Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless
FOR Impressive features; good battery life; balanced sound AGAINST Controls are hit and miss; not as musical as rivals
Since the Apple Airpods were launched back in December 2016, there has been a steady stream of truly wireless in-ear headphones from manufacturers such as B&O, Bose, Motorola, Onkyo and Sony. All have had a slightly different twist on the design, different feature sets, and varying degrees of success.
But what about Sennheiser? The headphone giant has spent the past year and a bit observing quietly from the sidelines, scouting out rival models and fervently making notes as it plans how to approach this particular headphone category. Now the time has come for the Sennheiser Momentum True Wirelesses to make their debut. But will they play a blinder, or end up being sidelined on the bench?
Wish list
If there’s a feature you want from your headphones, the Momentum True Wirelesses probably have it. The spec list is so long and comprehensive that it’s hard to know where to start. Battery life is a decent four hours, which compares with the Sony WF-1000XS’ three and the capable Bose Soundsport Frees’ five.
As is the trend for truly wireless in-ear headphones, the Sennheisers come with their own carry case that doubles as a docking and charging station. This takes the form of a compact, fabric covered box that charges via USB-C. The earpieces just drop into slots where they’re secured by magnets and start charging via their gold contacts.
The pairing process for these wireless in-ear headphones starts as soon as you remove them from the case for the first time. They’re immediately discoverable, and to pair them with a different device, simply press and hold on the outside of both earpieces to restart the process.
A small LED light on the rear indicates the level of charge in the box – green for more than 50 per cent, yellow for less than 50 per cent and red for empty. It’s a small detail, but handy for quickly checking if you have enough juice to charge the buds.
At full capacity, the case provides enough power for two additional charges, which amounts to a total of 12 hours of battery life. The headphones need roughly an hour and a half of charging to reach full power from empty.
With some truly wireless in-ears, it’s difficult to monitor how much charge is left, but that’s not the case with the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless. If you power up the Sennheiser Smart Control app (compatible with IOS 11.0 and above and Android 7 and above) you can see an exact percentage of power remaining in each earpiece. This attention to detail means you should never get caught out.
The Sennheisers’ armoury includes what the company describes as ‘two-mic beamforming’ which it claims improves the audibility of your chat during phone calls. They also prefer noise isolation to noise-cancellation and do a good job of blocking out all the various rumblings on the daily commute.
If you’d prefer to hear more of what’s going on around you, turn on the Transparent Hearing feature, either in the app, or by double tapping the right earpiece. You can set it either to stop playing or continue to play when activated. It works fine with the former setting, but its effectiveness with the latter depends on your music – the louder it is, the less the feature works.
Sweet sounds
Imagine trying to put a Rolo in your ear – that’s a bit how it feels manoeuvring the small round earpieces into place. We find short listening bursts of up to an hour fine, but they are occasionally a little uncomfortable over a prolonged period. The Momentum True Wirelesses boast a clean, uncluttered look, with not a single button in sight. Sennheiser has achieved this by turning the metallic rings on the exterior surface of the buds into touch-sensitive buttons. The left ring controls playback, with a single tap to play and pause, a double tap to skip forward and a triple tap to skip backwards. A long press and hold turns the volume down, while doing the same on the right ring bumps the volume up.
A single tap on the right brings your virtual voice assistant (Google or Siri) to life, while a double press enables or disables the Transparent Hearing feature. Having all these controls at your fingertips sounds great in theory, but the reality is a little different. Playing, pausing and changing volume work well enough. The headphones react quickly and the volume doesn’t jump up and down unpredictably.
Hitting the spot
Issues arise when you want to skip tracks and activate the Transparent Hearing mode. It’s quite tricky to nail multiple taps, and if your finger doesn’t quite hit the spot you’ll find yourself pausing when you want to skip forward or skipping forward when you want to go back. We also find ourselves activating Siri on a number of occasions when we are trying to turn the Transparent Hearing on and off.
Sennheiser’s Smart Pause feature means you can just remove one earpiece and music will automatically stop. Replace the earpiece and the music picks up again. It's a neat feature we haven’t come across in truly wireless in-ears before. The only issue is that you need to keep the two earpieces a certain distance apart or else the music starts playing again.
So the execution isn’t perfect, but we admire Sennheiser’s ambition. We just hope the sound quality hasn’t taken a back seat – after all, these headphones are part of Sennheiser's hugely successful Momentum range. And on the whole, the True Wirelesses do well.
Lean times
Compared with the wired Momentum in-ears and Bluetooth Momentum Frees, they are a little calmer and leaner in the bass. Those models have a slightly richer and fuller bottom end, but what the True Wirelesses lose in weight they gain in balance and poise. Play Björk’s Hyperballad and there's plenty of deep, probing bass and a good sense of spaciousness, with distinct layers of detail too. Switch to Elton John’s Rocket Man and the piano, strings and vocal sound reassuringly warm and natural.
Harsher recordings with rough edges are treated fairly. They’re not glossed over but nor do they sound overly bright or uncomfortable. Rivals such as the Sony WF-1000XS still have the edge when it comes to outright musicality, capturing the galloping rhythm of Jamie T’s Sticks ’n' Stones more naturally. They display a sense of flair and fun that the Momentums can’t quite match.
Handling video and audio can be an issue for wireless headphones, so we watch videos on an iphone 8 Plus and Macbook Pro via Youtube, Netflix and BBC iplayer. The Sennheisers pass with flying colours, presenting no obvious lip-syncing issues. The range and stability of the Bluetooth signal is also impressive, with no problems with the signal breaking up when we wander around our office.
In many ways, it’s an impressive True Wireless debut by Sennheiser. The design is classy, they boast some useful features, battery life is good and so too is sound quality. But the Sennheisers cost around twice as much as the classleading and wonderfully musical Sony WF-1000XS – and for their price, the user experience isn’t perfect. Any price reductions will make them a more appealing proposition, but for now, they don’t quite justify that elusive fifth star.
“The clean, uncluttered look has been achieved by turning the metallic rings on the exterior of the buds into touch sensitive buttons”