The £230/£200 Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max are earbuds with a difference. Their square AI Note-Taker Smart Case has can record, transcribe, even translate meetings. It has 100 built-in languages and promises 97% accuracy. I put it to the test.
The case is square and a bit bigger than most – the touchscreen lid slides up to reveal the earbuds. A QR code appears on screen for the app. Pairing is straightforward but you have to pair twice: once for the headphones, a second time for the case.
Double-tap on the screen to wake it, then swipe up and select AI Note Taker. You can record, stop, flag key moments. Recording works offline. The case stores 15 hours of audio, syncs with the phone app via Bluetooth, then automatically deletes older recordings.
The cloud-based AI transcription is impressive and free. You get 120 minutes a month for two years. Heavy users can get an $8/£8 monthly Pro subscription for ten times as many minutes.
But other apps and services can transcribe and summarise. Microsoft Copilot and Otter.ai spring to mind. You don’t need an extra gadget. You may already have corporate software that does it.
The Soundcore offers a discreet personal note-taker. I’m not suggesting you put it on the boardroom table to record your own notes on the sly… but you could.
More compelling is the in-meeting translation because it uses the earbuds as well as the case. It only works when you have the phone and app on hand. You pick source and destination languages (they aren’t automatically detected) and tap a button on the case, or app, to record audio. A translation is piped into your ears and also displayed on screen.
The results are prompt and impressive. Being able to hear in my own language was great and led to more natural conversations. But you have to press each time to translate. I fast found myself tapping the app and ignoring the case. And thanks to AI there were occasional hallucinations. A conversation in French about money turned surreal: “What’s your fish?”
I like the earpiece but want more: one earpiece each for a natural conversation that cuts through language barriers. Sure, sharing an earpiece is intimate, but a deal might depend on it… carry wipes.
Soundcore says the case has 100 built-in languages, but with translation dependent on the app, it’s hard to see the benefit. I tried Google Translate as a free alternative and, although it lacks the earbud thing, it lets two people have a very natural conversation in different languages with translations on screen.
Meanwhile, if you don’t need the Max’s smart case, the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro are $170/£150 for the same earbuds with a… dumber case. Active noise cancelling (ANC) is impressive. Turn it on and the world goes quiet: you can’t hear the train, laptop, etc. All repetitive noise is silenced and only non-repetitive noise can be heard: the child in the train carriage, the cat’s miaow.
It’s disturbingly quiet at first, like an anechoic chamber. I could hear my pulse because there were no other sounds. Typing helped: I could hear the tap on the keys even though I could no longer hear the laptop fan.
Calls were clear, music was immersive and, crucially, I could listen quieter because there was no need to punch above background noise. But turning the ANC off was jarring. I could hear all the noises that I normally ignore. The world was suddenly very loud.
The supreme noise cancellation makes sense. The earbuds have a Guiness World Record as the clearest for calls. They boast eight mics, two bone conduction sensors and useparent company Anker’s Thus AI chip with a built-in neural network, with a new efficient design that combines processor and memory. Anker says it’s 150 times more powerful than its previous earbud chip.
In all, I like the Soundcore, but the tech could do more. I want two people to have an earbud each for audio translation. I also want the case to have a mode that constantly listens, with a “capture that thought” button that preserves what has just been said, whether a brainwave or an unguarded moment. Now that really would make me a boardroom boss.
Now read I’m glad to see these colourful new Bose headphones inherit a trick from my favourite pair for travel
Read the full article here
