Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsThe audio quality is superb, but completely ruined by the software
Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2023
(This is copy-pasted from my Trustpilot review:
I don't understand how on Earth a headset can have such good build quality and amazing audio quality, but the software can be so bad it's laughable. I will be returning my headset (Momentum 4 wireless).
To start out, the audio quality is AMAZING. I'm coming from the sony WH1000-XM4s. It's the best I've ever head. I can differentiate between 16 bit and 24 bit very reliably. Lossy audio over Bluetooth is very noticeable now. No complaints there.
The build quality is also really nice. I love the materials used, the weight, and how the headband extends. All around really nice feel.
The software that the headset has, on the other had, completely ruins all of that. Here's a list of every problem I've noticed in the two days I've had my hands on it:
- There is no ability to turn ANC or transparency off. You must choose one at all times.
- Transparency mode makes things twice as loud for some reason. I literally don't know where to start with this
- There's no palm detection for the touch gestures to quickly enable transparency mode. Does the headset not have multitouch hardware? If so, why?
- There's no way to customize the touch gestures. It even says this in the app. That's rediculous.
- If you have the automatic play-pause feature turned on, which pauses the music when you take the headset off, and plays it when you put it back on, the tones even if you're using the headphone cable. I haven't tested with a four pole cable, but the included one is three poles so I'm going to deduct that the headset doesn't have the ability to play/pause when using the headphone cable.
-Firmware update takes half an hour??? Why?
- The app really, really buggy slow, and generally difficult to use.
- When using USB connection, if you activate the microphone it goes to some really low quality mono audio mode for no apparent reason. Is this something the headset does where it thinks it's in a phone call when the microphone is on, so it just does this with no second thought?
- ANC is really bad. It is laughably bad. In adaptive mode, any sudden or sharp noise, no matter how small reduces the ANC effect. It's really noticable and distracting, especially when typing. In non-adaptive mode, the ANC does essentially nothing.
- I have voice prompts turned off but it still talks to me when I connect to bluetooth. It also says how much battery I have when I touch the power button, even though there's LEDs on the bottom which show battery charge. I have it turned off, I expect it off.
- You can adjust the volume when using the headphone jack. This is really confusing.
- This isn't a software issue, but why does it use a 2.5mm headphone jack? There seems to be no reason to do this since the cups are plenty large enough to support an extra mm. The included cable also doesn't have any clear markings on which end is the 2.5mm one.
- The touch gestures are really stupid. A single tap to do anything is a really bad decision, since it's very easy to accidentally touch the touch-sensitive area when adjusting the earphone. And again, they can't be customized. Like what? Why? That should take a software engineer like a day to implement, at worst.
I don't get it. Is this intentional? There's no way Senheizer is ignorant to these problems. Do they not test stuff at all? This is really bad. There's gotta be some really abhorrent management problems over at Sennheizer for it to be this bad. These headphones have been out for a year (released August 9th, 2022) and every issue in my list should have never been present at any point during release. This is really, really bad. I'll be staying away from Sennheizer for a very long time, and you should to. I expect way more from flagship headphones.
