Responsive controls

Taking the Momentum 4 headphones off doesn’t lead to that extreme headphone shock that often accompanies heavyweight audio products. Music pauses as soon as they’ve moved off the ears thanks to a sensitive wear-detection. Also, really sensitive are the controls on the right ear cup. There’s a single button for power and pairing while other actions are handled with light taps and swipes by the touch-sensitive surface. That includes calling up your preferred assistant and toggling noise cancellation modes, volume, track navigation, etc. The controls are minimal, responsive and intuitive.

More granular adjustments to the features take place in the Sennheiser app that users should download. You get firmware updates, but other than that you can do a listening test and set noise cancellation level with a slider. There’s also an equaliser, which is much needed because bass can get rather prominent. There’s a bass boost mode, which is hardly needed and a podcast setting which is quite useful. The app is, however, not always an instant connection and lags a little.

Full-bodied sound

Different genres of music sound wonderful on Momentum 4. There’s good detail and separation and the sound is generally lively and punchy — but you do have to set the bass level to your liking. These headphones are supposed to be ‘audiophile inspired’ but that group will almost certainly want the bass turned down and not overwhelming other frequencies, which they sometimes do.

Speech and calls sound very clear and natural. A feature called ‘Sidetone’ allows you to adjust the way you hear your own voice during calls. The headphones use a 42mm transducer and support the AAC and SBC codecs plus AptX and Adaptive AptX. They actually sound better with Android playback devices. The adjustments you can make using the EQ make it possible to have personalised modes or ‘sound zones’ and have them automatically associated with different locations and activities. The Bluetooth standard used is 5.2 with the range holding up very well. The Momentum 4 supports multi-point connectivity so one can switch from one device to another.

Sony WH-1000XM5

60-hr battery among Sennheiser Momentum 4’s top tier features