Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsDo you hate it when you stand up after forgetting your headphones are plugged in and it just kind of jerks the cable out?
Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2017
Let me start this by saying I bought a used pair. It wasn't new, it didn't come in the original packaging, and it sure wasn't free of surface grime from whatever might have happened to this pre-shipping. I still love these headphones despite its life before I met it. To put things into perspective, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD 600 headphones, but these are still my go-to headphones for casual listening, which I will elaborate on in a bit.
COMFORT: This is the over-ear version of the Momentum 2.0 Wireless. However, "over-ear" should be placed in massive sarcasm quotes because the stock earpads on these are a joke. They are leather, and they are soft and squishy, but they're hardly over-ear. Maybe it's just my freakishly huge ears, but these stock earpads may not cup your ears like a HD 600 would. BUT, all of this is okay because earpads are easily replaced. Just buy some Brainwavz HM5 replacement earpads, slap them on, and your listening experience will go from "Rumpelstiltskin pressing his hands on your ears and whispering the lyrics of that Usher song you thought you forgot past his fingers" to "Clouds around your ears that hug your face and tell you that you're very handsome and everyone thinks you're cool." Now, I mentioned earlier that I prefer these to my HD 600s, and that's because of a difference in purpose. Don't get me wrong, the HD 600s are excellent, easily the best sounding headphones I've heard. But the Momentum 2.0 Wireless is just easier to use. The Momentum 2.0 is wireless. The HD 600s are not. The Momentum 2.0 doesn't need an additional amp. The HD 600s do. The Momentum 2.0 can come with you to the bathroom. The HD 600s in theory could, but you really don't want to do that.
SOUND: The sound of these headphones is why you really want to get these headphones. Many headphones with active noise cancelling sacrifice sound quality for their ability to cancel ambient noise, but not these babies. If you ride public transit, consider this an excellent choice for mitigating annoying motor noise to let you focus on the sweet sound of your favorite album, Running With Scissors. Speaking of which, the clarity these headphones provide is nothing to scoff at. Due to the nature of being a closed set of headphones, you will hear details that you may not have even known existed in your favorite songs. This comes with a price, however. If you look at a frequency response graph of the Momentum 2.0 Wireless, you may see that around the 5kHz range, there is a strange valley. Strange, because while listening to music with detailed highs, it doesn't seem to matter that much, which I see as a big positive for the versatility of these things. The bass too, while not overpowering, feels very tasteful. It's clean bass that doesn't muddy like Dre's Beats do. Vocal clarity is just as good and clean.
NOISE-CANCELLING: It's okay. It's probably not as great as the Bose QuietComfort stuff at noise cancelling, but that's okay too. You're not getting these for the noise-cancelling. You're getting them for the unparalleled sound quality in a pair of bluetooth headphones. These will do what you need them to do, such as blocking out the noise of a plane's engine, or those computer fans you've got running at full power.
LOOKS: Damn sexy.
BUILD: You know what's really solid? A strip of pure metal. That's what the headband is made from, and it shows. When you put these on your head, you won't hear a thing come from any part of the construction. No rattling whatsoever. And if you're worried about that leather strip with no padding on the top, don't be. With proper adjustment of the cups on the sides, that strip basically won't even touch your head most of the time. Speaking of the cups, they slide up and down very smoothly, a bit different from other headphones that click to adjust in small intervals. Basically, if you're not actively trying to destroy these headphones (and why would you?), then these will last you a long, long time. In 50 years, your grandkids are gonna ask you why you're using those big dumb earcups instead of their cybernetic aural implants, and you'll say "Because it hasn't broken yet. Also, you're adopted." Obviously hyperbole, but they're just built so well.
Edit: I forgot to mention a few more things.
BATTERY LIFE: 22 hours of battery life is what they advertise on their page, but I've heard claims of upwards of 25 hours playtime on a full charge. I don't know if I can substantiate that claim, but I can say this: I've never had these headphones die on me in the middle of listening. I go for days at a time without charging, intermittent listening all throughout and often overnight if I fall asleep with them on (since the HM5 pads are so comfy). There is a downside to leaving it alone for a while though, and that's the lack of an auto-sleep function. If it's on, it'll stay on until it dies or you turn it off. Fortunately, if you triple-tap the play button on the side, you get an audio reading from a British lady of approximately how much time you have left until you need to charge. And speaking of controls...
INTERFACE: You get 2 buttons: a power button, and a play button. It takes a bit of time before you learn how to play, skip, pause, volume up/down, etc, but when once you get it, you're good. I'd rather have a set of headphones with as few buttons as possible than a set with like 4-5 different buttons scattered everywhere. Also, I don't know if this works with other headphones, but if you connect it to your smartphone and use Sennheiser's custom music app to listen to your music, you can enable a spatial emulator of sorts to increase the soundstage artificially. From what I can tell, it actually works and your music sounds like it's coming from outside your ears instead of being beamed into your brain. It does make your music quieter, so turn up that volume.
TL;DR : Get these if you care about sound quality. Get Bose QuietComfort if you care about not hearing the din of the air conditioning in your one-room apartment. Get Beats if you care about fitting in at high school.
