Sennheiser Momentum 5 Wireless

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

The reason is a 700 mAh cell the owner can replace.

Every pair of flagship headphones is a lithium battery with plastic around it, and lithium batteries die. They die at roughly 500 to 800 full cycles, which on a fifty-seven hour runtime is a long time and not an infinite one, and when they die the headphones are refuse. Sealing the cell is cheaper to build, easier to waterproof, easier to make thin, and it turns a durable good into a consumable with a five-year clock. The whole category does it.

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

The case is a slim hardshell rather than the enormous clamshell everyone else ships, which no bag has ever wanted.