Sennheiser entered the premium true wireless audio category in 2019 with the Momentum True Wireless. While they were steeply priced, the earphones impressed on its design, feature set as well as performance. Now, Sennheiser has launched a successor to their first offering and aptly called it the Momentum True Wireless 2.
The True Wireless 2 improves upon the design of the earbuds by reducing their size compared to the first generation. While this is a welcome change, the earbuds still do stick out on your ears – one of the things that bothered us with the original True Momentum headphones. Both earbuds have touch-sensitive controls that work well, and you can customise their functionality with the smartphone app to suit your needs. In terms of fit, the Momentum True Wireless 2 is one of the best we have used to date. The fit is snug yet tight – we used the headphones for walks as well as jogging, and they did not get loose or fall out. The snug fit also plays a significant role in enhancing the noise cancellation, which we will discuss in detail ahead.
Let’s talk about storage
The storage case is also unique. Sennheiser has continued with a fabric-wrapped design on the case, which not only makes it stand out but also adds a non-slip grip. Moreover, the case is now compact making it easy to carry around. The earbuds stick to their charging position magnetically, so you don’t have to worry about wrong positioning. On the back is the USB Type-C port for charging, but much to our disappointment, there is no wireless charging feature. For this price, we expected Sennheiser would have added this charging feature as it is offered by competitors already.
Audio quality is as expected from a premium Sennheiser audio product. The Momentum series is where Sennheiser offers its best possible audio performance. The first generation True Wireless has a great sound. It was amongst the top recommendation for most of the last year. With True Wireless 2, Sennheiser has further improved the audio quality. The volume level is loud enough that we did not have to move beyond the 60 percent level most of the time. The vocals are crisp and clear, making it great for watching videos as well as for gamers who like to do a lot of voice chat in-game. For music, we felt that the bass was punchier, and overall the audio feels rich to listen. This brings us to the soundstage of the headphones (how well can the headphones reproduce distance and location of instruments) – it has one of the broadest soundstages we have heard on true wireless headphones. We used the headphones to listen to a variety of genres from rock to Bollywood, and it handled all of them perfectly. What further delivers outstanding audio is the support for aptX Codec as well as Hi-Res audio streaming.
One of the big new updates for the True Wireless 2 is the active noise cancellation. The earbuds already offer a good amount of passive noise cancellation thanks to their snug fit, and it’s enough for use at home or when out for walks. However, active noise cancellation takes it to the next level by muting ambient noises even when it is noisy. To check out active noise cancellation, we sat in front of a TV, raised the volume to max and then switched on active noise cancellation on the earbuds. The earbuds were able to block out almost 90 percent of the sound, and when we played music on the earbuds, then we were not able to hear anything from the TV. This ensures that the user gets an immersive experience without sacrificing sound quality. In case you want to hear ambient noises, you can enable transparent hearing without having to take the earbuds out.
What about battery life?
Battery life is another strong point of the Momentum True Wireless 2. Sennheiser claims a 7-hour battery life on the earbuds with a total of 28 hours with the charging case. In our usage, we regularly got around 6 hours of battery backup and a total of around 26 hours of total usage time with a full charge. This is one of the best battery backup we have seen from a pair of true wireless headphones. There is also fast-charge support – 10 minutes of charging gives you 1.5 hours of playback.
While the headphones score in almost all departments, they are not without their share of issues. Our biggest gripe is with the average microphones on the earbuds. They work fine indoors, but outdoors we got complaints about our voice being inaudible 5 out of 10 times, which was solved when we spoke loudly. Things got worse if you took a call in the car with a window open or when outside as the mics had trouble cancelling ambient noises properly. The other issue is that the Momentum True Wireless 2 lack simultaneous multi-device connection. You cannot have a smartphone and a laptop connected at the same time – you will have to disconnect from one device to connect to the other one. In work-from-home scenario, this would have been a great feature to have as you can easily switch calls between two devices when required without going through the disconnection process.
At Rs 24,990, we feel the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless 2 are an excellent option for users who are looking for a pair of premium true wireless headphones for multimedia usage. However, if your primary usage involves voice calls, we recommend looking at alternative options. In the same price range, you can look at the Apple Airpod Pro or the Klipsch T5.
Karan Bajaj is a senior tech journalist based in New Delhi.
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