Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

The Momentum 5 Wireless costs $399.95, weighs 290 g, runs 57 hours with noise cancelling on, uses eight microphones for the cancelling, and carries aptX Lossless and Adaptive alongside the usual SBC and AAC. All of that is competent and none of it is the reason to write about it.

The reason is a 700 mAh battery that the user can replace.

Every pair of flagship headphones is a lithium cell with some plastic around it, and lithium cells die. They die at roughly 500 to 800 full cycles, which on a 57 hour runtime is a long time and not an infinite time, and when they die the headphones are refuse. That is not an accident of engineering. Sealing the battery is cheaper to manufacture, more waterproof, easier to make thin, and it converts a durable good into a consumable with a five year clock on it. Everybody does it. The whole category does it.

Sennheiser has put a replaceable cell in a $399.95 pair of headphones, which means these can plausibly be working in 2040. Against competitors that sound similar and cost similar, that is the entire argument, and it is a good one.

The case is a slim hardshell, which we mention because the alternative is the enormous clamshell everyone else ships and nobody's bag wants.