Sennheiser has always been a leader in Audio. Thanks to a partnership with Polar, they are diving further into the world of fitness trackers with the Momentum sport wireless earbuds. But can you merge the two and still deliver a good experience? That’s what we are here to find out.

Design

From the start you can tell that these headphones are geared around fitness. The case has a mix of plastic and rubber, with the rubber wrapping around the entire case and even covering the charging port.

The headphones come in 3 colours: Black, Olive and Graphite. The ones we got were Olive, and honestly we loved the colour. From the orange Sennheiser logo to the overall look, it just works. It’s unique without looking tacky.

The case size is fairly large, and the earphones themselves feel a bit chunky. The earphones are not the nicest looking things, and they stick out a bit in my ear, so that could matter to some, but for most it should look quite good.

But thanks to the various wings and ear tip sizes that come in the box you can customise this to your liking. And once you get the right fit they will stay in your ear for hours without hurting or falling out during a workout.

Features & Build

The Momentum Sport has a solid build, from the case to the earphones everything just feels premium. The only part that was a bit of a miss was the USB-C cover. It didn’t feel secure and also just didn’t cover as high as I would have wanted it to.

The headphones have a IP55 rating, which means they are shock, dust and sweat resistant, just don’t go swimming with them.

You get 4 total modes of Noise Cancelation – Off, ANC, Transparency and Wind Resistance. The wind resistance is another nod to being fitness focused, because with cycling or running outdoors this can be an issue. The Wind resistance was a bit on the weaker side, but the rest of the modes were good enough.

With the Momentum Sport you get a basic touch controller, but you also get tap controls. Now you might think they are the same, but you would be wrong. Tab controls are when you tap near your ear, and not on the headphones. Which is pretty cool as a concept, for me it was a bit of a hit or miss, gladly with more hits than misses. One good control is that you can turn the volume up and down with the touch controls and all the other media controls like, play/pause, next etc with touch controls. Thus making it really versatile and handsfree.

With the partnership with Polar, the fitness really comes into its own. The headphones track two things: Body temperature and heart rate. These are tracked from the left earphone, and it happens from inside your ear. Through the speaker area (see the picture). Quite a cool idea, but this also lead to a downside in the sound department, more info below.

It should be noted that in order to unlock the full capabilities of the fitness tracking you need to link the headphones with the Polar app and the Sennheiser app.

Note that you must use the included ear tips, which are transparent, in order for the sensors to work properly.

As with all headphones these days, Sennheiser has an app for the Momentum Sport called Smart Control (it’s their generic headphone app).

The app did have its own flaws and had quite a few UI bugs. But it hits hard where it matters. You control every little aspect of your headphones and track the fitness data. It’s quite a detailed app with many many controls.

You get the usual controls like: 

• ANC settings
• Tap/Touch customisations (thought limited)
• Equaliser
• Firmware Updates
• Battery indicators

But you also get some other cool features, some of the standouts for me were:

• Audio Resolution (Choose between lower quality better battery, or higher quality less table and lower battery)
• Eco Battery (Like a low power mode for your headphones)
• Battery Protection (Prevent charge upto 100%)
• Others: Auto power off, auto answer and more

It’s a lot. Yes many other competitors also provide similar things, but this is quite comprehensive.

One downside of the touch controls was whenever I adjusted the headphones, I would end up increasing or decreasing the volume, because essentially its a tap and hold. Annoying, but something you kinda get used to.

My only real complaint will be with the equaliser, and not so much the settings, but the actual implementation, which leads me to the Sound of the Momentum Sport.

Sound

The Sound of the Momentum Sport right out of the box is pretty average, with a decently wide soundstage and good instrument isolation. The surprising thing was that the headphones didn’t sound as punchy as I have come to expect Sennheiser headphones to be. The headphones definitely have good mids.

The best thing to do is to head into the settings and turn on Bass Boost, it feels like once you hit that, you get to the more traditional Sennheiser sounding headphones, which always seem to focus on the bass. This is probably how I would recommend most people to listen to music on these headphones.

Not meant for extremely high quality audio, but would do great in a workout environment.

The sad thing was that the Equaliser, while decently customisable, just made the audio sound bad no matter what setting you chose. Even their prebuilt options that would match your music choice seemed to add unnecessary distortion. Not sure if this was just my experience, but I set the eq to 0, boosted the bass and was happy with the overall result. Audiophiles would be horrified, but that’s how these headphones sounded best to me.

One other strange feeling I had was, that the left headphone had a very minor, you need to be looking for it, heaviness to it, not sure if it is because of the sensors or the weight or something, but it definitely felt a bit less punchy than the right one. Again, this is only if you are really concentrating, but then again it could also be my mind playing tricks. 

Overall the Sennheiser Momentum Sport are an all rounder good sounding pair of earphones. You will be happy with these for sure.

Battery and Connectivity

The headphones connect quickly and easily, taking the headphones out the first time they are ready to pair. In my case that didn’t happen, I had to press and hold each earbud for about 3 seconds to get them into pairing mode. Not ideal, but hardly a problem.

The battery of the headphones was competitive, coming in around 6.5 hours of usage on a full charge, with the case taking that up to a claimed 24 hour battery life.

Price

The official price of the headphones is AED 1,400, but you can easily get it for around AED 1,259 on Amazon.

Verdict

The Sennheiser Momentum Sport is a very capable pair of headphones, with a unique and comprehensive experience. If the added sports capabilities peak your interest, then you are exactly who the headphones are targeting and you will not regret getting them.