Anker bets on silicon with Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro: AI-driven ANC and a touchscreen case
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Moving Beyond the Off-the-Shelf Component
For years, the earbuds market has been a battle of tuning and driver quality, with most manufacturers relying on standard Qualcomm or Airoha chipsets. Anker is attempting to break that cycle. Following the announcement of its proprietary silicon in April, the company is now deploying its first homegrown AI chip—the Thus AI chip—inside the new Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max.
The shift to in-house silicon isn’t just a branding exercise; it’s a play for deeper integration between hardware and noise-processing algorithms. Anker claims the Thus AI chip allows the earbuds to sample environmental noise up to 384,000 times per second. This high-frequency processing is designed to tackle the ‘problem’ noises that traditional Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) often misses: the erratic chatter of a crowded cafe or the sudden spikes of urban traffic. According to Anker, this results in noise cancellation that is up to twice as deep as the previous Liberty 4 Pro.
The Hardware of Human Voice
Call quality remains the Achilles’ heel of most TWS (True Wireless Stereo) earbuds, usually plagued by wind noise or the ‘underwater’ sound of aggressive digital filtering. To solve this, the Liberty 5 series employs a 10-sensor matrix paired with a neural-net AI model. Most notably, Anker has integrated bone-conduction sensors into the buds.
By sensing vibrations directly from the wearer’s jawbone, the earbuds can more accurately distinguish between the user’s voice and ambient noise, theoretically eliminating the struggle of being heard in high-wind environments. It is a hardware-heavy approach to a problem that most competitors try to solve purely through software.
The Case as a Control Center
The most visible departure from industry norms is the charging case. While many brands have experimented with basic LEDs, Anker is treating the case as a secondary interface. The standard Liberty 5 Pro features a modest display for battery levels and mode switching, but the Pro Max pushes the concept further with a 1.78-inch AMOLED touchscreen.
This isn’t just for aesthetics. The Pro Max’s screen allows users to manage playback and, more interestingly, trigger AI-driven recording features. The device can capture meeting audio and leverage AI to generate transcriptions, identify different speakers, and automatically extract actionable to-do items. It essentially attempts to turn the earbud case into a pocket-sized digital secretary, bridging the gap between audio hardware and productivity software.
Audio Fidelity and Technical Specs
On the sonic front, Anker is doubling down on its HearID technology. Beyond the standard custom EQ profiles, the company claims the system can ‘rebuild’ audio details lost during Bluetooth compression, asserting a recovery of up to 65% of lost quality. While such a percentage is difficult to quantify in a blind lab test, it suggests Anker is using the AI chip to perform real-time upscaling of compressed streams.
In terms of raw specs, both models support LDAC for high-resolution audio and integrate with Apple Find My and Google Fast Pair. Battery life is rated at 6.5 hours of continuous playback, extending to 28 hours with the case. Multipoint connectivity is also present, allowing users to stay connected to three devices simultaneously—a necessary feature for the ‘productivity’ angle Anker is pushing with the Pro Max.
The Liberty 5 Pro is priced at $170, while the Pro Max carries a premium at $230. Whether the touchscreen and AI transcription justify the $60 jump will depend on how seamlessly the software integrates with the rest of the mobile ecosystem.
