizing the conditions I’m in and adjusting accordingly, this may take a couple of seconds in changing conditions, however.
Another caveat is that ANC will not work as effectively for high notes, for example the ticking of a car engine, plates being stacked or a loud mechanical keyboard, it will try to lessen the effect of the sound to some extend, but unless you’re also playing music you will still be able to hear it.
I’m telling you man, it’s all in the tip.
Another feature that also uses ANC is “Transparency” mode, which is meant to do the exact opposite of ANC, meaning, it will amplify sounds the mics pick up around you.
This comes in 2 modes, “Fully Transparent” and “Vocal Mode”, Vocal Mode seems to just increase the highs while suppressing the lows a bit, I personally saw no benefit to using it.
Transparency Mode works okay, it’s not great, but also not terrible, you sadly cannot apply an EQ to the audio that comes from Transparency Mode, output volume cannot be adjusted either, I wish there were a few more options in that regard, as I’d like transparency mode to specifically hear voices better, as of right now it doesn’t really do that.
As for the sound itself, it does a fairly good job at respecting the fact that your hearing works 3-dimensionally, wind and contact with the earbuds gets compensated for fairly well, so you don’t need to worry about going deaf when adjusting your earbuds, I just wish we had more settings.
Build Quality
I’ll be upfront, I hate rating build quality, most reviews that rate build quality tend to throw presentation into the same score as how well they work, which I find utterly unfair.
Having said that, the Anker Soundcore Liberty 4 NC (are you getting sick of this name yet?) look and feel fairly well built, the plastic case is plastic, the top cover is held by a magnet, a button is used to open the case and pair the earbuds, once opened, the earbuds come to life and immediately attempt to connect to your phone, they do not require being turned on separately.
The case interior is glossy whereas the exterior is matte, the glossy interior loves collecting fingerprints, which will be annoying to people who hate fingerprints on their tech.
Once taken out of the case, the earbuds easily snap back into position when dropping them into their respective slots, they are secured via magnets and charge as soon as they are in the case.
From my experience, charging them from empty using the case will take around 25 minutes, when using LDAC I have observed the listening time to be reduced to around 5-6 hours with noise cancelling.
As I tend to take breaks fairly often when using earbuds I have yet to drop below 30% charge before putting them in the case, the case itself supposedly lasts for up to 5 charge cycles before needing to be recharged, although I have not tested that claim yet, using them for a week (about 3-4 hours a day) resulted in the case being down to 30% charge, you should be able to go about half a week before having to charge the case if you use the earbuds all day.
Mic Quality
I’m not sure what to even talk about here, if you’re looking for earbuds to make calls, avoid wireless earbuds, in general.
These earbuds will work fine in quiet (and I mean, QUIET.) environments, but step outside, turn on your dishwasher, leave a sink running in another room or have a PC with a fan and that quality falls apart faster than that cake I baked that one time.
I recommend listening to the rtings.com samples, they provide an excellent demonstration of how decent (and terrible) these can sound.
Software
The Soundcore Android App does a good job in making the earbuds both easy to use and to configure, when first launching the app you are prompted to sign in, but this can be skipped and the app will not ask you to log in again.
The app is stable and works well, it automatically detects if your headphones are paired and displays the charge level, I would personally prefer the charge to be displayed in percent as the battery icons in the app are quite small and hard to read.
Controls
Here’s where my major critiques start, the earbuds have 4 controls per side.
That is, 8 controls, in total, including both earbuds, there is one “touch” surface that will recognize touches and that’s it, what this means is you end up with only 4 ways to change your earbud settings:
- Tap
- Press & Hold
- Double Tap
- Triple Tap
There is no volume sliding or anything fancy like that, which I think is a massive missed opportunity, having 8 controls is just a too little, considering I like having my controls be ambidextrous, this means I only have 4 things I can bind to my earbuds.
Conclusion
Despite it’s flaws, I believe the Anker Soundcore Liberty 4NC are a respectable set of earbuds, it’s long battery life and decent Noise Cancellation outweighs the few flaws it has.
If you are an audiophile or are around very noisy environments often i would not recommend these earbuds, to frequent travelers and people who care less about the audio characteristics and more about battery life though? These might be worth considering.
Closing Thoughts
Thank you for reading, this is my first “proper” review of a product so it might might not read that great, feedback is very much welcome.
Take care.