Sennheiser Momentum 4 review: tremendous noise-cancelling headphones

The fourth-generation of the Momentum Bluetooth headphones from the renowned German audio manufacturer Sennheiser are a wholesale redesign, ditching their previous retro styling for something simpler and much more comfortable. All this with 60-hours of battery life.

Undeniably pricey at £299 ($349.99/A$549.99), the Momentum 4 Wireless are still £50 cheaper than their predecessors and undercut key competitors from Sony, Bose and Apple.

They are well balanced and the most comfortable headphones I have worn in a very long time, even over eight-hour listening sessions.

The headphones support Bluetooth 5.2 with the universal SBC and AAC audio formats for Apple devices and others. But they also support the very latest aptX Adaptive format, which offers higher audio quality, lower latency and is backwards compatible with the older aptX standard, which is common on Windows PCs and Android devices.

Multipoint connects two devices at the same time, such as your phone for music and your laptop for video calls, and works extremely well. They come with a 2.5mm-to-3.5mm analogue headphones cable and can play audio over USB-C at the same time as charging, similar to the B&W PX7, giving you plenty of connectivity options.

The touch panel on the right ear cup supports a set of excellent gesture controls. Swipe forward or backward to skip tracks, swipe up or down for volume, tap once to pause the music or twice to switch to the ambient sound mode. Unusually, you can also use a smartphone-like pinch-to-zoom gesture to slowly turn noise-cancelling down and ambient sound up, or vice versa, a bit like turning the volume up or down on the outside world.

The headphones do an excellent job with all music genres, making them extremely adaptable while also handling action-filled movie soundtracks with suitable bombast and immersion. The Control app has an equaliser, bass boost, podcast mode and a system that helps you tailor the sound of the headphones to your liking.

You can also manually adjust how much outside sound is let in with a slider in the app or the pinching-to-zoom gesture on the headphones adjusting from maximum noise-cancelling to full transparency, so you can have as little or as much awareness of the outside world as you prefer.

The transparency mode is very good, too, although on maximum it is louder than not wearing the headphones. Finally, call quality is excellent, matching the very best headphones without a boom mic, even in noisy environments.

The battery in the headphones is not replaceable but Sennheiser estimates it will maintain at least 80% of its original capacity after 30,000 hours of listening, which is 27 years of listening three hours a day, meaning it is never likely to need replacing.

The Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless cost £299.99 ($349.99/A$549.99) in black or white and ship on the 23 August.

For comparison, the Bose QuietComfort 45 cost £319.95, the Sony WH-1000XM5 cost £379 and Apple AirPods Max cost £549.

The Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless are some of the very best-sounding, longest-lasting and the most comfortable noise-cancelling headphones available.

What they lack in the visual flair of their predecessors, they make up for in performance. The battery lasts for a full 60 hours of playback, with effective noise-cancelling. They are well balanced with thoughtful tweaks to make them super-comfortable even for very long listening sessions.

They support the latest aptX Adaptive standard and can connect to two Bluetooth devices at the same time. You can even use them for audio as well as charging over USB-C, plus they still have an analogue headphones cable. Even the controls and voice call performance are top notch.

The best bit is how they sound, producing the sort of sparkling audio few top rivals match for a set of wireless headphones.

If you want some high-end noise-cancelling headphones, the Momentum 4 are worth every penny.