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.