Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless

Headphone giant Sennheiser has priced its first true-wireless buds above the competition. Question is, if you’ve got the cash, is it worth paying more?

£259

Since the Apple Airpods were launched back in December 2016, there has been a steady stream of truly wireless in-ear headphones from a host of manufacturers, including 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 been observing quietly from the sidelines like a waistcoat-clad Gareth Southgate, 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 world debut. But will they play a blinder, or end up on the bench?

Features galore

The spec list here is so long it’s hard to know where to start. Battery life is a decent four hours and, as is the trend for truly wireless in-ears, the Sennheisers come with their own carry case that doubles as a docking and charging station. The earpieces just drop into slots where they’re secured by magnets and start charging via their gold contacts.

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 – 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.

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.

The Sennheisers’ armoury includes what it describes as ‘two-mic noise cancellation’. The tech doesn’t quite have the same impact as the noisecancelling in the very best over-ears, but the Momentum True Wirelesses still do a fine 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, you can turn on the Transparent Hearing feature.

Imagine trying to put a Rolo in your ear – that’s 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.

Sennheiser has achieved that clean, uncluttered look by turning the metallic rings on the exterior surface of the buds into touch-sensitive playback, skipforward and volume buttons. Having all these controls at your fingertips sounds great in theory, but the reality is a little different. 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 performing the wrong action. On the whole, the Momentum True Wirelesses don’t disappoint. 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 sound loses in weight it gains in balance and poise.

Bass and space

Play Björk’s Hyperballad and there still plenty of deep, probing bass to latch onto. There’s a good sense of space with clear and distinct layers of detail too. That said, rivals such as the Sony WF-1000X still have the edge when it comes to outright musicality and a sense of fun.

The range and stability of the Bluetooth signal is impressive, with no problems with the signal breaking when we wander to the far corners of 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 Momentums cost around twice as much as the class-leading and wonderfully musical Sony WF-1000X – and, for their price, the user experience isn’t perfect. All of that means they don’t quite justify that elusive fifth star.