I’ll admit it, I’m already a Sennheiser girly. My over-ear wireless headphones have long been a favourite, so when the new MOMENTUM True Wireless 5 landed on my desk, the question wasn’t really whether Sennheiser could make something that sounded good. It was whether a tiny pair of in-ear buds could give me enough of the experience I love from the brand’s over-ear headphones to actually make me reach for them instead.
What surprised me most was just how customisable these little earbuds are. A lot is going on behind the scenes, but Sennheiser has managed to make most of it feel genuinely useful rather than like technology added for the sake of another feature on the box.
The Smart Control Plus app is where you can really get stuck in. It has an eight-band EQ alongside guided Sound Personalisation and surprisingly granular control over how the earbuds behave. I played around with it far more than I expected to, particularly because you can actually hear the difference rather than feeling like you’re moving meaningless sliders around an app.
But my favourite feature is much simpler: the touch controls.
With the earbuds already in, I don’t want to pull out my phone every time I want to skip a song, adjust the volume or change how much of the outside world I can hear. The left and right earbuds become little control panels in your ears. A series of taps lets you control your music, volume and transparency, and once you’ve learned which side does what, it becomes second nature.
The transparency control in particular is brilliant. The MOMENTUM True Wireless 5 uses a four-microphone array for its adaptive noise cancellation, while Sennheiser says this generation has its most natural-sounding real-time transparency mode yet. Being able to quickly let the world back in without taking an earbud out is exactly the kind of feature that makes me actually want to keep them in.
And then, of course, there’s the sound. These are unmistakably Sennheiser. Each bud has the brand’s 7mm TrueResponse dynamic transducer, with support for high-resolution wireless audio up to 24-bit/96kHz on compatible devices. You don’t need to understand any of that to appreciate them, though. Music sounds full, detailed and properly immersive, with enough bass to be fun without everything else disappearing underneath it.
The noise cancellation helps enormously here too. Once it kicks in, you’re given that little private bubble that makes a good pair of headphones so satisfying. And it really feels like a bubble. I couldn’t hear a thing around me. This will be a lifesaver on my next flight overseas.
The physical design deserves some love, too. The charging case is impressively compact compared with many other true wireless earbuds I’ve used. It’s narrow, pocket-friendly and doesn’t feel like you’re carrying a little brick around with you. Sennheiser has actually redesigned the case for this generation specifically to make it narrower and easier to slip into a pocket.
And can we talk about the colours? Because they’re all so pretty. The MOMENTUM True Wireless 5 comes in Graphite, Cream, Copper, Denim and Lavender, and this is one of those rare product launches where I genuinely don’t think there is a bad colour in the line-up. They’re sophisticated without being boring, and it’s nice to see premium tech offered in more than the obligatory black and white.
Battery life is equally impressive, with Sennheiser claiming up to 12 hours of continuous playback and up to 40 hours in total with the wireless charging case. An eight-minute quick charge can also give you another hour of listening.
One of my favourite design decisions, however, is something you hopefully won’t have to think about for years. Both the earbud and charging-case batteries are user-replaceable. Rather than accepting that your $549 earbuds will eventually become useless as the batteries deteriorate, Sennheiser designed them so you can replace the power cells with a small screwdriver.
At $549, these are undeniably premium earbuds. But they’re also not trying to compete at the budget end of the market. Sennheiser has essentially taken the experience of its flagship MOMENTUM headphones and squeezed as much of it as possible into something that fits in your pocket.
As someone who already loves Sennheiser’s over-ear headphones, I expected great sound. I didn’t expect the in-ear experience to win me over quite this much. They’re compact, beautifully designed, ridiculously customisable and genuinely enjoyable to use.
The biggest compliment I can give them? My over-ears suddenly have some competition.
