Sennheiser Momentum 5 - Full Review After 1 Week

[00:01] the brand new Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones with a beautiful design, a user swappable battery, a 57-hour battery life with ANC enabled, three times better ANC, better sound quality, and across the board a number of

[00:14] going to talk about throughout this video. So, there's a lot to really be headphones I've tested, these are among the best looking headphones and they this video, of course, we'll go through all the normal tests for ANC, sound

[00:29] quality, microphone indoor and outdoor, transparency, and I'll talk about all figure out these are actually the best headphones you can buy. So, I'm really in particular with these, but I think we need to start off with the design. I

[00:42] elegant-looking pair of headphones. There's three different colors, there's called denim, which is my personal favorite. And if you look at it, you can see we have a very denim-looking fabric top to the headband, so I really like

[00:54] metallic Sennheiser logo on either side, so subtle, not like huge branding, but very elegant look to that. We also have the very complementary-looking, it looks silicone kind of, but it's a very soft feel on the headband on the bottom. I'll

[01:09] but those two colors, kind of the metallic, the soft fabric, and this kind just a very premium-looking pair of headphones. The ear cups rotate a total headphones. The ear cups rotate a total of 180°, so 90° in and 90° out. They do

[01:24] you don't need to in the case, obviously. And of course, there is some touch controls on the outside, and I'll talk about those in just a minute. You metallic-looking band kind of slides out there. It feels nice, there's a good

[01:39] resistance, it stays everywhere I want it to. It's not like the most premium, like, you know, $800-looking pair of headphones in that aspect, like it's not but that does help to reduce the weight and like I said, I'm a big fan of this

[01:52] design. Looking at the bottom, you can see we have a USB Type-C port. That's course for USB type C playback. We have a smaller wired audio port on the other side and we'll show you that cable in the case. We've got our five LED

[02:05] pairing mode and battery level. We've got one button on here. You can see the microphones are accented on the front. A very small font there it says Sennheiser and Momentum 5. So, aesthetics, two thumbs up for me. I absolutely love this

[02:19] recently the best headphones in the market and the Sennheiser HD 630s were a in last place for design. And these I think would have probably come in first

[02:31] or at least tied in first. Really beautiful design. The case then is 20% smaller than the Momentum 4s and uh maybe that's because there's an indent on the back, but overall I do have to say I like the case as well. You have

[02:43] that same branding, the little metallic accent on the front and the same fabric that matches the top of the headband. It's a hard shell case. It's very slim, very compact. You don't need to do any kind of weird headphones gymnastics to

[02:55] get it in, which I'm personally a big fan of. I'd rather have my headphones just set in like that instead of trying to remember which way they fold. All right, one small quirk that has kind of been bothering me since I got these

[03:07] out what was happening now. The case, you have right and left and it's clearly indicated, but because the headphones fold 180°, sometimes I actually put the right. And And from the top you're not There's no letter there, so you're not

[03:21] like don't fit that way. It's a really subtle thing, but if you turn them around, they fit in perfectly. So, you want to make sure you're always putting the right in the right side of the case. They're not ambidextrous. Um

[03:35] something to know. We have two cables in here, so you have your USB to USB cable, Looks like it's about 3 ft long, I would say. And or maybe 1 m is probably really the 3.5 mm cable. I like having this in here in case you're on a plane and you

[03:50] need to plug into like the seat in front of you for a for watching a movie, it's have a little pouch here. The user manual comes in there at first, but you can put anything you wanted in there, I guess, maybe another cable. The case

[04:02] loop on the backside, so you can hang it on something if you needed to. I don't like it as much as the Sony one that just clips shut, but overall, I'm the case. All right, honestly, I was

[04:14] thing to talk about with the design is the user swappable battery. I was afraid you just pull a little bit harder than you think, they pop right off. They They're plastic snaps. And in there, you can see four Phillips head screws. So, I

[04:29] Look up how to do it if you ever want to swap out the battery, but they did say Phillips head screwdriver. I assume those are the four you would take out, so, it's kind of nice that these should be lasting longer by swapping out the

[04:42] battery. Hopefully, they'll last a really long time. They're also a little bit more future-proof with Bluetooth on here. They have 5.4, but they're ready to go with 6.0 with what Sennheiser says is going to be a firmware update in the

[04:54] near future. As far as controls go, on the right ear cup, you can tap it once, twice, three times. Uh you can also swipe up and down. That's going to be and back to skip through tracks. Interestingly, you can also pinch in and

[05:07] of your surroundings is how I think about it, where you're turning transparency on or you're turning up ANC. So, like pinching is kind of like zooming out, and it's like turning the sound down, so you have more ANC. That's

[05:20] kind of how I think about that. There is no speak-to-chat feature on here, where start talking, these don't do like the audio ducking that others do. And has a thing where you can just like quickly hear your surroundings by like

[05:33] either. You just have to take the headphones out. The battery life on these is incredible, though. 57 hours is the claim, and that is with active noise cancellation on, which absolutely destroys the competition, which usually

[05:46] 30 is very respectable, and this is almost double that. As far as the fit relatively lightweight feeling on my head. I'll show the weights on screen headphones and see how they actually compare, but the ear cups, I think,

[06:00] could be a tad deeper. I do feel my left ear, maybe mostly my left ear, I can feel just barely feeling like the the back of the ear cup there. Everyone's maybe for you it might not affect you at all. My ears don't really get hot. I

[06:13] like 2 hours before they start to get a little bit warmer. Um and again, that's compared to other headphones, these are definitely middle of the pack in terms of temperature and comfort. So far, definitely very comfortable, perhaps not

[06:26] Comfort Ultras, for example, but I would say more comfortable than the Sony XM6s. As far as transparency and ANC go, let's start off with ANC. Like I said, I recently did a full comparison of all the best headphones, unfortunately right

[06:41] before these launched, and the Sennheiser HD 630s were in that good reference here, and looking at these, they sound very very similar in terms of ANC to the 630s there. That means that they're going to be behind

[06:54] the AirPods Max 2. They're not as powerful as the Bose Quiet Comfort Ultra 2 or the Sony XM6s. They also would technically be slightly behind the Sonos technically be slightly behind the Sonos Ace, and in fact, the Sony HD 630s may

[07:06] actually be slightly better at blocking higher frequencies due to that thicker overall, the ANC in these is definitely solid. Comparing to the absolute best of the best, these would be like in fourth or fifth place. But compared to the rest

[07:19] of the market, these are definitely really good. I think the ANC is solid. It's not the focus of these headphones, as you'll see throughout this video. is pretty nice if you're outside and it's really windy, you can toggle that

[07:31] on, and it'll do less uh reproduction of the wind sound through the headphones. Also, transparency then, um I'm using it right now, and I have to say, it's actually really good. This is a huge improvement for Sennheiser. They used to

[07:44] noise or or just like it didn't sound it sounded more compressed. These do a really good job of recreating frequencies in a very natural way. I would say there's essentially no white noise. I can hear everything around me

[07:57] forget you have them on your head, but as far as transparency goes, these definitely get a big thumbs up for me. Now, of course, sound quality. I want to talk about what these have like spec sheet wise and then what my experience

[08:10] is. Spec sheet wise, so they have a 43 mm transducer. They have Snapdragon different Bluetooth codecs. Of course, you have the basic SBC and AAC, which if be using AAC. Sorry to tell you that. But Android users, you have access to

[08:24] on what phone you're using, but that could be aptX, aptX lossless, and you can see these in the app. I actually really like how the app shows you what codec you're using. You can choose uh connection stability or audio priority

[08:39] on how you want Bluetooth codecs to work. And you can enable up to 24-bit 96 kHz for more lossless streaming. And I think overall, the app does a really good job of that. We'll dig into the app a bit later, but the equalizer on here,

[08:51] sound personalization, which is like a little quiz sort of they they they play the like you'll play your music and then they'll give you three different EQs and you choose which one you like best and you go through maybe four to eight

[09:04] decides what your EQ is actually going to be based on what you're hearing. And know what frequency you're supposed to listen to. The whole point is it's a blind test to see what you prefer. But one thing is that there is weirdly no

[09:19] more advanced EQ like we see on the Nothing earbuds, Nothing headphones, um the Sennheiser 630s, like they had it, but for some reason, Sennheiser didn't It feels like it would be an easy thing to add in, but maybe I'm missing

[09:35] process works or why they chose not to include that. As I mentioned, Bluetooth 5.4, pretty solid, but these will be getting upgraded to 6.0 with a firmware listening to these, what is my experience actually like? Well, they're

[09:50] not particularly loud. I find that normally I would listen to headphones at like 60% volume. In these, I'm probably more like 75 to 80% volume, turning it up a little bit louder. And the sound itself, I've actually been a pretty big

[10:02] on their more premium headphones. The Momentum 4s from, I guess that was like 3 years ago now, were definitely more mainstream with a bass lift and a pretty serious mid scoop, but the recent HD 630s, as I mentioned, added a lot of

[10:16] detail. They gave a more neutral profile and those sounded incredible in my Momentum 5s, would sound exactly like the 630s, but in comparison, the Momentum 5s are slightly more bass oriented while still preserving a lot of

[10:29] really good, but not quite as vibrant or textured as the 630s. They're warmer, there's more of a bass emphasis, and the bass is a little bit over emphasized. But that could be depending

[10:42] doesn't really give me much session fatigue. I feel like I can listen to doesn't get exhausting. These are fun to listen to and a gentle EQ can bring them preference. They're still definitely more of a consumer dynamic profile, as I

[10:57] would call it. I think audiophiles would prefer the 630s, but compared to the Momentum 4s, the vocals on these Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones are forward, there's better clarity, there's more detail, they're less boomy than the

[11:10] 4s, or at least there's more control over the bass, I would say. It still sometimes is a bit over emphasized, um but significantly better sounding than due to probably, I would say mainly due to improving the mids. Overall, I have a

[11:24] good time listening to these. They're fun, they're lively, they work with a wide variety of genres. Um Um, think I would like to see, like I said, a little bit more like the 630s. I would like a little bit more emphasis and detail on

[11:36] the symbols and those high-end details. But that said, these are still better headphones on the market. You can hear details in songs that you probably didn't even know were there. The Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones are

[11:49] There's good sound stage and instrument separation and you get a full sound with a much more neutral mid-range than most other headphones which end up doing a massive amount of mid scooping. Okay, so let's get into a microphone test. This

[12:03] is an indoor microphone test with the Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones. It's echo. This should be a fairly easy environment. But let's go outside. I near a busy road and recently I've been doing a really loud test as well just to

[12:17] see how these handle that. All right, so we did indoors. Test number two now is It's not really windy, but let me know the weed whacker test. All right, I started doing a more advanced test for

[12:30] volume. Uh, some headphones are just too good for like the road noise. Got a weed whacker here. So I'm going to start it. And idle so you can hear anything. I'm going

[12:44] idle so you can hear anything. I'm going to full throttle. Some headphones are better than others with this. Now, as far as the app goes

[12:56] interesting thing that I've noticed with these, so they detect when they're on to turn off right away when they're off your head, but they do somehow detect take them off and set them down, they don't turn off right away. But if you

[13:10] take them off and set them down in the case, they turn off immediately. When immediately. I kind of do wish that was the case, but when you take them out, And like I said, auto auto pause when they come off your head. And these do

[13:22] actually let me just show you the app. There's a bunch of features in there pretty well. So, these are compatible with both iPhone and Android. This right see you got the headphones on the top. They tell you what how they're

[13:36] connected. So, wired or Bluetooth. Like I said, you can actually connect these you wanted higher resolution audio on an iPhone for example. Um and you'll still on the app here. The battery level's there. You have connection management.

[13:50] connectivity. You can select what they're connected to as well, but by products and they'll switch seamlessly between them. You have your noise adaptive, you have custom, or you have

[14:02] adjust between them. As you see on the app right here, if I just start pinching in or yeah, pinching in, it goes to transparency. Pinching out is like zooming out of the world is how I think of it and that's going back to the ANC

[14:15] and you can dig a little bit deeper into like how it's going to work when you're have immersive audio if you want to turn on Dolby Atmos. We have my sound and there's a bass boost there for anyone who just wants even more bass. Toggle

[14:29] that on right away. Otherwise, you've got the graphic EQ, which is a just if you go to this one, you've got an eight-band equalizer there. And they and how many decibels you move it up and down. Um you also have the bypass option

[14:42] sounds like without the EQ and then with EQ on. The other way to EQ, I already here, but it's going to be the sound check. So, you can see sound check right you know, show you three different options one, two, and three and you'll

[14:56] Okay, going back to the app, some other features we have here. You can find your headphones. You have sound zones. So, you can have like when you're at home, at the office or at the gym or whatever, you want different settings. If we tap

[15:08] controls you have for phone calls, for playback, for just general everything manage the tiles and how the app is actually going to look. Another question is, can the Sennheiser Momentum 5s connect to the BTD 700's that come with

[15:24] the HBD 630's. Sennheiser has to stop using these these letters and numbers. I normal names, but this little dongle thing right here that comes with the more expensive, you know, audio-focused headphones, the whole goal here is to

[15:38] give you higher resolution codecs on like your PC or your MacBook or your USB type C. You plug this in, it automatically connects. It's a really nice thing to have. And from my testing, it wasn't immediately connecting to

[15:51] goes into pairing mode, and it should connect. It didn't connect. That's not to say you cannot connect if you enable some Auracast or honestly, I don't know for my testing, it it didn't connect right away. I kind of would like to have

[16:05] that connect cuz it's like a $60 device that you could buy from Sennheiser. I'll that, I'll put a comment down below. Um I'll pin a comment, and you'll know. All right. Now, as far as the price goes, these are $399.99. So, 400 bucks. That's

[16:18] not a small chunk of change, but these are actually really competitive. Hear me video, these would be tied in first place. Bose, Sony, JBL, uh those are all in like the mid $400 range, high $400 range even. And the AirPods Max are

[16:34] $549. So, these I would say would definitely compete with all of those, without any sales. I'll have a link in the description to the latest sale you're interested in buying that. Um and it does help to support the channel at

[16:48] no cost to you. But, these are available starting June 16th. So, I'm fortunate to mentioned this earlier. This video is not sponsored. No brands have any input on this video whatsoever. Obviously, I'm covering both pros and cons. So, the

[17:02] positives with these headphones, beautiful design, excellent case, comfortable, cheaper than the other flagships, and really excellent sound quality for Bluetooth headphones. The controls are also really solid, but not

[17:16] headphones. There are a couple downsides. Uh honestly, there's not that many. The main downside is that the ANC is not at the same level as some of the best in the industry from Sony, Bose, and of course, Apple AirPods. But,

[17:30] flying with these or traveling with these, they're still going to do a pretty decent job of crushing that sound. Also, uh depending on what type really optimizing for sound, you're going with aptX, you may not have the

[17:44] then, you do get some blips where it cuts out a little bit. But, overall, my these Sennheiser Momentum 5 headphones. design of them, I like the fit and the comfort. They have a lot of features on

[17:58] battery life is really hard to argue with. And honestly, I hate to say it, headphone comparison video. Like, these just I know it competes so well in that video. So, if you guys want to see that, be sure to subscribe to the channel. I'm

[18:11] wait a couple months until some more headphones get updated as well. new pair coming out. So, thanks for watching, guys. Let me know what you comments below, and I'll see you in the next video.