The Accentum Plus Wireless headphones from Sennheiser are the latest in their wireless headphones lineup. Featuring an extensive battery life, quick charging, adaptive ANC and custom sound profiles, the Accentum Plus Wireless offers an impressive amount of customization. Offering either black or white colour options, the Accentum Plus Wireless aims to raise the bar on what to expect from wireless headphones.
Similar to the Momentum 4 wireless headphone design, the Accentum Plus offers a balanced mix of comfort and function. Featuring soft, plush earcups, the Accentum Plus sits firmly in place over your ears. While this does help create some impressive passive noise cancellation they can feel a little tighter than most wireless headphones, initially. However, even after longer testing sessions, they never felt uncomfortable or applied too much pressure around the ears.
My ears fit exceptionally well within the earcups without any pinching. While there was some concern about discomfort while wearing glasses, it never seemed to be an issue, thanks to the aforementioned plush earcups. Likewise, the headband, while featuring a hard plastic exterior, offered a nice cushion on the interior of the band, which rested comfortably on top of my head.
Adjusting the Accentum Plus is handled by a sliding plastic inner band that easily extends to adjust to the size of your head. The connection point between the headband and earcups offers a 180° turn radius along with a tilt joint, giving the Accentum an impressive amount of flexibility and movement. This aids in providing additional comfort and flexibility to fit various head sizes. The overall build quality is in line with the rest of Sennheiser’s impressive headphone lineup.
“The Accentum Plus features an adaptive Hybrid ANC system that actively adjusts the power of the ANC based on the environment.”
Finally, the Accentum Plus Wireless headset comes with a host of touch controls conveniently positioned on the right earcup. A series of taps and swipes allow for easy control of play, pause, volume up/down and other common controls. Additionally, the Accentum Plus Wireless has full voice assistant support for both Android and Apple, making it easy to control your device right from the headphones.
Moving away from structure and design, the Accentum also comes packed with some fairly impressive features. Battery life easily reached 45-50 hours of playtime while the quick charge worked as advertised, providing hours of additional playtime after only a few moments of charge. Even after two weeks of daily use during work, I’ve yet to charge them a second time.
More impressive still is the ANC (Active Noise Cancellation). The Accentum Plus features an adaptive Hybrid ANC system that actively adjusts the power of the ANC based on the environment. This can help prolong battery life by dynamically adjusting the power of the ANC based on how quiet it is in the environment. In testing, the system worked exceptionally well, quickly adjusting to the various environments it was exposed to.
As for the effectiveness of the ANC, when active without audio playing through the headphones, the Accentum Plus does a great job at filtering out most noise in the environment. When testing between quiet and loud environments (our testing environment included an auditorium and a water filtration and pump room attached to it), the ANC system did an excellent job filtering the noise in the pump room and quickly scaling back as I moved to the auditorium. Once the music was playing through the headphones, all background noise ceased, providing an excellent listening experience.
The Sennheiser Accentum Plus provides some of the best active noise cancelling on the market, even when compared to some higher-priced ANC-enabled headphones I’ve tested. This becomes more impressive when considering the $229.99 USD price point. While there are a few wireless headphones in this range with ANC, Sennheiser’s adaptive hybrid system helps set it apart from others.
As for the listening experience, it’s excellent. While an audio profile is quite a subjective experience, with everyone liking a slightly different audio experience, Sennheiser has historically done a solid job at offering a fairly balanced sound profile by default. It’s the reason the HD 280s are still the go-to editing headphones for so many audio editors. The Accentum Plus Wireless headphones are infused with years of Sennheiser experience and, as such, provide an excellent audio listening experience.
Testing across a spectrum of music genres, the Accentum Plus provided a clean audio experience in the low, mid and high end. Bass notes come through clean and punchy, while higher-end frequencies (especially vocals) are represented clearly without additional noise. The out-of-the-box audio experience is clean, clear and full.
For those wanting to dial into their preferred sound profile, the Sennheiser Smart Control app provides everything needed to customize the listening experience. The Smart Control app features an option for Sound Personalization, which is the brainchild of Sennheiser and the Fraunhofer Institute. The Fraunhofer Institute is a massive research and development organization with multiple divisions of study. The Audio and Media Technologies division has created many of the digital audio standards we use today.
Their partnership with Sennheiser has led to the creation of the aforementioned Sound Personalization software that’s baked into the Smart Control app. In essence, the Sound Personalization software takes the user through a series of audio tests to help configure an EQ profile that best matches their listening preferences. Admittedly I was a bit skeptical of the software when researching it, however, after running through the test myself, the skepticism quickly transitioned to praise for the Sound Profile experience.
“The Sennheiser Accentum Plus provides some of the best active noise cancelling on the market, even when compared to some higher-priced ANC-enabled headphones I’ve tested.”
Within a matter of minutes, the Smart Control app had created a unique audio profile that perfectly matched my preferred audio listening experience. It’s a unique piece of software that adds an extra level of quality to the overall listening experience. It also, once again, helps set the Accentum Plus Wireless headphones apart from other wireless headphones in its weight class.
As for the rest of the Smart Control software, it’s easy to use and well laid out. Controls and settings are easy to find without the need to consult additional documentation. The Smart Control software also includes a 5-point equalizer for those who still prefer manual EQing as well as easy access to ANC settings. Additionally, battery and connection info can easily be accessed and adjusted on the fly. It’s a solid app that is easy to use and understand.
The Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless headphones offer a premium audio experience at a competitive price point. While they can feel a little snug initially, the overall comfort and quality of the audio profile help the Accentum Plus stand out in the crowd. Throw in some impressive ANC, powerful Sound Profile software, and excellent battery life, and you have the right combination to create some of the best headphones for pricepoint on the market today.
- Quick charge technology: Get 5 hours of premium stereo sound with just a 10-minute charge, with an unrivalled 50-hour total battery playtime; perfect for the time-conscious music lover
