Anker Liberty Air 2 Pro review: $ 130 ANC headphones worth listening to

It is increasingly difficult to stand out in the wireless headset market. You can find a pair of headphones in almost every price range, with a variety of different features scattered throughout. Being within a specific ecosystem, such as AirPods for iOS users or Galaxy Buds Live for Samsung users, is an easy way to choose the right headphones for you. Anker doesn’t exactly have a phone of its own to sell along with its Liberty headset line, so its strategy is to offer desirable features at a competitive price.

The $ 129.99 Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro buttons do a lot of good, but many other headphones for that price do too. It is their competitive active noise cancellation and well-designed app that helps them stand out.

The buttons themselves have the same stem design with a silicone eartip as Apple’s AirPods Pro. (I think the name is not the only way Anker was inspired by Apple.) The Liberty Air 2 Pro has a golden fan-shaped cover over its speakers, which serves no purpose but looks cool and a matte textured finish. They come in “onyx black”, “titanium white”, “sapphire blue” and “crystal rose”. Included in the box are nine silicone ear tips of different sizes, ranging from XXXS to XL, to create the best seal and, hopefully, prevent movement in your ear canal from happening.

Tuning is extremely important in headphones, not only for ANC, but also for the best sound quality experience, especially at lower frequencies. To confirm that you have chosen the best size tips, Anker has a Tip Adjustment Test within the Soundcore application. The app plays about 10 seconds of ringtone-type orchestral music and then displays a “good seal” or “bad seal” result for each headset. (Yes, it’s basically like what Apple does with AirPods Pro. Inspiration.)

There is also an audio test called HearID that claims to map your personal hearing sensitivity across multiple frequencies to better adjust the EQ settings for you. It plays about 30 different tones per ear and asks you to confirm whether you can hear the tone or not. You will then see a graph of your results and an EQ preset saved in the app. My test resulted in deep, less high-pitched bass, which made my music sound more complete.

Adjustment and equalization configuration tests are something that several other headphone manufacturers are currently doing, and while not everyone finds these tests useful, I am grateful to have the option.

The box, large and almost like a stone, slides open and closes with a satisfying click. It is more like the Galaxy Buds Pro case – it is longer than tall – but its larger size makes it not as pocketable as most headset cases. There are three battery indicator lights at the front and a button to pair at the rear. This may seem like a small detail, but I really appreciate the headphones that have a physical button for pairing. It’s much easier to use than touching headphones to pair as you need it on the Jabra Elite 85t.

Like most headphones, the Air 2 Pro has touch controls when you use them: double-tap the left button to skip the next track, double-tap the right button to play and pause, or press and hold for two seconds in any button to switch the ambient sound modes. It is great that the buttons respond quickly to my touches, but I am frustrated with the limitation of the controls. All of them can be customized in the app, but I wish there was a single ring or even triple ring option.

Any button can be used independently of the other, and detection at the ear can be enabled and disabled in the Anker app. Take off a headset and your music will stop; put the button back on your ear and it will resume. In-ear detection was a little sensitive for my taste. When I put on a hood, for example, every time the headset hit the hood, my music stopped even though the button was still attached to my ear. A quick reset of the button would make my music play again, but ended up turning off the ear detection feature entirely.

The battery life is the same as other ANC headphones. Anker claims to have seven hours of battery life with the ANC off or six hours with it on. There are three additional charges on the case, which can be recharged wirelessly or via the USB-C port on the back. That was more than enough to get me to the point of my ears needing a break from the tight seal of the buttons inside my ear. There is also a 15-minute quick charge that can provide three hours of listening when the case is plugged into an outlet via USB-C.

Liberty Air 2 Pro supports SBC and AAC audio codecs. They have 11 mm drivers that create a heavier sound. Although the music seemed full and engaging with a clear separation, I often wanted more bass. Raising the bass in the app’s EQ helped, but it didn’t sound as clean as the bass in the AirPods Pro. Funk and soul from the 1970s sounded great, but the more contemporary R&B seemed a little empty.

I was very impressed with the active noise cancellation on the Liberty Air 2 Pro. Outside of Amazon’s Echo Buds, there really aren’t that many options at this price that include it, much less that do it well.

The Air 2 Pro has three ambient sound modes: total noise cancellation, transparency mode and normal. Within the full ANC and transparency modes, there are more specific controls for managing pass-through sound levels. You can enable a mode of transport to cancel low-end frequencies, such as train noises; Internal mode for medium-sized frequencies; an outdoor mode that Anker claims is best for urban spaces; or create a custom mode to dial in the best configuration for you. I set up my ANC for Transport and left it there most of my time and found it comparable to the ANC on the Jabra Elite 85t, a set of headphones that costs $ 100 more than Anker’s.

Noise cancellation let the outside world disappear, but it was not as insulating as the AirPods Pro or Galaxy Buds Pro. And while the transparency mode can be repaired, it also doesn’t have the AirPods headset-free feeling Pro. There is a vocal transparency mode that removes the lower frequencies while allowing higher frequencies, such as voices. It was useful for listening to train announcements, but in the end, taking off a headset to hear an announcement was much easier.

Most wireless headset apps are so bad that I open them once to set the equalizer settings and some custom touch controls, and that’s it. The Soundcore app made me come back several times, mainly to play with all the different controls it offered.

When I was bored on the train, I would open the app and start testing all the transparency modes while strangers were talking to each other on the other side of the car. I also had fun increasing and decreasing the EQ settings. The app is full of nice colors and easy to navigate, which is surprisingly rare in the headset market.

In a wireless headset market full of valid (and not-so-dignified) competition, it is increasingly difficult to be impressed by a new pair of buttons. But the competitive price of $ 130 for Soundcore Liberty Air 2 Pro brought me, and its true active noise cancellation and well-designed app got me back for more. They could certainly use a little more bass and a smaller case, but Anker made a pair of wireless headphones that bridges the gap between a more economical option and a reliable and versatile headset that I was excited to put in my ears. every day.

Becca Farsace / The Verge photo