Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro Review – Impressive Sound Minus The Wires
The Liberty 2 Pro’s are the flagship TWS offered by Soundcore. The chances are if you are in the market for a nice sounding TWS earbuds Soundcore might not be in your shortlist. It was the same with me, i wasn’t expecting much when I received the Liberty 2 Pros for review. But I was pleasantly surprised after using them for a while and this when I have a bunch of TWS with me for review purposes. So let's get on with the review –
Packaging and Box contents
So yeah, we are talking about the packaging which means it has to be something special, And it is. So the Liberty 2 Pro’s come in a premium box packing with “In-ear studio performance” written on the cover. Things start getting interesting, As you unfold the box, you see things about the internals of the earbuds, Balanced Armature Drivers for accurate Highs and Mids, and a Dynamic Driver for Tight bass. Ok, more on this later, so the packaging is excellent and they give out a distinct premium feel to the product.
Inside you get the Liberty 2pro earbuds and a pebble-shaped charging case that slides up to open, interesting design and works well. Apart from this you also get 12 extra ear tips for that perfect snug fit and 4 extra “fins” or “Wings” and a USB A to USB C cable.
Hardware Design
The first thing you notice is that the pebble-shaped case is good looking but the earbuds are on the larger side not really discreet looking. And they do stick a bit from the ears. The review unit came with Dark Grey and Matte Black color combination.
It’s the earbuds are marked left and right so no confusion there, they feel dense and premium. Both the earbuds get a physical button on them which can be used for multiple actions. The Buds are magnetic and snap inside the case and are secure enough.
The pebble-shaped is really good to look at but it's on the larger side, but the rounded pebble-shaped design meant it was easy to carry around. The Sliding mechanism is smooth and shuts with a reassuring click, in my time with the Liberty 2 Pro I never faced any situation where the case opened when in my pocket or bag. The USB C charging port comes with a rubber cover, nice little addition as it keeps the port from collecting dust and dirt being kept in the bag or pockets.
Fit
Well, the liberty 2 Pro is on the larger side and the big questions everyone has with big earbuds are will they fit? Will they be secure? Will they fall off ? well the answer to all these questions is in the design of the earbuds, Liberty 2 Pro comes with a lot of soft silicone ear tips and wings for getting your perfect fit. Even though they jut out a bit, I had no problems with the fit.
Sounds Signature
The Engineers at Soundcore have tried some wizardry here and put a Knowles balanced armature driver directly in front of the dynamic driver and aligning each of the two drivers in a coaxial architecture, this concept is not really seen in earbuds commonly. All this tech aside there is support for Qualcomm aptX codec and Bluetooth 5.0. A major step up over cheaper buds that use AAC or SBC when streaming audio.
The sound quality is supreme, yes that good! The large drivers really help with bringing the extra details which normally is lost. The sound stage is wide and the bass is not over pronounced. If you are looking for heavy bass this is where you should stop reading. The Liberty 2 Pro has a superb overall dynamic sound that handles the shades of music tracks exceptionally well. Testing multiple TWS earbuds one after the other the difference in the full-range sound of the Liberty 2 Pro was very evident.
Now I prefer to listen to electronic music and I was particularly impressed at the separation in busy tracks, with vocals standing out clearly from the clutter of audio behind. Overall listening to all genres of music on the Liberty 2 Pro was a pleasurable experience, the extra detail and clarity is just amazing. You can further tune the audio through the Soundcore App.
Battery
Apart from the great sound signature, the Liberty 2 Pros come with good battery life, roughly 8hours or so, During the process of running in the drivers I was constantly getting 7plus hours of usage. The pebble case adds extra 30 odd hours of usage, The pebble case is also wireless charging enabled and this is a great addition.
Mobile App and Extras
The Liberty 2 Pro comes with its own mobile app, and there is a lot more audio tuning available here. There is a special ‘Hear ID’ feature that maps your ear’s hearing sensitivity at multiple frequencies to create personalized EQ settings. The results are quite impressive. There is an 8 band custom EQ settings for manual tuning along with that you get EQ settings from 10 Grammy-winning producers and preset EQ settings from Soundcore as well.
Negatives
The buttons, With the Liberty 2 Pros being on the larger side the extra real estate could be easily used for touchpads, au contraire you get physical buttons on each bud that can do limited things. A single tap pauses and plays audio nothing, a double-tap on the right bud skips a track, a double-tap on the left bud skips backward. Holding either side will activate the Google Assistant on your Android phone — although you can change this to volume up or down controls. Buttons on TWS buds tend to dislodge them I feel, including a touchpad would have been awesome here, Maybe the Liberty 3 Pro gets it.
Secondly, The second earbud also needs to be paired for the first time and once it is paired, both the earbuds connect automatically upon taking it out from the charging case. Additionally, there is no auto-pause feature when you take either of the buds out of your ears, at this price point I would expect this feature. Phone calls are a bit iffy, the mics gather a lot of ambient sound for the listener, this is quite common with TWS, so well!
Verdict
The Liberty 2 Pro is priced at INR 9,999 and at this price, there is a wealth of TWS available in the market. Some come with more features, some with more bass and some with a smaller footprint but if you value sound quality over everything else be sure to check out The Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro. Even though the bass is a little low for my liking, I loved the wide sound stage and the clarity that the Liberty 2Pro provides. The Pebble shaped case with the sliding mechanism and wireless charging is sweet too. Overall I’m highly impressed by the Soundcore Liberty 2 Pros, alternatively, you could check out the RHA TrueConnect.
