Anker’s Soundcore Liberty 4 earbuds add spatial audio and heart rate tracking

Today Anker is adding a new entry to its line of Soundcore earbuds with the Liberty 4. While this set keeps the brand in the budget earbud category with a $149.99 price, they’re the first ones in this line to combine a “stick” design (as seen in the Liberty Air 2 Pro) and dual dynamic drivers that Soundcore claims “push the boundaries of sound performance, offering clarity across all frequencies for the best listening experience with all genres of music.”

While we’ll judge how the Liberty 4s measure up once we’ve been able to use them, the spec sheet features a few things that we haven’t seen on every set of earbuds in this price range. Not everyone is a fan of spatial audio features in headphones and buds, but these buds have it, promising 360-degree tracking with a gyroscope and algorithm that try to align the sounds as you move your head while watching movies or listen to music while you have the feature turned on.

They also include an in-ear heart rate sensor that ties to a Wellness app to keep track of daily data or just while you work out — in case you don’t have a watch, armband, or ring to monitor that kind of thing.

For more typical earbud tasks, they include Bluetooth 5.3, Soundcore’s HearID active noise cancellation, three sizes of ear tips, and 6 microphones (three per earbud) that are supposed to help your voice come through clearly to people on the other end. They also have multipoint connections to stay linked to both your laptop and phone, for example. Like their predecessors, codec support in the Liberty 4 includes LDAC, AAC, and SBC, but not aptX.

Battery life could depend on which features you use, promising up to 9 hours on a charge with normal use, 5 hours in spatial audio mode, 6 hours while in LDAC mode and no noise cancellation, and up to 7 hours with just ANC on.

Their charging case can fast charge them for 15 minutes to add 3 hours of playback or charge them from empty to full in one hour, and the case itself charges via USB-C or wirelessly. Under normal conditions, Soundcore says the Liberty 4 is capable of up to 28 hours of use in normal conditions before you’ll drain the buds and their case.

If you’re interested, they will be available in either black or white, with the black version on sale starting today from Soundcore.com, Amazon on October 10th, and Best Buy’s website by the end of October. The white set is scheduled to go on sale on October 7th from Soundcore and on October 17th from Amazon.