Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review
Our Verdict
The Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro are a fine choice if y'all want a pair of agile noise-cancelling earbuds on a tight budget. In that location are better-looking and more comfy buds, only for $130, Anker'southward ANC and personalized sound output exceed expectations.
For
- Racket-cancelling and Transparency modes
- Decent battery past ANC standards
- Affordable
- Sound personalization works well
Against
- Ugly design
- Tin get uncomfortable after a few hours
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Anker Soundcore Freedom Air 2 Pro are a fine pick if you want a pair of active noise-cancelling earbuds on a tight budget. At that place are ameliorate-looking and more comfy buds, but for $130, Anker'southward ANC and personalized sound output exceed expectations.
Pros
- +
Racket-cancelling and Transparency modes
- +
Decent battery by ANC standards
- +
Affordable
- +
Sound personalization works well
Cons
- -
Ugly design
- -
Can get uncomfortable later on a few hours
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro specs
Price: $130
Colors: Grey, Blue, Silver, White
Size: i.five x 0.9 x 0.9 inches (per bud), two.4 x ii.4 10 1.2 inches (charging case)
Weight: 0.4 ounces (per bud), 1.viii ounces (charging case)
Bombardment life: 26 hours
Speakers: 11mm dynamic drivers
Features: ANC, Transparency mode, touch controls, custom EQ, replaceable tips, wireless charging
With the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro, Anker is making a seemingly irresistible proposal: truthful wireless, active noise-cancelling (ANC) earbuds for just $130.
By comparison, the Apple AirPods Pro are $250, the new Samsung Galaxy Buds Pro are $200 and even the Sony WF-100XM3 are hovering around $165 more a year afterward release.
Is there a catch? That's what this Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review aims to find out, but while at that place some design issues these are generally a skilful picayune pair of ANC buds — specially for the price.
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Anker Soundcore Liberty Air two Pro review: Design
Unfortunately, the styling of these earbuds doesn't get them off to the most auspicious starting time. Their long, slightly angular stalks manage to be even more than off-putting than the cylindrical white tubes of the AirPods family unit, and the grey model in particular makes each bud expect like a shrunken version of those Bluetooth headsets you'd encounter on businessmen in the early 2000s.
The blue, white and silver color options aren't quite every bit bad in this regard, just bluntly, those stretched-out stalks are ugly in any shade.
It'south the applied side of things that saves the Soundcore Freedom Air 2 Pro from being a pattern bust. The touch controls, for example, work reliably. Inputs are exclusively double-taps or hold gestures, which helps foreclose accidental skipping, and I never had a trouble with failed inputs.
IPX4 h2o resistance is also a very welcome inclusion. This rating means the Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro won't survive a swim (or a careless shower), just will cope fine with splashes and sweat, potentially making them a decent pair of sport earbuds. Sure enough, I wetted the buds in the sink, without fully running them under the tap, and no ill furnishings adult.
The charging instance isn't weatherproof, merely information technology at least avoids the misjudged aesthetics of the earbuds, with a smart soft-touch terminate to the plastic and a neat sliding cover. It can be topped up with Qi wireless chargers, too, should you misplace the USB-C cable.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review: Condolement and fit
To Anker's considerable credit, the Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro earbuds come with a generous nine sets of silicone tips. Seven of these range from XXXS to large sizes, and in that location are two extra sets that are slightly deeper variations of the medium and large circumferences. You've therefore got a much meliorate gamble of finding the perfect fit than with the AirPods Pro, which include merely three sets of tips.
These earbuds slip in easily and hold fairly firmly, which is impressive considering the lack of wings or hooks, and they don't utilize the twist-to-fit shape favored by Sennheiser and Samsung. They're too comfortable to wear for shorter periods — an hour or two, say.
However, for longer listening sessions, the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro can get-go to feel a niggling fatiguing on your ear canal, especially compared to the more lastingly comfy Sennheiser CX 400BT. It feels like the weight of each earbud is backside held up primarily by the tips rather than the load being spread around the rest of the ear.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review: Setup and controls
Setting up the Soundcore Freedom Air 2 Pro with a source device is no more than hard than whatsoever other pair of Bluetooth headphones. If they're within their charging example, simply sliding dorsum the encompass is enough to put them in pairing mode, and I could quickly get them connected to my phone without effect.
As with an increasing number of wireless headphones, installing the companion app for the Soundcore Freedom Air 2 Pro is essential for managing its key features. More on those soon, though for bones play/pause, skipping and phone call controls, at that place's always the aforementioned touch controls.
My only complaint with these is that while y'all can hold down on either earbud to activate or deactivate ANC, there's no tap or hold input to quickly enable Transparency mode, which would salve having to dig your phone out to do it through the Soundcore app instead.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review: Audio quality
The most immediately striking aspect of the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro's audio is how bassy information technology is. Information technology's not necessarily to the indicate of the depression end being entirely out of command, and for some songs it kind of works: bass-drum kicks felt like they were thumping my encephalon around in my skull, in a much more pleasant and satisfying way than that sounds.
Yet, in too many instances this bass preference tin can too rob mids and highs of their sparkle and touch on. It was well-nigh a scrap sad to hear the gorgeous plucked violins on Marmaduke Knuckles'south "Kid Gloves" dulled nether the weight of all that depression end.
The proficient news is that while this is the default audio, it's not the only 1. The Soundcore app serves upward customization in a couple of different ways, the more interesting being its "HearID" feature. This plays a series of beeps to test how well you lot can hear unlike frequencies at various volumes and uses the results to arts and crafts a sound profile that'south specific to yous.
Amazingly, my personalized contour fixed the overbearing bass entirely. It was still present plenty to deliver the dial I wanted, but was generally better balanced with the mids and treble. Now those violins had their shine back, and more upbeat compositions like The Electric Swing Circus' "Bella Belle" had an easier fourth dimension treading the line between fun and boomy.
It should be stressed that the post-HearID sound still doesn't quite lucifer the lovingly detailed signature of, say, the Sennheiser CX 400BT. The soundstage isn't equally broad, either. But for $130, the Soundcore Liberty Air two Pro audio dandy, with clearly defined instrument separation and clean phonation.
Remember, besides, that HearID isn't a magic "fix the bass" button. It tailors the output to individual users, so your results may sound different from mine. But even if you don't find the results as agreeable as I did, you can all the same manually suit the EQ using the Custom contour in the app to get these earbuds sounding however you want.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air two Pro review: Features
HearID is far from the only tool in the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro'due south kit. Even more crucial is active noise cancellation (ANC), which is an extremely pleasant surprise to see on a pair of $130 earbuds.
It's not even a especially basic implementation of the tech. ANC comes in 3 flavors — Ship, Indoor and Outdoor — too as in a Custom pick that lets you adjust the noise-cancellation effect's intensity.
While Send is conspicuously designed for passengers of planes, trains and automobiles, I found it more effective than the Outdoor contour for quieting traffic while walking near roads. Unsurprisingly, these little earbuds can't entirely silence harsh sounds similar generators or speeding cars, but they tin bring them down enough that music drowns them out at moderate volumes.
The Indoor contour works great, too. Granted, it's tuned for less naturally noisy environments, but it does feel like the most successful at silencing ambience noises. Walking through a shop with this mode and no music playing felt almost eerily quiet.
There's also a choice of Transparency modes: Fully Transparent and Vocal Manner. The latter puts extra emphasis on speech so y'all can hold conversations more than hands. Information technology works well enough on that count, and I actually preferred using it exclusively, at Fully Transparent's expense. Vocal Fashion even so lets in enough sound from, say, traffic or the beeps of a checkout machine, and Fully Transparent boosts the volume of droning sounds beyond my liking. Plow Fully Transparent on nigh an air-conditioning vent or a refrigeration cabinet and the exaggerated whirring is hard to ignore.
Over again, though, some imperfections are forgivable when you think you're getting a premium feature like ANC for $130. If we're picking holes, you could probably say the AirPods Pro accept a mostly clearer-sounding ambient way, but the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro are more than practiced enough.
The Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro also demonstrate their smarts by detecting when you have them out of your ear. This detection characteristic automatically pauses playback then you lot don't miss a beat, and dutifully kicked in when I accidentally knocked one out while removing my face mask. It proved constructive in more intentional uses equally well.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review: Battery life
Anker promises a compelling vii hours of playback, just presumably this is with ANC switched off. At l% volume and with the Indoor noise-cancelling setting engaged, we got 4 hours and 42 minutes of continuous music from these earbuds.
Nevertheless, while that might be an underwhelming consequence for non-ANC buds, it'southward a pretty good showing when you cistron in the extra drain of constant noise-cancelling. They even narrowly beat the AirPods Pro, which lasted 4 and a one-half hours in our testing, though Sony'southward WF-1000XM3 seem to be the overall ANC earbud winners on longevity.
The charging case is listed every bit providing an boosted xix hours, though again that's probable not counting ANC. Based on our testing, y'all can expect the instance to add around 12 hours of ANC playback.
Recharging speed impressed me as well. From a quick 15-minute rest in the case, the Soundcore Freedom Air 2 Pro regained two hours and 34 minutes, more than half of their full chapters.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro review: Call quality
The Soundcore Liberty Air two Pro brand for a respectable voice-calling tool. The friend I chosen reported lower overall clarity than if I were speaking directly into my phone, but I was nevertheless coming through strongly and at to the lowest degree sufficiently clearly.
Likewise, on the receiving end, speech could perhaps be slightly sharper, simply sounds full rather than scratchy and metal (like on the Sennheiser CX 400BT), with good book.
Anker Soundcore Liberty Air two Pro review: Verdict
It'southward disappointing that Anker couldn't match the design quality of the Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro earbuds to the standards of their personalized sound quality and ANC capability. If they looked improve and were more comfy to wear for longer periods, they'd exist as well skillful to pass up, such is the fantabulous value of that $130 toll tag.
Then once more, their flaws are not completely ruinous. It's better to have a capable pair of headphones that look lame than a stylish pair that sound awful, and if you're willing to spend a minute or and so tweaking the app, the Soundcore Liberty Air ii Pro dial to a higher place their weight over again and over again.
The earbuds' waterproofing, active racket cancellation and battery life are likewise on par with much more expensive in-ear headphones, including the AirPods Pro. If yous want ANC on the cheap and can live with a few rough edges, these are absolutely worth a wait. Or a listen.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/anker-soundcore-liberty-air-2-pro
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