One set of earbuds that sound like 3 different pairs. And beyond sound, does the Lypertek Z5 have the capability to beat the best of the mid-range like the Edifier NeoBuds Pro and the SoundCore Liberty 3 Pro? Let’s find out together.
🎧 Buy the Lypertek Z5: https://geni.us/LypertekZ5
🎧 Buy the Edifier NeoBuds Pro: https://geni.us/EdifierNeoBudsPro
🎧 Buy the SoundCore Liberty 3 Pro: https://geni.us/Liberty3Pro
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So what is the Lypertek Z5? Well – it’s a set of true wireless earbuds with ANC that sound pretty damn good. They’re priced at 129 Euros at launch which is right in the middle of the Edifier NeoBuds Pro which are cheaper and the SoundCore Liberty 3 Pro which are more expensive.
Sound
So let’s get into sound – these sound great! The basics – they support APTX Adaptive and AAC as codecs. We also noticed that they sound best with noise cancelling on. And there’s one thing that Lypertek wins hands down – it’s LOUD! We said that about the Z3 and it’s true about the Z5!
Lypertek has taken a very interesting approach on sound. You can essentially achieve three types of sound using three different tips. You get two sets of different silicone tips and one set of foam tips.
We start with the silicone narrow bore tips – holy shit!! This gives you massive bass. Way overdone! But we like it! Bassiest buds we’ve ever heard and that includes the bass and sub-bass. But it’s a very powerful, present and strong bass. It’ll be bleeding all into the mids and we can imagine that this would be great for watching movies and explosions, but also for listening to EDM and dance music. The Lypertek call these PurePower, but we call them PureBOOMBOOM! Love it.
Then at number 2, we have the wide bore tips. Called PureSpace, these give you a more spacious, balanced sound and we can see folks who don’t need overdone bass enjoying these tips more. They are the most balanced and really, Lypertek take a bow. These earbuds sound fantastic! We have a little issue with the treble being a little tame, but it’s still adjustable via EQ. And thankfully it’s not sibilant.
The third type of tip you get are foam tips. Now we must say – we really struggled with putting on the foam tips – and to us we preferred the silicone tips anyway for comfort. So for our personal taste, it’s either the PurePower or the PureSpace tips.
Now – there’s something special about the Lypertek sound. It has a certain quality about their mids that we just enjoy. Vocals sound present and natural, not recessed, but just at the right level, be it the multiple voices in Brothertiger’s Arizona or guitars that soar over the rhythm section like in Joe Satriani’s latest single – Sahara. And they resolve really well too. The Liberty 3 Pros have a quality to their treble that we don’t really enjoy. They can sound very good, but when it comes to personal taste. The NeoBuds Pro are also very similar – although they really turn up the bass.
The Z5 also have LDX audio – which we think is a little bit of a gimmick, but what’s more interesting is the EQ. Very good presets and you can go full monty with the EQ settings to tune it to your taste. It makes a significant difference in the sound.
Overall – these are really the best of the best sounding buds for this price class. A different character from the other two we’re talking about. But you should not have any regrets buying these purely for sound.
Build
The moment you pick up the earbuds case you notice the boxy form factor with the shiny logo on it. These are certainly thicc bois but boy are we happy with the hinge action. We see a lot of buds here on the channel, and hinges can be weak sauce. Not the case with the Z5 – it’s got that solid popping and locking! Didn’t think we’d be so enthusiastic about a bloody hinge.. But here we are. Sticking to the topic of the case, it’s got Type C charging as expected, which supports fast charging. Which means 2 hours playback by charging it for 15 mins. Wireless charging – yes it has it. But how much juice are these thicc bois packing? Well you get 7 hours on the buds, but only 4 hours if you’re using ANC. And you get another 28 hours from the case. They’re not bad, but they’re not spectacular either.
As you flip open the case with the delightful hinge. Did we talk about the hinge? The buds have your classic stem shape with a touch surface on the rounded part of the buds. The touch controls are responsive, but a bit too responsive. We’ve accidentally hung up on calls more than a few times. We think Lypertek knew this and that’s the reason they’ve included a ‘Safe’ setting in their app which disables single taps. You can also customize these touch controls to your heart’s content. More on the app later though.
And when you’re done flexing the hinge on the case, you might head to the gym to flex your own hinges. Then you’ll be glad to know that these are IPX5 water resistant meaning that they’re fine for workouts and rain. We’ve spoken about the tips, but what about comfort? They’re very comfortable in our experience! Another reason why these would be our pick for workouts! They remind us very strongly of the Edifier Neobuds Pro. They fit securely and are comfortable if you’re wearing them for several hours. Important if you’re working out or just working. Working at home or wherever you are these days in our hybrid world.
Calls
Speaking of calls – they’re good. We’ll leave you with that limited sneak peek as we let you listen to some microphone samples comparing them to the Edifier Neobuds Pro and Soundcore Liberty 3 Pro.
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Back to the calls – there is one running theme which crosses over to calls on the Z5. When you’re listening to the calls, other people sound LOUD on the Z5 – just thought we’d point that out as we noticed it while comparing it with the Liberty 3 Pro and the Neobuds Pro.
Now moving on to how the microphones sound. Testing them in quiet conditions is like telling identical triplets apart, they look the same but dress differently. Ok, strange metaphor but you get the point. But the microphones really get put through their paces in noisy and windy conditions. In noisy conditions we have to give the win to the Neobuds Pro since you hear a little bit of the background noise but the voice is very clear. The Z5 follows suit and are very usable although if we needed to nitpick, the voice clarity was slightly worse than the Neobuds Pro. And last place goes to the Liberty 3 Pro. It does an amazing job at cancelling out so much of the background noise but the speaker’s voice gets a bit distorted at times. Probably because of that aggressive noise reduction at play.
In windy conditions we coincidentally see the same ranking. On the Neobuds Pro you hear a bit of the wind but the voice remains clear and audible. On the Z5 you hear more of the wind leaking through but the voice is generally clear. It does get distorted when speaking softly though. On the Liberty 3 Pro you hear the most wind but the voice is audible. Now and then we see it get distorted.
So in conclusion: the winner for us is the Neobuds Pro. But since we’re talking about the Z5 – rest assured that it’s still a confident choice and you won’t be disappointed.
We know you would be disappointed if we didn’t talk about the vakman controls. So let’s do that. The Z5 has the basics of answering and ending calls, but there’s no on device muting. You do get volume controls which is always a welcome option. Triple tapping on the right bud increases the volume and doing the same on the left bud reduces the volume. These controls aren’t for the faint hearted though. If you’re on a call with extremely sensitive touch controls, then you’re living on the edge. Just by attempting a triple tap to change your volume by a single notch, you risk ending the whole phone call. Our risk appetite isn’t that high so we’ll probably pull out our phone to change the volume.
Extras & connectivity
Similar to buying a BMW Z5, you’d probably want to know what kind of extras you get on the Lypertek Z5. If you take out an earbud while listening to music, it won’t pause music. But since that touch surface is so sensitive you might pause it accidentally anyway. Speaking of removing a bud. The Z5 works independently with either bud so when you pop that case open – first enjoy that satisfying hinge action. And then pick a bud, any bud. For phone calls or music.
Ok – low latency mode. This is a feature we’ve seen quite often, especially with budget buds. It’s a mode you can generally enable from the app and improves latency when gaming. The Z5 takes a different approach. It has it as well but it’s just on. All the time. No setting or option to change – it’s always on – straight out of the box. Nice!
So how does the Z5 play with polygamous relationships? It doesn’t. It connects only to one device at one time. Unlike the Liberty 3 Pro or the many other wireless earbuds that let you stay connected to two devices at once. But what is arguably worse is that you can’t force a connection from a previously paired device. You have to disconnect it from the first device before you can pair with another. Or you can put the buds into the case, push and hold the button in the case and put the buds into pairing mode.
App
So the app is very similar to the app we saw with the other Lypertek we reviewed, the Z3. But… it’s another app. The one for the Z5 is called the PureControl ANC vs the older PureControl which we used for the Z3. Pure Confusion. But it does have all the basics. The LDX and EQ we talked about and it has the ability to find your earbuds. You can customize the controls and…
ANC
..when it comes to ANC, you can just toggle, but not really tune the strength of the ANC and ambient modes, which we think is perfectly fine! How does the ANC and transparency perform though? Let’s listen to some samples and we’ll see you here after that.
So the ANC on these is ok, but not great. The Edifier are the clear winner when it comes to eliminating sound. The Z5 are about the level of the SoundCore, probably a bit lower but not by much. Where these do shine is at transparency. Again, they let sounds across the spectrum in and we think they’re a little better than the Edifier and a lot better than the SoundCore. And while you will hear white noise in quiet environments, it still does fine against its competition. So between the three of these, the Lypertek Z5 would be our pick for transparency and the Edifier NeoBuds Pro for noise canceling.
To buy or not to buy
So look, if you know about Lypertek, you are going to know what they can bring in terms of sound. And these buds – they deliver. At 129 Euros at launch – they live in a very challenging market with the Edifier NeoBuds Pro nipping at their heels and the SoundCore Liberty 3 Pro nipping at their…toes? What’s unique about them? The three different types of sound based on the tip is pretty ingenious if you’re hardcore about your sound and don’t believe in equalizing via software. They’re loud, can be either punchy or spacious but it’s not just all about the sound with the Z5. They have very good microphones for calls, an above average ambient mode and decent noise cancelling. But they do lack certain extras like conveniently switching devices, an in-ear sensor to pause your music and they don’t have the most compact case.
Out of the three buds we’ve talked about in this video, the Liberty 3 Pro is the most feature-packed – dual device, great app, wireless charging, in-ear sensor, LDAC – the works. But we prefer the Edifier NeoBuds Pro and Lypertek Z5 when it comes to the best fit and comfort, with the Edifier having the edge. They’re also cheaper and do better at phone calls and look more understated with the stem shaped design. The Edifier NeoBuds Pro does really well for being the cheapest of the lot, with the best water and dust resistance at IP54 and excellent ANC. They don’t have wireless charging, but other than that – they’re still a great set of buds, if you’re fine with the weird app permissions it asks for.
So this is a really close fight, but we’re happy that the Z5 is in the race – unless those extra features are important to you – multi-device, auto-pause etc, we think you can pick any of these 3. It’s a great time for mid-range wireless earbuds. And hinges.
You’ve been coming unhinged and we’ve been DHRME. Namaste 🙏
