Last month, Sennheiser India introduced the SPORT True Wireless, a new TWS built specifically for fitness enthusiasts and athletes. It boasts a secure and adaptable fit with three different ear adapters and four different ear fins to handle any workout. At Rs. 10,990, the SPORT has a lot of serious competition, and let’s see if it can live up to the challenge.
Design
The Sennheiser Sport true wireless earbuds look similar to the CX Plus TWS – a plastic charging case with a rectangular design with rounded corners and edges.
The charging case has a matte finish, which means no fingerprints or smudges, and has a golden logo. The USB-C charging port is housed behind the case.
A small notification LED is in the front for the charging status and also has a hole on the side to loop the lanyard. The earbuds are held with a magnet inside the case. The design of the slots makes it easy to slip the earbuds in.
Moving on to the earbuds, they are a bit large and square-y when compared to the competition. It is an in-ear style earbud with no stem and has all the components inside the head unit itself. The exterior of the earbud has the same matte plastic finish as the charging case.
There is a microphone hole on each earbud and a proximity sensor for in-ear detection on the inside surface. The buds come with six sets of ear adapters, including three sets “open” and “closed” each.
The fit of the Sennheiser Sport was comfortable in my ear. The earbuds are also quite snug, which is important and ensures that the earbuds don’t fall out easily. The earbuds are IPX4 rated, which should mean they can survive water splashes and sweat. Overall, the earbuds have a reasonably good design and comfortable fit.
Connectivity and performance
The Sennheiser Sport earbuds connect via Bluetooth 5.2 and feature support for four audio codecs – aptX, aptX adaptive, AAC, SBC.
The connection process is quite simple – take the earbuds out of the case, hold both the touchpads for 3 seconds, and it should show up in the menu of your Bluetooth device.
Since there is no physical button on the case, there is no option to factory reset the earbuds. You’ll need to use the companion smartphone app to perform a factory reset.
The Bluetooth range is rated at 10m, and during my review, the connection was good, and I did not notice any connection drops.
I tested the Sennheiser Sport with the OnePlus 9 Pro and Macbook Air, and my experience with them was good. To customise the settings, users need to install the Smart Control app.
The app enables users to customise to any supported function, which is highly convenient. Further, the app offers more features, such as an equalizer, where you can create custom presets or choose from built-in presets.
There is a feature called Sound Check, where you can set up a custom sound setting. The app also allows you to toggle in-ear detection, toggle auto-accept calls, update the firmware, and it shows you which codec is currently being used.
The innovative Adaptable Acoustic function lets users select from open or closed ear adapters and adjust EQ settings to create the ideal personalised training sound.
Furthermore, the open ear adapters on the earbuds, in conjunction with the Aware EQ settings, help to decrease body-borne noise while allowing certain outside sounds to enter for enhanced situational awareness.
This amount of granularity is not common among true wireless earbuds, so this is definitely one of its strengths.
Talking about the performance, SPORT True Wireless is powered by a unique 7mm dynamic and offers a quite balanced across the frequency range. The bass is noticeable, but it is not very overpowering, which is quite common in Sennheiser products.
The mid-frequencies have a good amount of clarity and the trebles, on the hand, are clear and bright. They also get pretty loud in my opinion and at higher volumes, the earbuds sound significantly better. The sound stage is good for in-ear wireless earphones, with decent separation of instruments and voice.
In reality, the audio quality is fine for the price, and it is slightly better than the competition.
There is the ability to customize the audio output using the equalizer in the Smart Control app. There are even presets to enhance the Bass or to enhance the voice for podcast listening.
There is no dedicated gaming mode in the CX Plus for low-latency transmission.
On the call quality, Sport uses a 2-microphone beam-forming array to pick up your voice during calls. The Sport TWS does a pretty good job in these areas, and according to the people I talked to, my voice always came through clearly, even in loud environments. In quiet environments, the voice quality is perfect and legible.
Battery Life
Each earbud has a 55mAh battery inside, and the charging case comes with a 400mAh cell inside. According to Sennheiser, the earbuds offer a standalone battery life of 9 hours and a total battery life of 27 hours with the charging case.
During my testing, I got about 7 to 8 hours of listening time, which is not bad at all. The earbuds do not support fast charging, which is a let-down. It takes about 1.5 hours to fully charge. And there is also no wireless charging support.
Conclusion
The Sport TWS from Senheisser performs well in many areas, such as the audio quality, microphone quality, support for aptX codec, app customizability, and battery life.
However, there are some weak points too like the earbud’s large size, lack of spatial audio technologies, and wireless charging.
Coming to the price, the Sennheiser CX Plus has launched at Rs. 10,990, which is quite good for earbuds that offer these features. However, the competition is fierce in this segment, and more notably, they are cheaper too. It is available Amazon, and other leading electronic outlets in India.
Pros
- Good audio quality
- Excellent quality during calls
- Support for aptX and aptX Adaptive codecs
- Lots of customizability for on-board controls
- Good battery life
Cons
- Plastic feels sub-par
- No wireless charging or fast charging
