Sennheiser momentum true wireless 2 review: Stunning sound without compromising on comfort

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Sennheiser’s original momentum true wireless buds arrived in 2018 and left users quietly impressed. The sound was nicely balanced and the build quality was what you’d expect of an upper-range model from this storied German manufacturer. Plus, they were pretty easy on the eye too.

However, they weren’t perfect. The touch control felt a little wonky, they were just a little bulky, and the battery life of four hours was just about bearable. If you were still going to opt for a pair of Sennheiser’s, you’d probable choose a pair of the brands reassuringly huge over-ear models.

Late last year the brand released its follow-up buds, the momentum true wireless 2 which looked to address all those niggles directly. Sennheiser nibbled two millimetres from the casing while beefing up its sound with new drivers and boosting the battery life.

These, Sennheiser promises, will end the trade-off you generally have to make between having wireless earbuds which sound good, and those that feel good. A high quality pair might well sound fantastic, but the extra weight and size can leave you wondering whether it’s worth paying £250 to end up holding a cold flannel to your poor, aching ear every couple of hours.

There’s also the addition of active noise cancellation to add to the “transparent hearing” feature of the original model. A setting that Sennhieser says is useful “when greater situational awareness is needed”: for example, when wandering around a city centre and trying to avoid being hit by buses.

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We put the momentum true wireless 2 through its paces over 25 hours of wear at home, listening to music and podcasts while walking around busy city streets and taking buses, trains and Tubes. As these had been billed as the answer to aching ears and having to jab one bud back into your ear as it started to fall out every 90 seconds, we tried wearing them over a six-hour session to see how comfortable they really were. We also wanted to see whether it really could bridge that gap between sound quality and all-day wearability.

The first sign that you’re looking at a particularly high-end piece of kit is the tweed-like covering on the charging case, and all the little additional details. For example, the metal touch-control panels on each earbud have some fine detailing on them.

Instantly, there’s a luxe feel to the whole package (as you’d hope for at this price point). The consciously muted choice of colours available – white, grey and black – helps as well.

Along with the case and headphones, you get a set of swappable silicon earbuds in different sizes – though, notably, not the usual foam options as well – and a USB-C cable. The pairing process is really simple: just touch the control plates on each earbud and they’re discoverable. In the time we tested them, the earbuds didn’t drop out once.

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More than that, they’re very, very comfortable. The earbuds themselves have been redesigned very slightly since its first incarnation, and this time around they are particularly light and sleek, so keeping them in for a few hours at a time was easy. In fact, it was easy to forget they were in at all at times. Speaking as someone with tiny little baby ears, this is no small feat.

In spite of their slight build, the sound which Sennheiser’s 7mm drivers deliver is extremely impressive. They handled the juddering, bassy synths of Metronomy’s Metronomy Forever and Bo Burnham’s “Jeff Bezos” song very tidily, delivering rumbling bottom end with precision and power.

But it’s the amount of detail and clarity which punches through in the mid-range that really separates it from the rest of the pack here, and makes you fully aware that you’ve got high-grade gear in your ear canal.

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Listening to orchestral pieces, too, it’s possible to pick out far more than you’d usually expect of earbuds. The organ part on Jonathan Dove’s “Seek Him That Maketh the Seven Stars” even delivered that pleasant brain-crushing feeling you’d get if you were stood in front of the real thing.

By comparison, podcasts could sound a little airless and thin, but that was quickly remedied with  Sennheiser’s smart control app.

It’s compatible with iOS 13 and later and Android 8 and later, and gives you a simple way to tweak the EQ (equalisation) to your heart’s content. You can also fiddle about with the transparent hearing function, which is particularly handy as you can personalise exactly how much of the outside world you block out and how much noise you blend into the earbuds output.

There’s active noise cancellation too, which was stringent and effective enough to deaden bus and train rides, and even create an effective aural cocoon on a busy high street. The Victoria line proved too much for it to handle, but there are some technological boundaries over which humanity may never cross.

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Everything’s controlled by taps on either earbud; the left ear is for pausing and skipping, the right for calling up your voice assistant of choice and toggling transparent hearing and ANC. Or, if you prefer, you can hook your Apple watch to it.

Like all touch controls on all wireless earbuds, they take a little while to get used to but they’re intuitive enough to work out and a lot more reliable than the original incarnation of these earbuds. Like most other aspects of the momentum true wireless 2’s, what happens when you tap, double-tap and triple-tap is entirely customisable.

Far more importantly, the automatic pause when you take one earbud out, and automatic play when it’s back in, is the smoothest and most reliable we’ve found in all the wireless earbuds we’ve tried.

This second generation of the momentum true wireless irons out all of the problems which nudged the first generation into being a faint disappointment. In fact, they’re a significant upgrade. You don’t need to compromise on performance in exchange for comfort, or put up with unnecessary bulkiness if you want punchy, clear sound.

Along with the simple quality of the drivers in the momentum true wireless 2s, the level of customisability available to you is what puts them in the top rank at this price range. They’re not cheap but at this price they still represent solid value, especially as entry level AirPods will set you back £199.