The Sennheiser Momentum Sport was made more or less at the same time as the Momentum True Wireless 4, and with the same price to boot. As the name suggests, the former has a greater focus on being able to handle the great outdoors, while the latter is focused on what the brand does best. Naturally, this comes with some caveats and trade-offs.
With the subject of this review being the former, there’s is the unfortunate preconceived notion that the Sennheiser Momentum Sport will be lacking in some way or other in the sound department, at least in comparison. I’ll try to judge them on their own as best I can, but the Momentum True Wireless will inevitably be brought up later. But with that in mind, let’s crack on.
What Am I Looking At?
Despite the being part of the Momentum Series, the Sennheiser Momentum Sport comes in quite a distinct look compared to the other TWS buds of the family. Where the rest of the series have some form of rectangular case, with a moderately square-ish shape to the buds’ housing, the sporty member has a square case with rounded edges and an almost oval-looking shape to the housing of the buds themselves.
Also, despite the size, the overall Sennheiser Momentum Sport package doesn’t feel like there’s a weight penalty attached to it. In fact, there’s a lot of rubber material on top of the basic plastic. This is good if you’re taking it wherever you go, not so much if you have a period of inactivity, and the case is kept either under sunlight exposure or just hot weather in general.
Befitting its sporty nature, the Sennheiser Momentum Sport comes with wing tips in addition to additinal ear tips, for a more secure fit while you are running, for example. It has none attached by default, with three wing tip lengths as options. You do have to remove the default band to fit either of them on, though. As for ear tips, there’s the usual S, M and L sizes, with the middle one being attached by default.
The key gimmick of the Sennheiser Momentum Sport though are its heartrate and body temperature sensors as part of the buds. You can get readings from both via the brand’s Smart Control mobile app, or more practically with a Polar health tracker watch. Getting these readings from the app is a little too tedious a process, especially when you’re taking a breather from your workouts to look at them, even if the body temperature one is a tad novel.
What’s Good About It?
Right off the bat, the first plus point of the Sennheiser Momentum Sport is that it is quite comfortable to wear, even without any of the wing tips attached. I personally had the medium-sized tips on, and while I needed to push them under the ear cartilage more often than not, they don’t cause noticeable discomfort either way.
By default, the Sennheiser Momentum Sport produced very balanced, but otherwise flat sound. Bass does have slightly more presence than mids and highs, though this can also sometimes get presented as muddy. This issue can be solved somewhat via the equaliser of the brand’s Smart Control app.
Of course, being the sporty entry in the series, it would be strange if the Sennheiser Momentum Sport was not also marketed with an IP rating. The specific rating here is IP55, so while you can’t have it on while you go for a swim, you can take them in the rain with no issues. The battery life of about 5.5 hours – or 24 with the case included – feels about right, though you can extend this at the cost of the aptX codec. But then again, why would you?
Finally there’s the novel ANC mode called Anti-Wind. It serves as a nice middle ground between full on ANC and transparency modes, as while it still lets some sound through, it cancels out the buffeting of wind, something you’ll likely encounter while out on a run. For what it’s worth, there’s no way to just turn the function off.
What’s The Catch?
With most TWS buds, the common touch inputs include, single, double and triple taps. For whatever reason, the Sennheiser Momentum Sport doesn’t register single taps, so the Play / Pause function is assigned to double taps instead. Tap and hold adjusts the volume down on the left bud, and up on the right. This leaves triple taps doing ANC mode cycling on the left bud, and skipping forward on the right, and you’ll have to give something up to get rewind easily accessible.
As this point, I’ll have to unfortunately bring up the Momentum True Wireless 4 which, I should reiterate, shares a price tag with the Sennheiser Momentum Sport. The first point of comparison is the personalisation process from the Smart Control app which, with the Sport, is a bit crude in comparison.
Rather than setting up your custom equaliser by frequencies that you can hear, the process with the Momentum Sport instead has you pick your favourite between three hidden equaliser presets. This is repeated five times, and your end result is the amalgamation of your choices, and the whole process is done while you’re listening to your own music.
Within the same menu, there’s a toggle for Bass Boost, which works with your custom equaliser as well as any of the presets, and does what it says on the tin. Then there’s the Podcast toggle, which disregards the equaliser altogether as it activates it own hidden setting. This improves the clarity of the mids and highs by a fair bit, but bass takes quite the considerable hit. Not too surprising considering the name.
On one hand this toggle works very nicely for low bass tracks like YUBIKIRI-GENMAN by Mili – a track with what sounds like only a piano and a cello accompanying the vocalist. But on the flip side, for tracks with a bit of everything like amazarashi’s Kyokaisen, and especially bass-heavy tracks like Bury the Light from the Devil May Cry V Special Edition soundtrack, the loss of bass with Podcast mode toggled is too great a tradeoff for vocal clarity.
Should I Buy It?
As fine as the Sennheiser Momentum Sport is as a pair of TWS buds, there’s this nagging feeling that’s stopping me from giving it a resounding yes. And a lot of this has to do with its cousin, the Momentum True Wireless 4, which launched at practically the same time and with the same price tag.
First off is naturally its pretty steep asking price of RM1,699 when it launched, or RM1,649 according to the official site at the time of writing this review. Comparing the Sennheiser Momentum Sport with the Momentum True Wireless 4, the latter is, as you might expect, the one that does the job of delivering music to your ears better. This divide is further expanded by the inexplicable difference in the personalisation process.
On the flip side, the addition of an IP rating is definitely a bonus that the Sennheiser Momentum Sport has over the True Wireless 4. While this can be argued as a worthy trade off for some sound quality, I’m not so sure if the same can be said for heart rate and body temperature monitoring tech. Sure, the tech probably cost quite a bit, especially for them to be squeezed onto earbuds. But its impracticality – unless you’re already invested in the Polar ecosystem – means that your money is not really paying for anything you’d use on the regular.
Ultimately, you’ll be deciding which you value more between great sound and the ability to take them with you on a run. Though if you do have lengthy workout sessions out, and on more days a week than not, then maybe the Sennheiser Momentum Sport is right for you.
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