Sennheiser targets AirPods Max takedown with new ANC wireless headphones

If you've ever thought "I quite fancy those AirPods Max, but not as expensive, with better battery life and not tied to Apple hardware", I've got good news for you: if you don't fancy the spectacularly good Sony WH-1000XM5, our current pick of the best wireless headphones you can buy, you'll soon be able to buy a set of Sennheisers that'll cost less than Apple's best noise cancelling headphones and last much longer too. 

The image above is a teaser from Sennheiser showing the Sennheiser Momentum 4, the soon-to-be-released successor to the really rather good Momentum 3 over-ears. Originally priced at $399 / £349 some reviews thought they were a little pricey, but even before discounting they were much cheaper than Apple's option. And the new model sounds pretty tasty to me.

What's new in the Sennheiser Momentum 4 headphones

Sennheiser is currently teasing us rather than offering solid specifications, but it promises "best-in-class sound, advanced Adaptive Noise Cancellation and an all-new design offering exceptional comfort." It's predicting 60 hours of battery life, more than double the Sonys and three times the AirPods Max, and there's an "audiophile-inspired 42mm transducer system" that Sennheiser says delivers a more natural sound stage. Bluetooth 5.3 seems likely but hasn't been conformed yet.

I've long admired Sennheiser's products: I use their mics on stage and I've had many pairs of Sennheiser earbuds over the years. So I'm excited by this news: I think the Momentum 3 headphones sound fantastic, and while they're hardly packed with attention-grabbing features they deliver a really rich and involving sound. So if Sennheiser has managed to make them sound even better, I can't wait to try them out.