It’s been close to four years since I last touched a pair of Sennheiser Momentum TWS earbuds. While I missed the opportunity to try out the brand’s 3rd generation offering, I’ve managed to get my hands on the Momentum True Wireless 4 (TW4) to dabble with and see how much more or little the brand has changed, especially since its consumer electronics division was acquired by Sonova all those years ago. And to my surprise, the answer is less so than I had anticipated.
What Am I Looking At?
If it was made clear already, the Momentum TW4 are Sennheiser’s fourth-generation earbuds, and the second generation to be manufactured under the Sonova branding too. Internally, the earbuds play house to a 7mm TrueResponse Dynamic driver, with a frequency ranging between 5Hz and 21kHz.
The design of the earbuds has stayed mostly the same, save for a few tweaks to their sides. Compared to the TW2 and TW3, the new model now have these “hips” at their edges, presumably to act as stabilisers, ensuring that the earbuds don’t suddenly shift around and pop out of your ears while your in the middle of a session. For that matter, a lot of the fitting and comfort are primarily handled by the soft silicon eartips.
The charging case for the Momentum TW4 still stands out with its choice of fabric material and in my case, off-white grey colour scheme. Another benefit to the fabric-style casing is that it hides all the scratchings and abuse a typical charging case endures, especially if you Charging the case is still done via USB-C but this time around, the charging port has been shifted to the front.
What’s Good About It?
It’s nice to see that Sennheiser has retained one of its long-standing traits with the Momentum TW4, and that is how bright the earbuds sound. The highs and mids are crisp, while the lows hit and thump just nice, but not hard enough to feel it rattling my skull. This can be remedied through the onboard equaliser of the Sennheiser app and more conveniently, it comes with a personalisation mode that automatically tweaks my audio preferences. All with a simple grid-style equaliser that you can drag and drop, based on the sort of pitches you like. Seriously, it will even adjust itself to your preferred volume levels and then prompts you when you’re listening at “unsafe” levels.
That said, tweaking the delivery of the Momentum TW4 helps the deeps bass notes in tracks such as Nina Simone’s Feeling Good and Stacey Kent’s La Venus de Milo really come out. In tracks like Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelt’s Digging My Potato, the highs of the harmonica really sings, with no breaking or cracking at high octaves. For that matter, vocals are just as clear and crisp and surprisingly, the Momentum TW4 enriches certain vocals, with Priscilla Ahn’s voice being a prime example of that enhancement.
Still on the subject of tweaking and enhancements, the dedicated also comes with the options to boost the bass or enhance the vocals and highs at the press of a button, the latter being called podcast mode. I can confirm it does work but, and this is me stating the obvious, you can tell it sounds more artificial than if you manually adjust and play around with the equaliser.
One refinement that I truly appreciate with the Momentum TW4 is any sharp sounds like keys jangling or hitting a hard surface or metal-on-metal are muted, instead of being amplified. This was a particularly painful issue with the TW2, and again, it is one that I am glad Sennheiser and its parent company, Sonova, seem to have addressed.
Battery life is also a prime attraction of the Momentum TW4, providing approximately seven hours of use per charge, but not necessarily at an equal pace.
What’s The Catch?
As mentioned, while battery life is great, the rate of draining isn’t across the board. For me, I noticed that the left earbud of the Momentum TW4 tends to run out of juice faster than the right. This isn’t technically an issue that is exclusive to the TW4 – Sony’s own WF Series suffers from a similar issue – but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.
Another gripe I have with the Momentum TW4 is that there is no option to disable the earbuds from pausing whatever I’m listening, to the moment I turn on the ambient sound mode. I find this irritating because other earbuds don’t do this and just continue letting the track play on, regardless of whether ANC or ambient mode is turned on. Mind you, you can manually get the track to play while ambient mode is active but the minute you turn ANC on and off, the whole interruption process repeats itself.
The Momentum TW4 also do not come cheap. Off the shelf, these earbuds cost RM1,699. They’re not the expensive pair of earbuds I’ve come across but at this price, there are a couple of other brands I could recommend.
Should I Buy It?
While the Momentum TW4 is one of the pricier TWS earbuds on the market, it is important to remember that these are audiophile-level accessories, and therefore a premium product. And premium products never come cheap.
If you’re willing to look past the price tag, and some of the odd quirks with its ambient mode, I can assure you that you’re guaranteed a very clean and bright listening experience.
Photography by John Law.
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