Design & Construction

Sonova's acquisition of Sennheiser's consumer audio business have left many of us wondering what's next for the future of Sennheiser’s highly-successful Momentum line. Now, can the Momentum 4 Wireless keep up with the competition and improve significantly upon its 3 year old predecessor? Well, there is only one way to find out. Diving straight into the design, the Momentum 4 Wireless abandons its long-term traditional look for a more modern and simplistic aesthetic. However, unlike the PXC 550-II , the Momentum 4 Wireless takes cues from recent models offered by its competitors such as the Bose Noise-Cancelling Headphones 700, Apple AirPods Max and even Sony WH-1000XM5. Is it a great design change? Well, it depends on which model we are comparing it to. If we were to compare it to the old Momentum 3 Wireless, it is miles better since it is now slimmer and less bulky when stowed. If we were to compare it to the newer competitors, my stand is a love-hate relationship as this model does not stow into a much more compact form such that it folds flat and upwards but there is nothing wrong with a design like this since it has been the go-to method for headphones these days. With a larger footprint comes a larger case, and yes. the hardshell carrying case included is now about bigger in dimensions but with perks. For one, it now has dedicated slots for accessories such as our legacy friend, the Airplane Adaptor, a 1.2m 2.5mm to  3.5mm audio cable, a mesh pouch to store paperwork as well as a USB-A to USB-C charging cable. Now, back to the headphones. from the top, we have the headband covered with a fabric material with Sennheiser logo plastered on both sides in a subtle finish. The underside now uses a soft rubber finish that grips onto my head and hair decently well. The headband isn’t the thinnest but of just enough width to keep it stable for long period of wear. The sleek yet premium plastic arms extender are now shifted to the lower part of the headphone, nearer to the ear cups, and they are do not click in steps or make any noises. It works as good as previous generations and has enough resistance for the earcups not to shift the set length. Both arm extenders bear the silver Sennheiser logo with the headphones having much softer, thicker and deeper leather cushions which is meant for providing a comfortable experience, even for users who wear spectacles like myself. The depth of the earcups are significant too, of which your ears will never touch any part of the inside fabric and I got to say, this new material fits snugly around the head with little to no clamping force. Onto the exterior of the headphones, it gives off this luxurious feel and subtle elegance with a matte-like finish, although made up of mostly plastic, to keep light-weight for extended periods of wear. The headphones, however do picked up fingerprint smudges and facial oils quite easily in day-to-day use. Controlling the playback functions are on the right earcup and this time we are finally getting touch controls. Swipe down for Vol-, swipe up for Vol+, swipe towards the front for next track, swipe backward for previous track, single tap to play/pause and double-tap will activate Transparency Mode. Transparency Mode is a feature that allows users to instantly pause the music and deactivate noise-cancelling to hear others when people want to talk with you. Alternatively, you can use 2 fingers to 'pinch' on the touchpad to activate gradually increase the amount of noise-cancelling or 'stretch' on the touchpad to gradually increase the transparency mode, however I found that this gesture isn't all that useful since I didn't get it to work at all. You may change certain settings should music playback be paused when Transparency is activated or how much level of Transparency is relevant to your use case. You are also able to do the traditional way of removing your headphones from your head and there will be a proximity sensor to track that you did and pause the music automatically. For calls, there is yet another set of controls. A single tap will answer/end the call, while a double tap will switch from the first call to the next incoming one. Meanwhile, tapping and holding for 2 seconds will end the call. You can mute the microphone by pressing the power button that is underneath the right earcup once. The Power button that enables the smart assistant of Alexa, Google or Siri while in use and controls the power functionality when long pressed. 5 white LEDs are found next to it too to give you its visual battery life status in real-time. It is worth noting that headphones do automatically power on when you tilt the earcups from a stowed position to its wearing form and would go into Bluetooth pairing by holding down the power button for 5 seconds until the LEDs turn green. It takes about 2 hours to charge the headphones up from a dead battery with the headphones having Quick Charge which only requires 5 minutes of charging for 3 hours of playback. Definitely one of the quickest charging speeds and longest-lasting batteries for a travel-friendly headphone.

Sound Quality

Exciting and energetic is how I would describe the sound of the Momentum 4 Wireless. With its large 42mm diameter drivers, the Sennheiser signature sound is back again and this time even better. So let's start off with the bass response. In short, it is deep, punchy, and tight, it never distorts at loud and maximum volumes and does not bleeds into the mids when it is at a low volume level. The bass depth is on par from the previous generation Momentum 3 Wireless and miles ahead of the Sony WH-1000XM5, AirPods Max or Bose NC 700s. The overall sound signature of the new Momentum 4 Wireless is much cleaner and tighter. The highs sound bright and are filled with plenty of details and the mids do sound extremely crisp especially with the help of the equaliser tuning that is found in the Smart Control app that really help to configure the sound to your ears. The soundstage isn't quite as wide as the mind-blowing AirPods Max's Spatial Audio but indeed wider than the Sony WH-1000XM5. The instrument separation is excellent with distinct left and right channels being heard clearly. If you are not so much of an EDM or Hip-Hop fan, I am glad to report that the headphones works perfectly with all other genres ranging from Pop to Jazz after you fiddle with the customisable sound settings in the Smart Control App available for download from the App & Play Store. In the app, you will first see the My Devices page where you can select which compatible Sennheiser device to delve into. Thereafter, you will be greeted with the selected devices' settings where the battery life status is shown as well as the option to manage your headphones' connections to your devices. Next, there is the Equaliser setting which you can choose to customise your very own or choose from the presets. There are presets like Rock, Pop, Dance, Hip Hop, Classical and Movie. Different presets do work well with different music genres and I personally prefer the Dance preset. You may also select any presets available and further tune and rename it to become your custom setting. Additionally, there is the Bass Boost option which I greatly enjoyed using to boost my low frequencies as well as the Podcast mode where the equaliser will be disabled fully and set to Sennheiser pre-made Podcast mode. Should you happen to mess up doing custom presets, a simple tap on the Restore all Sennheiser presets will revert all changes made. Now, you can further take this experience deeper using the Sound Check feature where you can play your favourite songs in the background while you choose from the 3 options in the low, mid and high frequencies that the app boosts to compensate for your hearing needs. Personally, I find that amongst the 3 options of A, B and C, I could hardly tell a difference, but you will definitely hear a slight difference in the sound if you pay attention and listen closely. At the end of it, I couldn't tell a huge difference before and after I use the Sound Check feature. Well, some additional tuning is definitely better than nothing, I guess. Just below these options, you will see the newest feature here, known as Sound Zones where the app will automatically switches to a certain equaliser and ANC or Transparent Hearing setting when it detects that you have reached a frequent destination like your office, school or at home. You can set up to 20 different zones and each can be from a close radius accuracy of 100m to 1km from the selected location. The Noise Control settings will tap into existing equaliser presets that you have and you will need to set what happens when you arrive and leave the location. Personally, I don't use this feature as it can be quite gimmicky as well as making it a great way to give away your location to Sennheiser too. Moving on, we have the Adaptive Active Noise-Cancellation option where you can control the setting using the slider from Maximum ANC to Maximum Transparent Hearing, leaving the slider at the middle position will turn off all settings for passive noise isolation. Transparent Hearing allows you to hear your ambient surrounding sounds so you can always hear the next train announcement or traffic noise to stay safe. Comparing the Transparent Hearing with the AirPods Max, I would give the edge to Apple's Transparency Mode as it is simply the most natural-sounding transparency that seems to know what to filter out and take in. If you would like for your music to auto-pause when you enable Transparency Hearing, that option is possible by clicking into the setting. You may also set Wind Noise-Reduction from Off, Auto or Max. Back to Home page, you can enable or disable the Touch Controls or switch SideTone from Off, Minimum or Maximum. SideTone is basically how loud you would like to hear yourself in your earbuds when you talk to another party over the call. Onto the Discover tab, you can read and catch up on the latest Sennheiser press release and news where they will share their latest product offerings and possibly entice you to buy them? In all case, its possibly the least important and useful feature in the app. In the settings, you may update the latest firmware updates and enable or disable Comfort Call, On-head Detection and Smart Pause which will pause the music for you to hear someone when you remove your headphones from your ears and this time it works on either earcups. You can also set the duration for auto power off ranging from 15 minutes to an hour. At the bottom, a factory reset of the app settings is possible together with the ability to show or hide the individual tiles to show on the homepage. You can easily check the current codecs used or the model name too. In terms of call quality, the headphones uses 2 beam-foaming mic arrays of 4 mics to capture your voice. The caller on the other end feedback that the microphones picked up significantly less surrounding noises but my voice does sound a little muffled and robotic. Wind noise reduction was not too bad as hardly any wind noise could get though even if it was quite strong outdoors. However, when put against the AirPods Max superior call quality, it sadly fails to beat the competition. 

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Connectivity & Portability

The Momentum 4 Wireless support the latest and greatest AptX Adaptive, AptX, AAC and SBC codecs together with Bluetooth Version 5.2. The battery life peaks at an impressive 60 hours per use with ANC. The headphones' connectivity to the app is perfect as it is able to detect my headphones when its already connected via Bluetooth all the time. If you try to watch videos or movies with these, they do not have any latency in audio transmission. Just like the previous generation, you may use a USB-C or the included 2.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable for music playback on Android devices only. Do take note that, using the USB-C cable should only be a temporary, in the crunch kind-of moment use, as I found that there was a huge volume dip that only max out to around 70% of its full potential compared to when you use it wirelessly or with the audio cable. If you are using an IOS device, only the 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable works for wired music playback with the volume remaining largely the same when used wirelessly. In both use cases, the noise-cancelling or Transparent Hearing can be activated when the headphones have battery life remaining.

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PROS

• Energetic Sound Signature

• Snug & Comfortable

• Lightweight

• Long Battery Life

• Easy Controls For Music Play & Calls

• In-App Equalizer

• Transparency Mode

• AptX Codecs Supported

• Bluetooth 5.2

• Sound Check

• USB-C Fast Charging

• Multi-device Connection

• Hardshell Carrying Case

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CONS​​​​

• Bulky Storage Method

• Large Case Footprint

• Mic and Controls Not Available In Wired Mode

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The Bottom Line

In all, the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless still represents the pinnacle of sound in the wireless travel headphones market. Strong adaptive noise-cancelling technology, lightweight modern design and massive 60 hours battery life coupled with a comprehensive app are formulas to help it stay on top of the pack when it comes to recommending quality. It is highly recommended for daily commutes and long flights. Two colours of Black and White are available to fit users of different genders and styles.