The short answer
These are not two versions of the same thing with $224.98 between them. One goes over your ears and one goes in them, and that decides it before price gets a say.
Flying, working in an open office, or wearing them for hours at a time: the Sony. Gym, commute, pocket, anything where you take them in and out: the Soundcore, and the $224.98 stays where it is.
Sony WH-1000XM5 vs Soundcore Liberty 4 Pro: what actually separates them
Over-ear headphones cancel noise twice. The cup makes a physical seal around your ear before any electronics are involved, and the active cancellation then works on what is left. Earbuds only have the second half of that, plus whatever seal the tip manages in your ear canal. That is why the site's note on the Sony — that it flattens plane engine noise to a hum — is a claim about a category as much as about a model.
The ratings say something similar without saying it loudly: 4.4 / 5 against 4.0 / 5 on Amazon Australia. That is a real gap but not a damning one, and it is the sort of spread you get when a cheaper product does most of the job.
The battery numbers are not comparable, and everyone quotes them as if they are
The Sony is about 30 hours per charge. The Soundcore is about 40 hours with the case. Those are different measurements wearing the same units.
Thirty hours per charge means thirty hours continuously. Forty hours with the case means the buds run for a fraction of that — the rest is stored in the case, waiting for you to put them back for twenty minutes. For a commute that difference does not exist. For a fourteen-hour flight, one of these lasts the whole way and the other needs you to stop listening twice.
What the Sony gets wrong
It does not fold. The previous generation did, and this one only swivels flat, so the case is bigger than it should be. That matters more than it sounds, because the case is exactly the thing you carry on the days you most want these — the travel days. A pair of headphones that is superb on a plane and awkward in the bag it travels in is a genuine trade rather than a footnote.
What the Soundcore gets wrong
The app takes fiddling, and the case is chunkier than most. Neither is fatal, but both are the shape of thing you notice on day one and again every week after.
The honest read of 4.0 / 5 is that it is a good pair of earbuds rather than a giant-killer. It is not quietly as good as the Sony for half the money — it is most of the way there, in a different form factor, for less than half. That is a better proposition than the giant-killer story anyway, because it is true.
So which one
Answer the question the price cannot: where will you actually wear them?
If the honest answer involves hours at a desk, a plane, or a train where you keep them on the whole way, the over-ear pair earns the $224.98 through comfort and seal, not through sound quality. If the honest answer is that they live in a pocket and go in and out ten times a day, over-ears will stay at home and you will have spent $399.95 on that.