ConnexionSennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 Earbuds Review – Still Some of the Best
The $299 price tag on the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 earbuds demands top-tier audio, comfort, customization, and longevity, and if you're spending this much on earbuds, you’ll want them to last for years and years. Sennheiser's excellent track record and the buds' specs sheet – including support for high-quality Bluetooth codecs such as aptX Lossless and LC3 – promise a treat for your ears. So do they live up to that promise?
Although they’re not quite perfect, the short answer is yes: they're some of the best, and best-looking, earbuds you can buy, up there with the similarly priced Sony WF1000XM5. And given they're several years old, you can sometimes get them at a discount.
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 – Design and Battery Life
Starting with the packaging, this is by far the most luxurious earbuds case I've held. The colour of the fabric matches your choice of earbuds, with five options. I think the copper variant I reviewed is my favourite: it's understated and classy. Everyone wanted to feel the case whenever I put the buds on or off around friends.
The hardy fabric showed no scuffs or scratches after a week of bouncing around in my jeans pocket and in my bag, and was no worse off after a few drops. Long-term users say it holds up well and that you needn't worry about fraying threads. It is on the chunkier side and it sticks out in my pocket more so than any of the buds I've tested, which bothers me. It's not a dealbreaker, but just know that everyone will be able to see the outline of the case.
The buds themselves look nearly as handsome as the case. The brushed metallic exterior isn't too shiny, and the indented Sennheiser logo lends a lovely texture. This is where you'll be touching to control the buds, and it recognised all my taps perfectly. I'm less keen on the placement of the external microphone holes, which sullies the clean finish.
The buds are chunkier than competitors, which means they extrude from your ear more, but it didn't feel excessive even as somebody with smaller ears. The extra layers on the bud – the metallic exterior, a rubber protector, the main body and stem of the bud, and the ear tip – creates plenty of crevices for grime to accumulate, although it was easy to clean.
The tips felt comfortable to wear for hours at a time at home or at the gym. You get a variety of sizes and the accompanying app – which I'll explore more later – includes a "fit test" to help you pick the right size. It's a useful extra that most buds don't have. The IP54 rating, indicating the level of dust and water resistance, means that rain and sweat won't damage these buds. The ear tips also have a mesh at their base, protecting the headphones from any dust or earwax falling inside: again, it's something that a lot of buds don't have.
And the long battery life enables extended listening sessions. You'll get between 7 and 8 hours on a single charge (although less with noise cancelling, custom EQs, and other funky features that I'll talk about later) and 30 hours total if you keep putting them back in the charging case when they run out. That single-charge life is a smidge less than Sony's best, but the total charge, including the case, is longer; both of which are excellent. They support fast Qi wireless charging and you can also turn on "battery protection mode" to charge the buds slower and stop them reaching 100%, prolonging their long-term life. Most smartphones now have a similar feature but it's rare on earbuds: another bonus.
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 – Sound Quality
They look good – but how do they sound? Lovely, thankfully. Smooth and balanced. I listened to music in plenty of genres, different podcasts, watched TV shows and even played games (which I'll talk about in a moment). Everything felt like an easy, pleasant listen, with no noticeable distortion and no artificial boosting.
Vocals felt balanced with background music to surround me when watching films, and voices sounded particularly rich. I enjoyed the "podcast mode", which enhanced the clarity and timbre of voices, and made it sound like I was listening in the studio. I like that the EQs presets are relatively gentle, too. Sometimes EQ presets blow up certain aspects of the audio, but listening to Jay Z's The Black Album sounded good on pretty much every setting.
You can enable "sound personalization", with a quick test on the app to adjust the balance of bass and strings to suit your ears, although I must admit I found it quite confusing, and didn't feel like it improved the sound. You do get a little less punch and clarity than with the Sony WF1000XM5 buds. Sony's earbuds are particularly precise and bassy, so you can really feel the music: Sennheiser's are, I'd argue, gentler and more well-rounded. Neither is obviously better – they're both great out of the box, and it's just what you prefer. If you want a bit more bite, you can always create a custom EQ on the app or toggle "bass boost" for some more oomph without distorting your sound.
They support a variety of hi-res and lossless audio codecs, including aptX Lossless and LC3. You'll obviously need to stream from a program that supports those codecs (the base Spotify subscription doesn't cover it, for example), and even when you do, you might not even notice a difference in audio quality. But it does feel good knowing you have buds that can do it all, and ones that are future proof for emerging tech over the next few years.
On the gaming front, the buds' Bluetooth latency won't stand up to a wired gaming headset or a dedicated low-latency gaming earbud like the SteelSeries Arctis GameBuds, but I found them to be better than other non-gaming earbuds I've tried. They have a specific "low latency" audio mode designed for gaming, which you can use on your phone or on your PC. The PC connection is a bit fiddly: you first have to connect to both your phone and PC at the same time (these buds can support two devices at once with zero issue), then toggle on low latency on the phone app, and stay connected to your phone as you play, because there's no dedicated Windows software.
There is still a slight delay from screen to ear but it's barely noticeable. I played a lot of Arc Raiders with them, and I felt completely consumed by its soundscape. With these buds, I could tell what was happening around me, and what direction footsteps were coming from. Microphone quality is the one big letdowns of these buds: the volume is fine but your voice will sound a little fuzzy and unclear, which is disappointing.
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 – Noise Cancellation and Transparency
These Sennheiser buds have adaptive noise cancellation by default, so you can't manually change the level of it. Some adaptive systems can be jumpy, and often fail to hit max noise cancelling, but there are no such problems here. I didn't actually notice any of the adjustments happening in real time and it cut out the loudest noises when it needed to.
The amount of noise cancellation isn't anything special, and I'd say it's not quite as powerful as the high-end Sony buds. It did everything I wanted, cutting out background noise at the gym and reducing the noise of the London Underground between stops, but it was no more impressive than the mid-range OnePlus Buds 4 I reviewed in September. The screechiest part of the Underground line still came through loud and clear.
The Transparency mode is impressive, mostly because you get more options than with most buds. You can pick between five levels of transparency, and you can decide to turn it on or off in phone calls. That level of customisation is useful: sometimes, you only want a bit of transparency – for example, so I can hear my wife calling from another room – and sometimes you want a lot, say, if we're in the same room. The highest transparency does produce a noticeable background hiss, which is annoying but expected. The trade-off for clearly hearing things going on around you is worth it, and most of the time you won't need to crank it to max.
Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 4 – Software and Customisation
All the settings for the True Wireless 4 earbuds come in Sennheiser's SmartControlPlus app. It's crammed with options you won't find on other buds. I've talked about some of them already: bass boost, podcast mode, battery protection mode and the fit test are all here. But you can also set Sound Zones, which apply specific settings when you arrive at or leave a location. It's a neat trick that means you can, for example, turn on noise cancellation by default when you reach the gym.
The app can be a little confusing because some of the settings are under the "my device" tab, while some come under the "settings" tab. That distinction, I'd argue, is illogical. But once you get used to finding what you need the app is easy to navigate, cleanly laid out, and works reliably. I particularly liked the detailed customisation of the touch controls. You have the freedom to set commands for single, double, and triple taps individually on the left and right buds. I would've liked a desktop app too, so I could change settings directly on my PC, but sadly that's not an option with these buds.
