Sennheiser Accentum Plus Lightning Review: Who's The Competition Again?

Sennheiser recently launched the Accentum Plus, a minor update to last year’s Accentum wireless headphones. With the update comes with a significant price bump, costing a whopping RM300 more for a few smart features, some extra accessories, and an audio jack.

With a price tag of RM1,300, they do inch towards the premium category for the average consumer, but that also means that there is a level of quality and performance to live up to, especially with such a steep price tag.

What Is It?

The Accentum Plus is a pair of wireless over-ear headphones with 37mm dynamic driver units and an advertised battery life of up to 50 hours, with an additional five hours of playtime for just a 10-minute charge. They come with adaptive Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), a customisable EQ, and a new smart pause feature powered by an infrared sensor in the right ear cup.

The right side also contains all the touch-based controls for the headphones on the ear cup and as a physical power button. they also support Bluetooth 5.2 and codecs such as SBC, AAC, aptX, and aptX adaptive.

Unlike the standard variant, the Plus model ships out with an included carrying case, along with a 2.5mm-to-3.5mm auxiliary cable, keeping the option to go wired with the headphones open. Of course, they charge via a USB-C port.

Is It Any Good?

Let’s start off with what’s good about them. The highlight of these headphones for me is the battery life. I’m not exactly sure if I got 50 hours out of them, but I used them as my daily driver for my commute and even in the office and I only had to charge them once a week, which is quite impressive that I didn’t even really have to think about plugging them in. Even when the battery was only on 10%, I nearly got a full day’s use out of them.

The Accentum Plus is able to connect to two devices at the same time and this feature functions smoothly when hopping between the devices, even if they’re using different operating systems. On a side note, the smart pause feature works surprisingly quickly even when connected to an iPhone or a Mac, something that I’ve had trouble with in the past with other non-Apple headphones.

With the transparency mode enabled, it’s quite easy to hear my surroundings that I don’t feel the need to take them off to have a conversation with people. The headphones even automatically pauses the music I’m listening to when I switch from ANC to transparency mode and starts playing when I switch back. The beamforming microphones are also pretty good for when you’re on a call.

What’s The Catch?

Unfortunately, I have more bad things to say about these than good. For one thing, the sound quality is sub-par for the price that customers are paying for this. I’m a vocals guy when it comes to music and these have a beefy sound, with the bass being both overpowering and muddy, lacking that “growl”. Simply put, a lot of the mids and highs get drowned out unless I’m listening to a song that’s mostly acoustic.

Speaking of vocals, the highs get tinny whenever I crank up the volume/ Even at moderate volumes, they’re still relatively muddy, to say the least. For instance, with Lewis Capaldi’s “Wish You The Best”, he belts out a lot of high notes but at high volume, the sound starts to crack.

When it comes to sound staging, there’s not a lot of separation, leading to a lack of any sort of rich imaging. The classic “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen sounds almost dull with all the elements being mushed together. You can try to improve these issues by customising the EQ but, annoyingly, you’ll need to sign up for an account on its app before you can do this.

The worst thing about the Accentum Plus is the comfort or lack thereof. They just feel a bit too tight, to the point they occasionally give me headaches if I wear them for too long and overall, they’re just uncomfortable. For another matter, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough foam in the ear cups and for some reason, they feel a bit heavy that they slide if I move my head too much. I can fix this by tightening the headband but that just makes them even more uncomfortable. Oh, and they don’t fold, which isn’t necessarily a big deal but does make it slightly more annoying to pack in bags.

As for the ANC, I never really bothered turning on the adaptive mode because I never noticed any difference. That might just be because the ANC is mediocre at best; the feature can block most noise while I’m playing music but on its own, it can’t compete with other headphones in this price range.

On the software side, the app has a feature that lets you set “sound zones”, which are a certain set of settings that are automatically enabled based on your location, but I never really got this to work for me. There’s also the issue with the touch controls where taps are fine, but swipes (for volume adjustment and skipping tracks) are buggy and inconsistent to the point where I never bothered using the headphones to change the volume.

Should I Buy It?

The Sennheiser Accentum Plus are not necessarily bad headphones, but at its asking price, it’s nowhere near the quality you would expect from them. The entire time I was using them, I couldn’t help comparing to the popular Sony WH-1000XM4, which is famously known for its immersive listening experience and being an all-rounder.

Despite being at similar price points, the three-year-old Sony headphones beat out the Sennheiser in almost every category including sound, comfort, the performance of  its ANC and transparency modes, and functionality — the battery life is the only part where the Accentum Plus shines. To top it off, Sony’s offering can be found for under RM1,000 nowadays, so you can see why I had to bring it up.

I’m not sure what headphones the Accentum Plus is supposed to be competing with, but it feels to me that Sennheiser has missed the mark. I could possibly recommend them if the price was slashed in half, but at the current MSRP, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

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