Sennheiser MOMENTUM Sport earbuds, Powered by Polar
Polar is about to make another expansion into pastures new. A year ago its algorithms were added to a Casio sports watch (first reported on this site in Feb 2023) and now the algorithms are added to a reimagined pair of Sennheiser music earbuds.
Buy: Sennheiser on Amazon
However, there is another twist in the story. The Sennheiser MOMENTUM earbuds are fully compatible with the Polar FLOW app and will work as if they were a Polar device. Thus you can go for a run with either a Polar Vantage V3 or the Polar FLOW smartphone app (with GPS) to see live HR and other metrics directly for the earbuds. I would imagine it is HIGHLY likely that you will need another device with you to supply the music, rather than it being stored on the earbuds, and I would be pleasantly surprised if the earbuds could cache heart rate like the Polar Verity SENSE so that the app can retrieve the details when you get back home (but I doubt it). However, when you do get back home the heart rate data from your workout will feed into Polar’s various Training algorithms.
You’d have thought that would be the end of the story but it’s not! The Sennheiser earbuds also measure temperature. I would assume that is skin temperature rather than algorithmically determining core temperature like Core by GreenTEG. So I’m not quite sure where that particular metric will lead us in terms of usefulness. That said, the ear is an EXCELLENT place to measure heart rate, so expect a highly accurate device from Sennheiser. Well, it should be accurate if it stays in your ear and doesn’t move about too much. That’s the issue with in-ear tech…we’ve all got different shapes and sizes of ears. My family are particularly ear-challenged as we cover all the ear sizes.
Specs include IP55 (dust and rain/sweat), 6 hours battery + 18 more from the USB-C/Qi case, AptX (not HD), Bluetooth 5.2.
Sennheiser Momentum Sport Specifications
Here is a full list of the Sennheiser Momentum Sport’s Technical Specifications
- Wearing style True wireless stereo earphones
- Ear coupling Ear canal
- Connectivity Bluetooth 5.2 compliant, class 1, 16mW (max), RF Range 40m – line of sight
- Transmission frequency/modulation 2,402 MHz to 2,480 MHz; GFSK, π/4 DQPSK / 8DPSK
- Supported profiles A2DP, AVRCP, HFP
- Supported codecs SBC, AAC, aptX, aptX adaptive
- Speaker principle Dynamic
- Speaker type/size TrueResponse dynamic, 10mm diameter
- Speaker frequency range 15 Hz to 18 kHz
- Speaker sensitivity 110 dB SPL (1 kHz / 0 dBFS)
- Speaker THD <0.25% (1 kHz / 94 dB)
- Active Noise Cancellation Hybrid Adaptive ANC
- Mic principle MEMS
- Mic frequency range 100 Hz to 10 kHz
- Mic pick-up pattern 3 mics per earbud, beamforming for noise reduction
- Battery lifespan Up to 5.5 hrs music playtime with earbuds; Up to 24 hrs overall music playtime with charging case (test condition: iPhone, mid-volume level 85 dB)
- Charging time Approx. 1.5 hrs for fully charged; After 10 min charging 45mins music playtime
- Remark: Ambient temperatures >30°C and Qi wireless charging leads to extended charging times
- Battery type Built-in Lithium-Ion rechargeable batteries; Left/right earbud: 72 (MC1254) / 75 mAh(CL1254); Charging case: 850-950 mAh
- Power supply 5 V⎓, 1000 mA max; USB charging via USB-C socket at charging case; Qi Wireless charging
- Magnetic strength field Earbuds: 1.86 mT; Charging case: 250 mT
- Weather resistance Earbuds: IPx5; Charging case: IPx4
Sennheiser is an EXCELLENT audio company. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned them before on this site but I have used its products for over 20 years on high-end audio systems so I’m very excited that it is making the first move into sports products. Most likely Sennheiser has adapted its MOMENTUM 3 (4?) earbuds by partnering with a 3rd party optical sensing company which the company will not disclose details of, I’ll delve deeper into that later in the year. The product is slated for an early April launch at $329.95/€329.90.
Buy: Sennheiser on Amazon
Reader-Powered Content
This content is not sponsored. It’s mostly me behind the labour of love which is this site and I appreciate everyone who follows, subscribes or Buys Me A Coffee ❤️ Alternatively please buy the reviewed product from my partners. Thank you! FTC: Affiliate Disclosure: Links pay commission. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
It’s interesting it says body temperature, though, that means that it captures your body temperature as a classical thermometer will do. There were multiple rumors suggesting Apple was working on such a health feature.
I was speaking with Sennheiser today. just briefly and hope to get much mroe info through on all the details
ultimately tho, there are some quite niche and interesting things you can do with temperature measurment and modelling. However I just can’t see that as being more that a highly focussed niche (I have the kit for that sort of thing but very very rarely use it). and these earbuds are defintiely NOT going to be targetted at people like me and more so the mainstream.
as sports earbuds it also cant have a mainstream medical usage (medical in the sense of mile illness)
so
not sure where they are going with the temperature stuff other than an app reminding you to more frequently hydrate in hot weather.
Wasn’t it Bragi and several others that tried heart rate through the ears over the years and each one of them failed? It seems this is targeted towards people who don’t own a watch and generally run with their iphone. With these and an iphone, you wouldn’t need to purchase anything else for heart rate and music, assuming it works. Alot of amateur runners never buy a dedicated gps sports watch, choosing to run with their phone only. However, that seems to be changing with more Apple watches. Nonetheless, many women, for instance, don’t feel comfortable running without the safety of having a phone with them. With these, one less device. We’ll see if it works and gains any traction but this type of device would have been more appealing at the time when gps sports watches didn’t have built in heart rate monitors. That day has passed.
Yes to all of that
tfk – For lack of anywhere else to ask this, I’ve been a supporter here now for a few months and I’ve been using the Dashboard to keep up with the posts, but is there anywhere as a user I can go to view all of my own activity? I’m mainly talking about comments on posts that I’ve made. Sometimes I want to circle back on those and see if there were any replies (I don’t receive email notifications, no matter what “notify me” options I select when I comment).
The dashboard shows the last 5-6 comment activity only, so that’s not a help. Apologies as a new user but I can’t seem to find what I’m looking for anywhere on wordpress.
hi
the dashboard you see is very different to mine because of user level access. it’s standard wordpress functionality
i’ve had a quick look and dont see anything that can easily help you.
however. there should be an xml file created for every page that lists all comments. that xml file should be able to be added to a feed reader. i use inoreader. in fact iuse inoreader to follow comments on other sites 😉 usually i do that at a site-wide level or as a sub-reddit level on reddit. my site should be ok to monitor commens inone place as there aren’t that many in the grand scheme of things. eg if you try to do the same method for dcr’s site you will find there are too many comments to keep track of.
Okay so if I understand correctly you’re suggesting adding the xml to my reader (Feedly) for each page I comment on? Or is there an overall xml I could add that would capture all comments made by all users?
overall, every comment in one place
that said i couldn’t find them in here: https://the5krunner.com/sitemap_index.xml –
and my Yoast settings DO enable a comments xml file
agreed – just tried to build an RSS reader in Feedly and can’t find a link for comments anywhere.
i’ll have to look at it
> I would assume that is skin temperature rather than algorithmically determining core temperature like Core
It should be possible to read the temperature of the tympanic membrane with an infrared sensor in the ear bud. This is how instant read in-ear thermometers work.
yeah but for their first consumer-grade HR product I dont think they will go there
Surprised Sennheiser teams up with Polar. Not that Polar is not a good company that makes solid products, but they don”t have the biggest market share. So now you have a very expensive product for a somewhat small community. But maybe other companies like Garmin will try to team up with them too. Sunnto has issued their own version of headphones, even if I returned my Suunto Wings because I thought they were totally unsuitable for bike riding. Anyway, very interesting!
hi yes i was surprised too.
i think Sennheiser’s problem is that Garmin wouldn’t open up Connect to them in the same way that Polar has. Garmin will support these as aheart rate monitor but will defintiely want you to use one of its recording devices to access Connect. i dont think that will change.
Polar is still a realtively large sports-focussed comapny, albeit not anywhere near the magnitude of garmin
So because Polar got a great platform with great algorithms but seemingly lost both the knowledge and the will to make great watches, they started monetizing said platform instead huh? 😉
Sorry, grumpy old man being grumpy.
it’s good to be grumpy sometimes.
The smaller companies need to monetize what they have eg access to the platform, the algorithms. Innovations to their business model might end up making them another Firstbeat or a platform that can serve many watch brands (partnering with someone like amazfit could give them improves access to Asian markets and the boost to brand awareness that would come to that (India springs to mind) . I guess you have to try these things, unless you are garmin.
Polar/Sennheiser/Casio whoever please make earbuds with hr plus ECG! I don’t want to fork out for apple watch plus iPhone to use apple watch just to have best portable ECG FFS! I’ve my old Motorola with crap battery life but happy to use it till somebody comes up with 50000mah battery phone!