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Sennheiser has a well deserved reputation for great audio gear and its headphones are second to none in music reproduction. But are the third generation Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 3 ANC headphones a great addition to the line? Surprisingly, not so much.
Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checks out the Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 3 and found that while the sound reproduction is gorgeous, the overall functionality and battery life of the Momentum Wireless 3 leave something to be desired. All is explained in this detailed review.
Check them at Amazon: https://amzn.to/30ix8tT
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Wireless headphones with ANC, but are they best in class? Let's find out
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Dave Taylor here, and I'm looking at these. These are the Senheiser Momentum Wireless 3
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and they're really nice, but they have some serious limitations. Now, first off, they sound fantastic
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Senheiser is very well known for its audio reproduction, and these definitely fit into that
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category. Now, frequency response, 6 Hertz to 22,000 Hertz. I can tell you I can't hear either of
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those extremes. Maybe you can. Congratulations for having great hearing. But there's a lot of interesting
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engineering that went into this. And I have the momentum wireless too, and I adore them. They're
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my favorite headphones. So getting the next generation of these, this is the third generation of
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their wireless. I was very enthused. It's like, awesome. Let's see what they've done. So let's talk
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about it. So first thing that you'll really want to notice is that these are off and watch
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a little light here. When you open them up, now they're on and they're paired. That's a really
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interesting idea. That's auto on off. I like it. I'm a little concerned that people might just
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leave their headphones like that and now they're on and there's no power switch. You have to
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fold them to get them on and off. Now, they also have smart pause. So if you take them off
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years, then it will actually pause the music. That's pretty neat. Active noise cancellation
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There's a whole stream of buttons on the side. We'll come back to that in just a second. But there's three modes for ANC. There's on, there's off, and then there's what they call
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transparent hearing, which I would describe as pause the play, right? So you go to transparent
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hearing and you can hear all the environmental noise around you and then you go back out of it
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and you're back into your music. I don't know why they have that as a separate mode. I
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I guess you could just have the pause button, but maybe it doesn't work exactly the same
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Certainly seems like it does. Now, on the side, there are a bunch of different buttons, and it's a little different to the previous generation of the Momentum Wireless
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So on the topmost button is the ANC, and it's on, off, or transparent hearing
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And then there's this three button UI, and here's a little bit of a cheat sheet on how it works
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It takes a little getting used to. I really like on the Momentum 2
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there's a little piece that sticks out and you just push it up or down or push it in
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But there's that sort of finger gesture. It's very easy to find it and get it in the right spot or get your finger in the right spot
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This one takes a little bit more practice and orientation. It does come with a sticker that describes all the buttons
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You might even leave that on for the first couple of days just as you're getting the hang of it
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Then at the bottom, there's a button that gets you into pairing mode. And then finally, at the very bottom, well, almost at the very bottom
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is USBC charging, and yes, comes with a cable, we'll get to that in a second
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So USBC charging, and then you can use this as wired headphones, that wire is included
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by just plugging into the base of the headphones. So if you run out of power, because they're battery powered, or you just prefer to have
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wired headphones, well, if you prefer to have wired headphones, these probably aren't the
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headphones for you why would you pay for the premium of wireless Bluetooth when you don use it but you can use it that way too So good either way Let see There also the lower button that does Bluetooth hold it for two seconds and you chatting with your voice assistant whether it Cortana or Google Assistant or Siri or whatever
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And then, oh, stop. Siri is very good at listening. Bluetooth 5.0
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And like I said, there's a wired option, which obviously circumvents Bluetooth 5.0
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And here's the thing, is that one of the things that Bluetooth 5 really added was that you shouldn't ever get any dropouts or anything
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But I tried this on a variety of devices, and I have to say this is the new iPhone 11 Pro
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You can see by all those darn cameras. And it was pausing, not pausing, it was losing signal a lot, which was weird
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I would say when I was listening to different music sources, probably I lost one second every few minutes, which was a lot
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So then I tried it on a different source. And so I used a MacBook Pro instead streaming the exact same source, SiriusXM, one of their channels, and it worked flawlessly
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So it's a little hard to say, is it the iPhone 11 Pro Bluetooth hiccup
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Is it something to do with iOS 13 in its very first instantiation
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So this might be something that's fixed in a week magically. I don't know
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But worth noting, I did have some connectivity issues with the iPhone 11
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Pro running iOS 13.0, not the dot 1 release or anything, and with these headphones
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Bit of a drag, because the headphones work with SBC, APTX, low latency APTX, and AAC, and my goodness
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this sounds really good. I just want to say that these are some of the nicest sounding headphones
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They're really nice, and they're very much like consumer-level headphones in the sense that
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they're not a perfectly flat response. And there's actually a paired app on your phone that you can
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use to tweak and adjust the EQ. But they sound really good. They sound like listen to music good
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as opposed to mix music good, if that makes any sense to you. So studio headphones are perfectly flat
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There's no attenuation, no increase, no decrease, anywhere on the frequency band. So you can exactly
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hear what's going on. But for consumers, for those of us that just put on headphones
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and want to enjoy some music, then you want to have it where there's like some little tricks
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in that music signature to try to get it to sound good for us. And these definitely do that because
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they sound really good. So really nice bass, really, really clean definition. I mean, clean
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is probably a great word to describe the sound, beautiful sound stage. I mean, there's a lot to like
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If you're just looking for really great music reproduction, these do a really nice job. Now, it also
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includes, and this is kind of interesting, there's somewhere built in here, there's a little
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Bluetooth chip which gives you tile support. So that means if you lose these, theoretically, you can
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use the tile app to help find where you lost them. So leave them at the recording studio
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you leave them at the office, you leave them at your favorite cafe, oops, you know, you can use
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the tile app to actually find these. There are zero instructions on how to get it all to work
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in the box but it really easy Just launch the tile app and this is one of the options you have Now it also includes the Sennheiser Smart Control app and that worth checking out You know here that gives you an overview of your primary settings
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The three button controller, that little screen I showed you earlier was from the app
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and it has a really funky EQ setting. Check this out. So you just move the dot left or right, up or down, and it changes your music signature
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It's really kind of mesmerizing. Is it the optimal way to adjust your EQ
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well, maybe, maybe not, but it sure is fun to play with. So, there's that. Now, 10.7 ounces
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17-hour battery life. And let's just be candid here. 17 hours is nothing to write home about
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You're thinking that's pretty good, but most of this class of product, the high-end, you know
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great ANC sort of headphones, they will have 20 or more hours of battery life. So 17 hours is really good
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but not fantastic. It's nothing that puts them in top of class
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And worse, if you turn on ANC, then you're cutting that down to about 13 hours of battery life
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So if you want to go around the world without stopping anywhere on your plane
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these are going to need a recharge. Or you'll use them wired, right? Either way
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So 13 hours with ANC, 17 hours without. I don't know when you wouldn't use ANC
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Even in your home, even in your office, there's always background ambient noise
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that's getting in the way. So when I have ANC anything, I always have the ANC on. So realistically
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I suppose we should say that this is 13 to 14 hours of battery life. And if you turn ANC off, you get a
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little bit more, but you know, you're probably going to do the same as me. Now, also comes with a
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leather headband, and I got to just say the fit and finish on this is really wonderful. They've done a
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beautiful job with this. The hinges, everything. It's just a really nice unit. But interestingly
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I feel like the ear pads are a little bit bigger than on the momentum too
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And it's a little bit tighter than the momentum too. So there's a little more ear fatigue
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So I would say that I'm wearing these for maybe an hour or two without, you know
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before I start to get to the point where it's like, I need to take them off for a couple of minutes just to give my ears and my brain a break
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But with the momentum too, I can wear those things for four or five hours at a stretch
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and just zone out and forget they're even on my head. That might be because these are brand new, and of course the band actually loosens slightly as you use it when you have a Cabesa Grande like me
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Your mileage and your head size may vary. So I've already talked about a lot of the features
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I just want to real quick go into the box because it also comes with a carrying case that's something that people are a little bit miffed about
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So I want to just show that. Let's just get this stuff to look a little neat
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So it comes with this. And I thought the funniest description was someone posted that it looked like either a hat box or a cake box
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But either way, you know, it is better than nothing, I suppose, and it's better than one of those crazy hard cases
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I don't like those hard cases at all. So I like that this can fold up and squish up
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And I just want to show you real quick what else comes in the box. So you get the carrying travel hat box, but it does fold way down, which
10:10
is nice And then you have a USB to USB adapter and the wire So you can use it in a wired mode And the reason they have that adapter is because the charging cable is USBC to USBC So that great if you have like
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the latest Microsoft Surface Pro or a MacBook Pro from Apple or something because those all have
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USBC. But if you got an old school charger, then you're going to definitely want to use that
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adapter. So that's what's in the box. In terms of my perspective on the case, it is entirely functional
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It is not very glamorous. You would not think this is the case you would get for a $400 pair of headphones
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but they work. So there's that. So really, at the end of the day, it all comes down to the headphones themselves
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And here's the thing. Again, I am comparing it to the Momentum 3
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I'm not looking at Sony or Bose or anything like that. And I will say there's a lot they've improved, and there are some things that don't really
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like very much. You know, I don't really like the auto on off the whole folding thing because over
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time I've found that this sort of thing ends up changing the shape of the ear cup. I mean
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and we're talking months and years. And I also don't like that if it accidentally doesn't fold
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or if someone leaves it like this, it's on and running. And there's no power switch. So there's
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no way to turn it off. You know, that's kind of a drag. It's possible it has circuitry that says
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I haven't heard any music for 10 minutes. I'm going to auto power off. But then I don't know how you'd
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power it on unless you're then supposed to close it and open it again, which seems a little clumsy
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as a gesture. But sound reproduction, beautiful. Active noise cancellation, very good from my
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tests. You know, is it the best in class? Well, you know, if you're looking for really, really
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the best, then it also depends a little bit on your higher frequency hearing, right? So that's not
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what I'm looking at, I don't put these on to test equipment. I'm just doing this like
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what's it like to put these on my head? And I will say, very enjoyable listening
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beautiful sound stage, really nice reproduction. I mean, there's nothing at all to complain about
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in terms of the music quality. It's lovely. It's everything else that I'm not entirely sure about
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But now that I've given you a lot of verbiage on it, you can decide for yourself whether these
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are the kind of features, you'd be like, ooh, that's cool, or, no, that sounds a little clumsy. I think
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Dave's right. Either way. Now, speaking of which, can you please subscribe to my channel
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Really appreciate when you do that. It really helps me out. So cool. Click that subscribe
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button, subscribe to my channel. Great. Now, all this left to talk about is the price
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and these are fairly premium headphones. These will cost you. These, Senheiser, Momentum, Wireless
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3, will cost you $399.95 at Amazon.com. Are these the right ones for you? Are these the best in class
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talking about it for 10 minutes now so you can make your own decision
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As for me, I think I am going to go back to listening to some music, which means, hang on, okay, cool
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I will catch you in my next video
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