Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless review: Compelling value, practical design

For a long time now, Sennheiser’s flagship active noise canceling (ANC) headphones has been in the MOMENTUM line. But with the release of more audiophile-focused headphones in the HDB 630 last year, some of us were left scratching our heads and wondering how the eventual MOMENTUM 5 would appeal to consumers. Well, let’s take a deep dive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWBy_ENsxzA

What’s it like to use the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless?

The form of the latest MOMENTUM Wireless headphones is much improved from its predecessors.

Design

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is a set of mainly-plastic headphones with metallic accents and fairly flat design elements. For example, the outside of the ear cups are clad in matte plastic with limited seams, and a fabric accent on the top of the band. Said band is the main mode of physical adjustment for the ear cups, allowing the yokes of the headphones to be moved to fit your head without inexact notches or increments.

The ear cups are fairly well-sized, and can meet most ears without touching your pinna too much. Taking the pads off is fairly easy, but you can’t access the driver as the guards are glued on. Though popping the pads back on is a little fiddly because of the plastic snaps, it’s at least very obvious when something hasn’t fastened in right.

The user-replaceable battery is an awesome feature for the longevity of your headphones.

With the ear pads off, you can unscrew the four Philips-head screws on the left ear cup. This lets you pull the whole speaker assembly out in one piece, and access the battery. This is an awesome feature for the longevity of your headphones, as it means that you can not only remove defective parts should something break, but also pop in a brand new battery cell if yours winds up degrading over the years.

The case of the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is a fairly robust plastic and fabric affair, with pouches on the inside for cables and the like. Because the headphones merely lay flat instead of folding up, the case is quite wide, though it isn’t very deep.

On the right ear cup is the combination power/Bluetooth pairing button, and a capacitive touch plate on the back of the same ear cup. The gestures are pretty straightforward for the most part, but you can tinker a little bit in the Smart Control Plus app. As usual, swiping forward and backward controls the track, up and down controls the volume, tapping twice toggles between transparency and ANC, and a single tap will play or pause your music.

Features

If you install the Sennheiser Smart Control Plus app, you’ll be greeted by a pretty simple interface that contains a lot of useful features. For example, you can define the exact level of ANC (or transparency) you want, set EQ presets, find your headphones, adjust connection preferences, and so on.

Signing up for a Sennheiser account also grants you the ability to use a feature that allows you to designate GPS coordinates where your headphones will automatically swap into pre-assigned settings — though you could just as easily adjust your headphones as you need. Additionally, said account will allow you to take a hearing test and automatically determine an EQ preset that Sennheiser feels fits you closer than what it already supplies.

Speaking of an EQ, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless only has an 8-band equalizer in the app, which is a bit of a shame given that we know Sennheiser has it in ’em to include a parametric EQ. That said, there needs to be something to make the higher-end headphones offered by Sennheiser worth it, so I’m not surprised it didn’t make an appearance on the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless.

How does the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless connect?

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless can connect to sources via Bluetooth 5.4, though the material reads “Bluetooth 6.0 ready…” whatever that means. I’m assuming that the hardware is capable of supporting the 6.0 standard, but hasn’t been implemented for whatever reason. As far as codecs go, the headphones can use SBC, AAC, aptX and aptX Adaptive. The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is also Snapdragon Sound certified, which is a nice add for those with the correct phone hardware — though the headphones likely don’t have the chip needed for eventual XPAN listening. Finally, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless supports Multipoint, which can be managed from the Smart Control Plus app.

For wired fans, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless also can connect over 3.5mm TRS cable (included in the packaging) or a USB-C cable with data capabilities. Though it’s rare to run across a power-only cable nowadays, it can happen — so make sure your cord can handle it. Many users prefer wired listening to avoid issues like latency, dropouts, and hardware incompatibility, but it’s not a requirement that you listen wired if you’re not a fan of dangling wires.

How long does the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless’ battery last?

Full disclosure, we haven’t finished with the battery testing quite yet. This is because the MOMENTUM line of headphones typically has an absurd battery life — and the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is no different. Sennheiser boasts a battery life over 50 hours with ANC on, and if past experience is anything to go by: the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless will be very similar.

Check back in a few days for full results. The current score reflects the manufacturer’s claims, but given the fact that Sennheiser’s estimates are generally pretty accurate (or even conservative), I’m okay with this as a temporary placeholder score until we can get a proper test through.

However, there is one feature that deserves mention here, and that’s the battery protection feature found in the Smart Control Plus app. Though the cell is already impressively huge — and the battery user replaceable — the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is also able to enforce good battery hygeine. At the expense of being able to charge al the way to 100%, you can prolong the life of the installed battery considerably with this feature turned on. If you’re looking to keep these cans rocking for many years to come, use this religiously — your battery will still run circles around that of the other top-tier ANC headphones even if you only charge to 80%.

How well does the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless cancel noise?

The ANC for the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless has been vastly improved over past generations, on par with headphones a little behind the top tier. However, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless specifically does a much more consistent job keeping noise under 1.1kHz reduced by 20dB. This is roughly where some of the more annoying sounds you’ll encounter live, so this is good news.

While it isn’t an enormous upgrade over the previous version of MOMENTUM wireless headphones, an extra 3-5dB of noise attenuation in this range will seem like a significant upgrade. Isolation is also quite decent, physicaly blocking a considerable amount of outside noise.

It’s interesting to me that the ANC is so much more effective in practice when the charts don’t seem to tell the exact same story — but sustained modest improvement across the board will do that. Though some of the improvement comes from deeper ear cups offering better isolation, but the ANC unit is also stronger with the new headphones. The days of having ANC as a massive tradeoff for Sennheiser’s cans are over.

How good is the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless’ transparency mode?

When enabling transparency mode, you’ll be able to hear the world around you piped into your ears as recorded by the microphones over the headphones’ exterior. Though it’s a little artificial-sounding, I haven’t yet met a product that’s completely knocked my socks off here. The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless works well for situational awareness, but you won’t forget you’re wearing headphones or anything.

How does the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless sound?

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless sounds decent, if a bit bass-heavy. It’s a little bit mystifying that results would be this different to the MOMENTUM 4 Wireless, but c’est la vie. You may find that you need to dig into the settings to get best results.

Reviewer’s notes

Editor’s note: this review uses a hover-enabled glossary to describe sound quality based on a consensus vocabulary. You can read about it here.

Can you use the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless for phone calls?

As the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is meant to be an extension of your digital contraptions, it should come as no surprise that it has a microphone array for calls. Said microphone array has some interesting wind screens, and offers some solid noise rejection

Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless microphone demo (Ideal conditions):

Should you buy the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless?

If you want noise canceling headphones and don’t need absurdly-priced top-performers, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is a great buy for those looking for connectivity features and solid performance. Though the sound isn’t really my cup of tea, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless was always going to need to differentiate itself from Sennheiser’s latest top-of-the-line ANC headphones — so it’s no surprise that it doesn’t sound much like higher-end options like the HDB 630.

But, for a substantially lower cost, the Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless isn’t half bad. The ANC still isn’t to the level of the AirPods Max 2 or anything, but it’s comparable to other ANC headphones near the top of the market. Additionally, a large user-replaceable you can easily swap out at any time means that these headphones will last you a long time if you protect the USB-C port. Not a bad value for $400.

Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless price history