The Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless is the German headphone giant’s latest attempt to plug a gap in the noise-cancelling over-ears market. That gap – between some outstanding products at the more premium end of the market, and a real bargain at around the £100 mark – is proving a tricky one to fill for most manufacturers.
A glance at the features offered by the Accentum Plus Wireless ought to make prospective purchasers excited; on paper, these headphones enjoy a very similar specification to those offerings a little bit further up the (canned) food chain. As ever, though, for us it is the sound that takes priority here – and it was with sound that the Sennheiser Accentum Wireless (£160 / $180 / AU$300) struggled somewhat. So, how will the step-up Plus model fare?
Price
At £200 / $230 / AU$400, the Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless occupy a slot pretty much bang in the middle of the company’s over-ear noise-cancellers. The Accentum Wireless come in at £160, while the excellent Sennheiser Momentum Wireless 4 would have set you back £300 ($350/AU$550) at launch, but can now be had for nearer £250.
The question then is, is that £40 or £50 worth saving or investing in the relevant direction? And that is talking simply about Sennheiser’s offerings – things get even more tricky for the Accentum Plus Wireless when brand rivals come into the picture.
Comfort & build
First things first though: the Accentum Plus Wireless continue with Sennheiser’s strengths of making nicely put together headphones. There’s nothing outrageously over the top (in any way) about them, but they are well built from good-quality materials and are every bit what one ought to expect from the look and feel of a £200 pair of headphones.
The padding around the earcups is nicely soft, and should please spectacle wearers – they grip the arms of your glasses firmly enough, but don’t force them uncomfortably into the back of your ears. These are headphones that will easily be able to stay in place for extended periods of time – on the train or plane, or over a few hours in the office when required.
Bluetooth 5.2
Codec support SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX HD
Noise-cancelling? Yes
Battery life Up to 50 hours
Finishes x2 (Black, White)
Weight 227g
Where the Accentum Plus differ from the step-down Accentum most obviously is in the controls. Where the Accentum has a number of buttons on the earcups, the Plus has a clean appearance, with just one button on view. That, unsurprisingly, is for powering on and getting a Bluetooth connection sorted. All other control is done via a series of taps and swipes on the right earcup – and through a fairly straightforward and easy to use app.
None of the controls are particularly taxing, and it takes us very little time to know where we need to go for skipping tracks, upping the volume and so on. There is smart pause as well, so the headphones will pause your music when you take them off (to talk to someone, say) and resume things when you put them back on your head.
The other major plus over the Accentum package comes with the provision of a travel case. The Accentum Plus Wireless don’t fold into a smaller footprint, but the earcups do swivel through 180 degrees, so will sit flush around your neck when you aren’t wearing them on your ears, or fit neatly into the case, which also holds both a USB-C cable and a lead for wired listening, with a 3.5mm input jack – another advantage the Plus holds over the wire-free Accentum.
Features
The Accentum Plus Wireless has the same impressive 50-hour battery life of the Accentum. And, should you be lulled by that fact into forgetting to charge it, a quick 10 minute zap will provide the headphones with a claimed five hours of juice.
And the noise-cancelling is really rather good. It takes a step up from the Accentum Wireless’s offering in that it is adaptive noise cancelling – and it works well, in our experience. Commuting noises – trains rattling by, noisy buses and the like – are dealt with well, as is a bustling office – sometimes to the irritation of colleagues, who are trying to attract the wearer’s attention.
The ANC is always on; a quick double-tap on the right earcup will invoke the transparency setting for hearing travel announcements or sneakily listening to colleagues’ conversations while appearing to be enthralled by music.
This, then, is a pair of headphones with all the makings of a great buy.
Sound
We at What Hi-Fi?, though, set by far the most store on how a product sounds – and how it makes you feel about your music. So having all the makings of a great buy is all well and good; but if your headphones don’t make you yearn to listen to more of your favourite tunes, they are failing in what ought to be their main function.
And, while the Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless are perfectly competent at playing music, there is no way we can call them a compelling listen. It’s a failing that we criticise the ‘regular’ Accentum Wireless for as well, so we probably shouldn’t be too surprised. Where the premium Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless have an impressively clean, neutral sound, neither of the Accentum headphones can match it.
Our main issue with the Accentum Plus Wireless comes at the top of the sonic range, where there is a sharpness to proceedings that shouldn’t be there – and isn’t in rivals both up and down the price ladder. Playing The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks there is a brightness to the upper treble that threatens to veer into coarseness.
That bulge in the sonic signature makes Madonna’s voice in Like A Virgin seem rather recessed in the mix and makes various sonic strands rather harder to make out than they should be. Similarly, Janis Joplin’s version of Me And Bobby McGee can’t get our toes tapping the way we are used to – certainly not in the way Sony’s WH-1000XM4 Award-winners can.
Where the high treble is almost strident, the bass notes are just a little too soft and tubby for our taste. There isn’t the snap and crispness you get from the Sonys, or the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, come to that.
This is an inoffensive sound that will certainly serve well on those commutes and days in the office for which the Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless are probably intended. But we want more from our £200 headphones than that, really. We feel no great incentive to keep on listening to our music, which isn’t how it should be with a good piece of hi-fi equipment.
While the features of the Accentum Plus Wireless are good for the price, the enjoyment of the sound on offer can be matched by something such as the Sony WF-C700, which are at least as interesting to listen to as the Sennheisers but cost less than £100. They don’t have those valuable extra features though, of course.
Verdict
Were you to buy the Sennheiser Accentum Plus Wireless without comparing them with anything else, you would quite possibly be perfectly happy with them. They are competent headphones in pretty much every way. But we feel we should be getting more than that – particularly on the musicality front.
There are better products that cost a bit more – £250 or so – that we would suggest are worth saving the extra for. Or, if you can do without some of the admittedly useful features, you could spend a fair bit less for a more compelling listen.
SCORES
- Sound 3
- Features 5
- Comfort 4
MORE:
Read our review of the Sony WH-1000XM4
Also consider the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless
Read our Sony WH-CH720N review
Best noise-cancelling headphones, tested by our experts
