Sennheiser Accentum Plus Review - I'm IMPRESSED! 😲
There were things about the basic Sennheiser Accentum which I didn’t quite dig, like its fit, and the fact that you can’t turn off its ANC, or customize its intensity.
But the Accentum Plus solved most of my complaints. Compared to the Accentum, it doesn’t clamp as hard, it uses touch controls similar to the Momentum 4 instead of buttons, has wear detection built into the right earcup - when you take them off it goes into standby, which saves battery on top of its rated 50 hours, and faster charging.
Although you still can’t turn noise canceling off, you now can change the intensity of noise canceling or transparency. It also comes with a hard carrying case and the option to plug in your source using a 3.5mm connector, things which weren’t available on the base model.
Of course, the trade off is that you pay a little more money. But that’s just talking about features. Today we’re going to talk about its performance like its sound, active noise canceling, call quality and transparency.
Microphone pickup
So its mic pickup versus the basic Accentum is quite similar in both quiet and noisy conditions. Overall, quite decent, but I did hope for a little more reduction of that background noise. Watch me compare their microphone pickup in both quiet and noisy conditions using some really loud cafe noise and some wind noise from a fan.
Active Noise Canceling
In terms of active noise canceling, the Accentum Plus does cancel more noise than the base Accentum. It’s especially more effective at tackling the lower frequencies. So in the following samples, you will hear less rumble on the Accentum Plus. Have a listen.
What I do also like is that “Adaptive ANC” which uses the microphones in the cans to listen to your surrounding ambience and adjust its ANC accordingly, that is an option which you can turn on if you want. Something that I wish the top Sony headphones had. And there’s also a wind noise reduction mode which does work, but at the cost of weaker ANC.
Transparency Mode
In terms of transparency, the Accentum Plus definitely amplifies more of everything, that includes your own voice and the ambient sounds around you. By comparison the basic Accentum has my voice sounding a bit more muffled, though it’s still quite usable for quick awareness.
Sound Quality
In terms of sound quality compared to the Accentum, the Accentum Plus sounds more revealing especially in the mids. On the other hand, the Accentum is more V-shaped, so some parts of its vocals can sound a bit underwater.
Frequency sweeps reveal that the Accentum Plus does have a flatter curve from the lower bass up until the lower mids region which influences whether vocals sound full or hollow. There’s also a roll off in the lower bass which means the Accentum Plus is going to deliver more gravity in bassy passages. Moving on to the high mids and treble region, we’re seeing that the Accentum Plus will sound brighter in general listening to female vocals, hi-hats, wind and string instruments.
Soundstaging is also going to sound more airy. In fact if we compare the Accentum Plus’s tuning to the Momentum 4, you can see that there are more similarities there compared to the base Accentum. (A more in depth comparison of the Accentum Plus to the Momentum 4 is coming) But for now, listen to the following samples comparing the basic Accentum to the Accentum Plus.
EQ Settings
The weird thing about the Accentum Plus is, yes you can customize its sound to the way you want in the Smart Control app by using Sound Check, which creates a unique sound profile for you depending on your personal tastes in sound, or you could try a wide selection of EQ presets. But trying to do it myself with the graphic EQ, every frequency band I play with makes the other parts darker or brighter. For example, if I tweak the treble by pushing it higher, the mids get darker which is not what I wanted. This makes tuning them myself a little more complicated than it needs to be. I just hope that a software update will come and make this issue go away.
Also its volume is not that high, somewhat louder than the base Accentum but I still needed to kick it up to 70% volume.
Conclusion
That being said, these arent exactly what I call budget headphones, because the Accentum Plus is still above $200, but they’ve got just about everything I need in a pair of cans without the need to pay flagship prices.
I would definitely skip the basic Accentum and just go straight for the Plus version. It sounds great, is more comfortable to wear, better noise canceling, and almost no corners were cut in terms of features and customization. Even the multipoint was just as stable switching between devices.
The only real beef I have with it is its build quality, it feels just as cheap as the basic Accentum. But overall, it still feels like fantastic value given how expensive the Momentum 4s are. Click on the links below to check its latest price and availability.
Check latest prices
Sennheiser Accentum Plus - https://amzn.to/3STxK3U
Sennheiser Accentum - https://amzn.to/3MZu0dy
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