How I Used The Soundcore Liberty 4 Earbuds

I tried my best to use these in a variety of situations, like I would any other earbuds that I’d own. As my primary use case is traveling, that was the brunt of it. I took them on a flight and therefore tested them while in the airport, walking around, in the lounge (that was packed and noisy), and on the plane. I also tested them while commuting on the NYC Subway, and while in the office working away. Further, I tested them with a variety of music: Indie Pop/Rock (Beach House, War On Drugs, Hurray For The Riffraff, Arcade Fire, The Preatures, among others); Rap (Tupac); Jazz (Coltrane); and Classical (Brahms).

I did not test the heart rate monitor as I’ve never used one from any brand ever, so I felt that it would be disingenuous to act like I had the knowledge to comment on that.

The Bad

I think the biggest knock for most people here would be that these aren’t top of the line. Which is a weird argument to make, I know. The sound won’t be on par with earbuds costing twice as much. People will legitimately expect that, and I don’t think that’s fair. But, it’s a true point.

The ANC is not quite as good as the big players. It could be that they don’t have a dedicated chip, it could be the algorithm, etc. It’s solid, don’t get me wrong. However when putting them to the test directly against the AirPods 2 - they fell short in some areas which I’ve outlined in the Performance section. I will say nothing so far as to make me not recommend these, nothing like that. But head to head/one on one? They do fall short.

You’ll experience some stuttering at large intersections, but I get into more detail on this in the Performance section. Frankly, many non-Apple earbuds have this issue.

Transparency mode works - but it’s a little “rough around the edges.” What I mean by that, is that it’s not as smooth/soft as more premium buds. Could just be the algo here again - or it might be the speakers for taking in sound. Nothing egregious here, but I want to to be fair in the comparison.

The Performance of the Liberty 4 Earbuds

As mentioned I was testing these in a few different environments so I wanted to summarize that here. This is a section I really only do on headset reviews because I think it’s important for you to see the feedback. I want to note that any criticism in these is not a deal breaker. It’s more to just make sure I’m being objective and trustworthy - overall, I think these are very solid earbuds.

Connection. Overall strong and modern. Distance is very good, I had virtually no skips or stutters while inside buildings, subways, etc. on my iPhone 14 Pro. I will say, I’ve yet to see an earbud other than Apple (presumably because of the H2 chip) pass the “city intersection test”. Bluetooth needs objects to bounce/reflect off of, typically. When you get to a large intersection in NYC for instance - there isn’t anything there. I find that with the possible high interference within a dense city, coupled with this intersection phenomenon - stutters and skips happen in that scenario in every other earbud I’ve worn here. These were no different. But, it’s temporary to that specific moment/scenario. Older earbuds would have this problem in airports (mostly due to so much interference). But none of that with these, just the Intersection Corollary (Can I copyright that?).

Scenario Performance. Not tops, but very good ANC. In the airport lounge, it really brought the noise down but could not stop clinking dish noises and such. Hotel lobby, busy, did good. Walking around DC with songs playing at a reasonable level, almost all car noise was gone, only large trucks were poking in. Buses and such. Busy cafe - kept major noise down but couldn’t eliminate all the nearby voices, especially a particularly zealous dude near me that never saw a 65 inch voice he didn’t like. It wasn’t great at eliminating louder voices overall. Same with heels on hard floors. Sound spikes and higher frequencies seem to be tougher for them in general, but I’d imagine this could be improved with algo updates. On an airplane they blocked a lot of hum as needed. Same thing here though - had trouble with nearby voices, including the on-flight music. Large spikes in sound could not be handled either. This is all with no music just to test. Louder, nearby voices continued to be a challenge once music played (including announcements). On the NYC subway it was all pretty consistent with the previous comments. They worked mostly well - dulled a lot of the cacophony (“You got the vocab? I got the vocaaaab” - Fugees) of the subway system but couldn’t block out the trains completely. Most of the chatter inside the car was handled well, just not the occasional Loud Talker that thinks everyone wants to hear about all the drama with their friend group when Steve and Jenny got in that fight at Calexico.

Transparency worked well enough to use at coffee shops when ordering. Fell short of AirPods Pro or my old Sony’s, but that’s kind of the best in the business and second best from what I hear. It worked well enough to do what it’s supposed to so you can order and not be rude to the workers. Just not quite as smooth as the high end versions.

I’m not sure I’d recommend using these for calls in noisier environments. A quick call with my wife from the coffee shop I was in (busy) and I had to take them off and use the phone. Now, she was outside as well and it could have been something dumb on my part, but didn’t work great. If I’m honest, I’ve never seen a pair of earbuds that work as well as AirPods Pro in this case. It’s sort of their super power. Sonys are universally crushed for their quality here. So, don’t hold this against the Liberty 4’s either. They’ll work in a less stressful environment (they worked fine on a call from the hotel lobby), but if you’re going to be heavily using them for calls and such and might be in high-stress situations as far as noise is concerned, I think in any case you need to spring for higher end solutions.