Anker Soundcore Liberty 2 Pro

glow as the synthesizer kicked in, and the precise placement of the instruments in the wide soundstage. For a $150 pair of truly wireless earbuds, that’s pretty impressive.

Next, I queued up Vlado Perlemuter’s performance of Maurice Ravel’s solo piano works for Nimbus Records. Solo piano can be a tough benchmark for any pair of headphones, let alone sub-$200 wireless earbuds, yet I was again impressed by the fine details in Perlemuter’s keystrokes, the elegant timbre of the piano, and the atmospherics of the concert hall.

Finally, it was time for Ciara’s “Level Up,” and I got a kick out of the punchy (but not too punchy) bass, the crisp but never tinny vocals, and

(again) the expansive soundstage and discreet instrument placement.

It’s also worth noting that I did most of my listening using the custom Hearid EQ setting. I switched around to some other equalizer presets too, including the recommended

Soundcore “Signature” preset, yet I generally found myself gravitating back to the

Hearid setting, which (to my ears, anyway) did the best job of balancing fine treble with deep but not overpowering

PROS

• Comfortable design.

• aptx support.

• Hearid features gives you a custom EQ preset for your ears.

• Dynamic and balanced armature drivers deliver rich, detailed sound

CONS

• No active noise cancellation.

• Charging case is a bit large.

• Can’t fiddle with EQ levels yourself.

PRICE

$129

COMPANY

Anker bass. Your mileage may vary, of course.

In terms of Bluetooth performance, the Liberty 2 Pro earbuds never went out of sync during my testing, and their range was excellent. I was able to walk the entire length of my apartment (a good 45 feet), then head upstairs and even further back before the connection began to go spotty; well past Anker’s rated Bluetooth range of 33 feet.

Anker claims that the Liberty 2 Pro earbuds will last for up to eight hours on a single charge, and that you can get a total of 32 hours of playback time using the charging case. That places it among the longest-lasting wireless earbuds. I used them for lengthy sessions and never got close to draining the batteries, and the earbuds charged up quickly when I put them in the case.

BOTTOM LINE

Sure, there are other truly wireless earbuds that sound this good (or better), but good luck finding any with price tags in the $150 range. Combine the Liberty 2 Pro’s sound with its comfortable design, its custom Hearid EQ preset, aptx support, and impressive battery life, and you’re looking at quite the bargain, even considering the lack of active noise cancellation. ■

HOW TO COPE WITH A FILEVAULT RECOVERY KEY DISAPPEARING WHILE YOU WRITE IT DOWN

Filevault is an extraordinary bit of macos technology. Introduced years ago, it encrypts the entire contents of your startup volume so that when the data is at rest—when your Mac is powered down— the drive is effectively full of garbage nonsense to anyone who doesn’t possess either the password to an account authorized to log in via Filevault or the special recovery key set when you turn Filevault on.

When you use the Security & Privacy preference pane’s Filevault tab to enable this encryption, macos prompts you with