ANKER soundcore’s Liberty 5 Pro Hits Indonesia With a Guinness Record

ANKER soundcore launched the Liberty 5 Pro Series in Indonesia on 11 June 2026, pricing the standard model at Rp2.999.000 and the Pro Max at Rp3.999.000. The launch follows the earbuds becoming the first pair to win a Guinness World Record for call clarity, and it lands at a US launch price of $169.99, undercutting Apple’s $249 AirPods Pro 3. The hardware hook is a proprietary chip the company calls the world’s first neural-net compute-in-memory audio processor, and the Indonesia event is the first major market outside the US to get the Pro Max’s AI Note-Taker in the charging case.

Indonesia’s no afterthought. Warta Ekonomi, citing Anker’s own materials, calls soundcore the brand wireless earphone nomor satu di Indonesia, the number-one wireless earphone brand in the country. Leon Wu, Anker’s Southeast Asia general manager, framed the launch around hybrid-work users who already lean on personal audio for meetings, calls, and travel. The series goes on sale through the official distribution network and an exclusive Shopee window running 11 June to 11 July 2026, with the open question being whether the Guinness-certified call-clarity claim and on-device AI silicon can pry share away from Apple’s flagship at $80 less.

The Guinness Record That Sets the Bar

ANKER soundcore says the Liberty 5 Pro was certified by Guinness World Records in April 2026 for the “Highest speech quality score (G-MOS) for TWS earbuds (objective test).” The certification landed before the global reveal on 21 May 2026 at the Anker Day event in New York, and Indonesia is among the first markets outside the US to get them. The same certification has since appeared on the official product page, where Soundcore describes the win as part of the marketing claim for the entire Liberty 5 Pro Series. Mashable’s lead shopping reporter, Bethany Allard, was at the Anker Day reveal and was the first outside reviewer to put the mic system to a hands-on test.

The claim is auditable. Allard put a pre-release pair through a 30-second home test during a FaceTime call: the colleague on the other end heard the reviewer but not a friend who leaned into the frame to say hello. Allard called the mic quality “superb” and confirmed the “whisper clear” promise with no shouting required.

Independent reviewers have echoed the pitch. The April 2026 Guinness call-clarity certification was followed a month later by a Forbes deep-dive that placed the Anker Thus AI chip in the same conversation as Apple’s AirPods Pro 3 and Sony’s WF-1000XM5. The Verge’s assessment, quoted in Soundcore’s own AirPods Pro 3 comparison, called the Liberty 5 Pro’s call clarity the best it had heard from any earbuds. SoundGuys, in the same round of reviews, found the Liberty 5 Pro outperformed competitors that cost well over $200.

What Makes the Anker Thus Chip Different

The hardware behind the call-clarity win is the Anker Thus AI chip, a neural-net compute-in-memory (CIM) audio processor. The Anker Thus chip architecture explained by TechRadar describes the chip as performing its computations inside NOR flash memory cells, fusing CPU and memory to slash the data movement that drains battery on conventional designs. The chip is fabbed in Germany, a detail Anker’s UK country manager Jocelyn Qian shared at the Anker Day launch event.

Soundcore puts the performance gain at 150 times the computing power of the Liberty 4 Pro chip. The number sounds marketing-shaped, but the company backs it with two specific throughput figures. The Adaptive ANC 4.0 system processes 384,000+ noise signals per second, and the AI Sound Enhancement feature recovers 65% of the audio quality normally lost over Bluetooth. The chip’s third job is on-device voice control: 20 built-in commands for skipping tracks, taking calls, and adjusting the volume run locally, which Forbes says makes them respond three times faster than cloud-routed voice control.

The pitch is as much a privacy story as a speed one: no audio leaves the earbuds for any of the AI features, since all the noise suppression, voice control, and audio enhancement runs on the chip itself. That is why Anker describes it as a “neural-net compute-in-memory” audio processor rather than a conventional AI accelerator.

The product spec sheet is also available on the Liberty 5 Pro Series product page, which lists battery, sensor, and case-screen details in addition to the chip specs. Both models run for 6.5 hours with ANC on and 28 hours with the case. The 0.96-inch TFT touchscreen on the Liberty 5 Pro case and the 1.78-inch AMOLED on the Pro Max case both work without opening the Soundcore app.

Whisper-Clear Calls, Tested in Real Rooms

Soundcore’s pitch for the calls comes down to a 10-sensor matrix. Eight high-SNR MEMS microphones capture ambient sound, and two bone-conduction vibration pickup units (VPUs) detect the wearer’s voice vibrations directly from the skull.

The chip then runs both streams against an AI large model trained on noisy speech, isolating the caller’s voice from the environment. Soundcore and HotHardware both claim the system can keep the caller’s voice intelligible in 100 dB+ environments: a roaring subway, a packed café, an airport gate. The underlying logic is that VPUs cancel out the noise floor before the AI even starts processing, since the noise never makes it into the bone-conduction signal in the first place.

The May 2026 first-impressions test of the earbuds by Mashable mirrored the marketing claim. A colleague in the same room spoke directly into the phone’s camera, and the friend on the other end of the FaceTime call heard nothing. The reviewer was heard without issue. In a second test, the reviewer took calls while people watched TV and chatted nearby; the person on the line wasn’t aware of any background noise.

The Productivity Play in the Pro Max Case

The Liberty 5 Pro Max adds a 1.78-inch AMOLED touchscreen on top of the charging case, replacing the 0.96-inch TFT display that sits on the front edge of the Liberty 5 Pro’s case. The AMOLED case on the Pro Max pulls double duty as a recording device.

The case acts as a standalone AI Note-Taker, recording meetings or interviews that sync to the Soundcore app for transcription, speaker identification, and summary generation. Soundcore claims the feature saves 10 to 15 minutes per hour-long meeting by surfacing tasks and deadlines the AI extracts from the transcript. Standard multi-device switching works on both models, with up to three paired devices moving between smartphone, tablet, and laptop over Bluetooth 6.1. Three other AI features ship with the Pro Max, none of them on the standard model:

• AI Recording: case-based meeting capture without a phone in the loop.
• AI Summary: app-side distillation of the transcript into action items and deadlines.
• AI Translation: on-device, two-way translation across a large language library.

The Price Gap Against the AirPods Pro 3

The $169.99 US launch price undercuts the AirPods Pro 3, which retails for $249. In Indonesia, the Pro lands at Rp2.999.000 and the Pro Max at Rp3.999.000. Soundcore has also published prices for Singapore and Thailand, where the Pro Max is SGD 299 and THB 7,999 respectively, and the UK, where the regular Pro is £149.99 and the Pro Max is £199.99. The price ladder across regions reads like this:

The Liberty 5 Pro undercuts the AirPods Pro 3’s $249 US launch price. In every market where Soundcore has published, the Pro is the cheaper option. The Pro Max is the more expensive model in each one.

The question is whether the AirPods Pro 3 still earns its premium. The short answer, from Soundcore’s own comparison page, is yes for low-frequency noise. Apple’s ultra-low-noise microphone array “leads the field on low-frequency attenuation, particularly on plane cabin hum.” The Liberty 5 Pro is rated 100% more effective than Soundcore’s previous flagship, but it covers office, traffic, and subway noise, not 35,000 feet.

Why Indonesia, and Why Now

Leon Wu, General Manager, Southeast Asia, Anker Innovations, framed the launch in market terms. Indonesia, he said, is one of the most important markets for Anker in Southeast Asia. The new earbuds target the hybrid-work users who already rely on personal audio for meetings, calls, and travel.

The Indonesia-specific rollout adds a few details not present in the US launch. Elvin Darwin, GTM Manager of Soundcore Indonesia, told the launch event that the chip turns the earbuds into a “smart companion” that adapts to the user’s day, and that the company sees this as the moment earbuds stop being audio accessories. The Indonesia launch at Mal Kota Kasablanka in Jakarta included live demos of Whisper-Clear Calls and the AI productivity features, plus a discussion with Indonesian actor Billy Davidson about staying productive on set and on the road. The event marked the first major market outside the US to get the Liberty 5 Pro Max’s AI Note-Taker.

• 50 hours of total battery life with the charging case, paired with 5-minute fast charging for 4 hours of playback.
• IP55 dust and splash resistance for daily commute and outdoor use.
• PCR (Post-Consumer Recycled) material in the product housing and FSC-certified paper packaging.
• An exclusive Shopee launch window from 11 June to 11 July 2026, ahead of wider retail distribution.

Where the Bet Stops Working

The AirPods Pro 3 still wins where Apple has always won: integration with iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Spatial Audio with head tracking, automatic device switching, Find My case location, head gesture controls, and continuous heart rate monitoring all require an iPhone.

None of it works on Android, where AirPods Pro 3 drop to basic Bluetooth playback. The Liberty 5 Pro’s ANC also has a known quirk. Mashable’s review caught a soft clicking sound in the left earbud of the Pro Max during adaptive ANC testing, and the reviewer flagged it as something a software update could fix.

And the AI Note-Taker, the Pro Max’s most distinctive feature, is likely to live behind a paywall for heavy users. Mashable noted that “a Pro version for more transcription minutes is available,” and Soundcore’s own product page does not quote unlimited minutes. The Pro Max ships with the recording hardware in the case; the cloud-style summarization and unlimited transcription remain a service question the company hasn’t yet priced publicly for Indonesia. Anker’s Southeast Asia GM, Leon Wu, called Indonesia one of the most important markets for the company; it is the first major proving ground outside the US for the Liberty 5 Pro Max’s AI Note-Taker. The wider push of putting AI in earbuds now has Anker’s on-device AI silicon in the TWS form factor, with the Liberty 5 Pro Series carrying the Guinness-certified call-clarity claim and a dedicated AI chip in one product.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the ANKER Thus AI chip in the Liberty 5 Pro?

The Thus chip is a neural-net compute-in-memory audio processor that Soundcore’s parent Anker developed in-house and produces in Germany. It fuses CPU and memory on the same NOR flash cells to deliver what Anker claims is 150 times the computing power of the Liberty 4 Pro chip, while running voice control and noise suppression locally without sending audio to the cloud.

How does Whisper-Clear Calls work?

The system pairs eight MEMS microphones with two bone-conduction vibration pickup units in each earbud. The MEMS array captures ambient sound; the VPUs detect the wearer’s voice vibrations directly through the skull. The AI chip runs both streams against a large neural network trained on noisy speech, which lets the earbuds isolate the caller’s voice even in 100 dB+ environments like a subway or airport gate.

What’s the difference between the Liberty 5 Pro and Liberty 5 Pro Max?

The Pro Max adds a 1.78-inch AMOLED touchscreen on the entire top of the charging case, replacing the 0.96-inch TFT display on the regular Pro. The Pro Max case doubles as a standalone AI Note-Taker that records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings. It also gets AI Recording, AI Summary, and AI Translation, three software features that are not on the standard Liberty 5 Pro.

Is the Liberty 5 Pro better than the Apple AirPods Pro 3?

On call clarity, Soundcore has the certification and reviews to back its claim; The Verge and SoundGuys both placed it ahead of the AirPods Pro 3 in noisy conditions, and it won a Guinness World Record in April 2026. On low-frequency active noise cancellation, particularly in airplane cabins, Apple’s flagship still leads. The AirPods Pro 3 also requires an iPhone for its best features, while the Liberty 5 Pro runs the same feature set on iOS, Android, and Windows.