Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless
HEADPHONES REVIEW

These headphones are nice-looking truly wireless earbuds but have a bulky design. The housings are thick and large, protruding out of your ears quite a bit. They have a premium look thanks to the dense plastic and metal touch-sensitive surface on the back of the buds. They only come in a black color with the metallic circle accent.

The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless headphones are not the most comfortable in-ears we’ve tested. Their bulky design may touch the interior of your ear and apply some pressure, which will result in fatigue after a while. This will be most noticeable for people with smaller-sized ears. However, they come with 4 different tip options for you to find the most comfortable fit and they are very lightweight. For a smaller bud design that might fit most people better, we suggest the RHA TrueConnect, which come with 3 different sizes of silicone and foam tips.

The Momentum True Wireless have a good and responsive touch-sensitive control scheme that may take some time to get used to. The left earbud is the command center for everything related to music. One tap plays/pauses, two taps skips forward, and three taps skips backward. The right earbud is for call management. One tap answers/ends calls, two taps rejects calls. When no calls are coming in, one tap triggers your device voice assistant while two taps controls talk-through. Holding down the left earbud also lowers the volume while holding the right one raises it. These headphones also have a smart pause feature, meaning as soon as you take out an earbud, the music will stop. However, if you pause your music manually with the left earbud, then take it out, music will start playing again, which seems to be an oversight or a bug. On the upside, you also have voice prompts for min/max volume and while pairing the headphones.

Even if they have a bulkier in-ear design, they are still very breathable. They don’t trap too much heat in your ear and don’t cause a big difference in temperature. You shouldn’t sweat more than usual while wearing these, making them a good option for sports.

These truly wireless in-ears are very portable. You can easily fit the two earbuds in small pockets or a bag. They also come with a small and solid case which doesn’t add too much bulk and can also fit in pockets.

The provided charging case that comes with the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless is great. It is a solid case that protects the headphones from scratches, water exposure and impacts, and is better than other true wireless earbuds like the Jabra Elite Active 65t. However, there is no locking mechanism and the case can open if it falls on the ground, exposing the headphones. They might also fall out if the impact is significant but the magnets do help keep the earbuds in place.

The Momentum True Wireless are very well-built headphones, similarly to the B&O Play Beoplay E8 2.0 They look and feel like premium headphones. They are made out of dense plastic and nice metal surfaces that act as touch-sensitive controls. They should survive a few accidental drops without too much damage. The case is also very well-made and feels sturdy. The earbuds are also rated IPX4 for sweat and splash resistance, but we do not currently have a test to accurately measure this.

These truly wireless headphones are stable enough for running and light physical activities. They don’t have stability fins like more sports-oriented headphones, but the in-ear fit is good enough so they don’t pop out of your ears. They also don’t have a cable, eliminating the risk of it getting hooked on something or stuck on clothing. People with smaller ears may have worse stability performance due to the bulky design of the headphones.

The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless truly wireless headphones don’t have any audio cable but come with a USB to USB-C charging cable.

The Momentum True Wireless have a very good bass range performance. Their LFE (low-frequency extension) is at 10Hz, which is excellent. They also have a flat low-bass and mid-bass that are within 2dB of our target curve. Combined with the excellent LFE, this results in a deep and punchy bass capable of producing low thump and rumbles. However, high-bass is overemphasized by 4dB, resulting in an overall bass range which is deep and punchy, but slightly boomy and muddy.

The mid-range is very good. The response is quite even and mostly flat. The low-mid overemphasis, which is the continuation of the high-bass bump, adds a bit of muddiness to vocals/leads and clutter to the mix. However, at 2.5dB, this effect will be subtle. There is also a shallow dip in mid-mid, slightly nudging the vocals to the back of the mix, but this will barely be noticeable.

The treble performance is sub-par. The overall response is rather uneven and quite underemphasized, especially in low-treble. The broad dip will negatively affect the detail and brightness of vocals and lead instruments. On the other hand, the peak at 11KHz will make some sibilances (S and T sounds) feel sharp and piercing. Overall, they will have a darker sound.

The frequency response consistency is excellent. If the user can achieve a proper fit and an air-tight seal using the assortment of tips that come with the headphones, then they should be able to get consistent bass and treble delivery every time they use the headphones.

The stereo imaging is excellent. Their weighted group delay is at 0.13, which is very low. The group delay graph also shows that the entire response is well below the audibility threshold. This ensures a tight bass and a transparent treble reproduction. Also, the L/R drivers of our test unit were well-matched in frequency, amplitude, and phase response. This is important for the accurate placement and localization of objects (voices, instruments, video games effects) in the stereo image. Note that these results are only valid for our unit and yours may perform differently.

The soundstage is poor. This is because creating an out-of-head and speaker-like soundstage is largely dependent on activating the resonances of the pinna (outer ear). The design of in-ears and earbuds is in such a way that fully bypasses the pinna and doesn't interact with it. Also, because these headphones have a closed-back enclosure, their soundstage won't be perceived to be as open as that of open-back earbuds like the Apple AirPods, Google Pixel Buds, or the Bose SoundSport Free.

The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless have a good harmonic distortion performance. In the bass range, they show very little THD, even under heavy loads, which is good. However, the peak in THD at 1KHz may add a bit of harshness and impurity to the sound of those frequencies. On the upside, there is no big jump in THD at 100dB SPL, which may be due to the flexibility of the drivers under heavier loads.

The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless have an above-average isolation performance. They only passively block noise as they don’t have any ANC features. In the bass range, occupied by the rumble of airplane and bus engines, they reduce the noise by about 8dB, which is about average. However, this is rather impressive for an in-ear, and more than what some active noise canceling headphones achieve. In the mid-range, important for blocking out speech, they achieved 22dB of isolation which is very good. In the treble range, occupied by sharp S and T sounds and fan noise like A/C systems, they achieved more than 49dB of isolation, which is excellent.

The leakage performance is excellent. They basically do not leak, so there's no need to worry about disturbing people around with your music, even if you listen at very loud volumes. With the music at 100dB SPL, the leakage at 1 foot away averages at 22dB SPL and peaks at 30dB SPL, which is roughly as loud as a very calm room and way below the noise floor of an average office.

The recording quality of the microphone is poor. The LFE (low-frequency extension) of 403Hz means speech recorded/transmitted with this mic will sound noticeably thin. The HFE (high-frequency extension) is at 3.6KHz, resulting in speech that lacks detail and sounds a bit muffled. The bumps between 750Hz and 3.5KHz could make speech on this microphone a bit too sharp sounding.

The microphone is mediocre at noise handling. In our SpNR test, it achieved a speech-to-noise ratio of 15dB, indicating that they are best suited for quiet environments. However, in moderate and loud environments, they will have difficulty separating speech from ambient noise.

The Momentum True Wireless have sub-par battery life as they only offer 3.7 hours of playback on one charge. Thankfully, the case offers 2 additional charges, bringing the total battery life to about 11-12 hours. They can easily last you a workday if you take breaks to charge the buds. Unfortunately, they don’t have any power saving feature to extend their battery life. On the upside, you can see the amount of battery left in each earbud inside the app.

Update: 13/02/2019: The Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless have a passive battery drain issue that has been corroborated by a lot of users in the discussion threads. Since we do not yet have a fully developed test for passive battery drain/ battery leak, we have not made any changes to the battery score of the review for now. Once we have an accurate way to measure this effect, the review will be updated.

The Momentum True Wireless headphones are compatible with a new Sennheiser app called Smart Control. When connected to your phone, you have access to small customization options such as a graphic EQ, which acts more like presets. You can move a cursor around, choosing to boost/lower bass or treble frequencies. This isn’t as useful as a 5-band EQ. You can also activate talk-through directly from the app, and you can enable smart pause, which pauses the music when you take out one of the two earbuds. However, manually pausing your music with the left earbud, and then taking it out, will result in music unpausing in the right earbud.

These headphones can only connect to one device at a time and do not support NFC pairing, which is disappointing. On the upside, they support Bluetooth version 5.0 and you may get better results in range and connection stability than what we experienced since our test bench only supports Bluetooth version 4.2 in our current test bench.

These truly wireless headphones can’t be used with a wired connection.

The Sennheiser True Wireless come with a charging case that gives you 2 additional charges, which results in an estimated 7 to 8 extra hours of listening time.

These headphones have an amazing wireless range. You’ll be able to leave your Bluetooth source at one spot and move around in a small office or apartment without too many problems. These results may vary depending on your Bluetooth source. Also, you may experience even better range than what we measured if your source is Bluetooth 5.0 compatible.

The Momentum True Wireless’ SBC latency may be too high for watching videos or gaming. On the upside, they are compatible with aptX and aptX Low-Latency. It reduces the latency down to 72ms, which isn’t too high, but still may not be ideal for gaming. They also support the AAC codec, but we do not have a test for this yet.