They may stick out like a giant pair of ear muffs, but the technology inside Sennheiser’s latest headphones means they get out of your way and let you get on with life.

Like it or not, strangers are forming opinions of you when you get around in headphones.

And the opinions are not always positive.

Beats wearers, for instance, are junkies of some sort. Either they’re addicted to Beats’ bass-heavy sound, or they’re addicted to buying anything and everything in the Apple store.

Does this headphone model look comfortable, or what?  

Bose Quiet Comfort wearers want everyone to know they fly business class. Sony WH-1000X wearers also fly business class, but they like to keep a low profile, and they value features over fashion.

I’m not saying any of this is true. It’s just what people think when they see you poncing about wearing over-the-ear headphones, rather than more-discreet in-ear earbuds.

I’ve been poncing about in a pair of Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless headphones these past three days, and I’m quite sure when people look at me they think: nothing at all.

The Sennheiser Momentum 4 wireless headphones are the most invisible headphones we’ve reviewed here in the Digital Life Labs, and I mean that as the highest praise. These headphones have jumped to the top of our list of the many truly excellent headphones we’ve reviewed over the years.

Sennheiser has opted for a minimal, blank-canvas look on the Momentum 4 headphones, which are just begging for stickers. 

Their most standout feature is their sound, which is invisible only in the most literal sense.

It’s very good out of the box – very neutral, with a slight over-emphasis on bass that many people find appealing (Beats was certainly onto something), and they pull off because the bass is big, yet rich and precise.

But for people who like their headphones a little different (I happen to like them a little crisper, a little brighter than they came in the box), Sennheiser has a novel “sound check” feature in its app that, rather like an eye exam that A/B test a series of lenses on you, takes you through a series of equalisation settings, asking you which one you prefer until you eventually zero in on an eq that suits your taste.

Using sound check, I was easily able to tweak the Momentum 4s to my taste, and they sound great.

Aside from the sound, the most outstanding feature on the Momentum 4 headphones would have to be their insane 60-hour battery life (double that of the previous benchmark, Sony’s WH-1000X headphones), which means you can wear them without even thinking of the charge level.

They just go and go. They go so long, I haven’t even been able to fully test Sennheiser’s claim, though I can attest it has to be in the ballpark. I’ve worn them for about 18 hours and barely made a dent in the battery level.

Meanwhile, the headphones are so incredibly comfortable, you can wear them all day and forget you have them on.

It’s actually been a strange experience, pairing the Momentum 4 headphones with my phone, leaving them on all day and enjoying a hands-free calling ability that seems to come out of nowhere.

And that’s not just because of the comfort. Other features, such as the active noise-cancelling (ANC) and the transparent mode that lets you hear the world outside your headphones, are quite invisible to you, too.

The ANC isn’t the most aggressive or complete noise-cancelling system we’ve used (we’d rank Bose and Sony headphones a little higher), but it is the most unobtrusive.

Sennheiser MOMENTUM 4 Wireless headphones are not nearly as ostentatious as they could and arguably should be. 

Especially when it’s in its “adaptive” mode, increasing and decreasing the level of noise reduction depending on how noisy the environment is, the ANC system on the Sennheiser Momentum 4 doesn’t make you feel like you’re in a noise-cancelled cocoon, the way more aggressive systems can.

You feel like you’re in your world, which for some reason has gone quiet.

The same is true of the Transparent mode, which uses the ANC system to amplify, rather than cancel, outside sounds.

It doesn’t provide the loudest ambient noise amplification, but it does provide the most naturalistic amplification we’ve encountered. People sound like people, rather than robots. Cars in the street sound like cars in the street, rather than cars driving through a tin tunnel.

Another related feature, “sidetone”, creates a similar, naturalistic and thus invisible effect. When you’re on a call, sidetone takes a little of your voice and plays it inside the headphones, so you don’t get the sensation of not being able to hear yourself speak because you’ve got headphones muffling your voice.

You’re just on a call which, for some reason you can’t quite explain, is hands free.

Really, if Sennheiser set out to build a pair of headphones you could forget you’re wearing, it has absolutely nailed it with the Momentum 4.

But this invisibility business is not entirely a good thing.

Considering how accomplished these headphones are, they’re not nearly as ostentatious as they could and arguably should be. They’ve got a small Sennheiser logo above each ear cup, but other than that they’ve got an utterly minimalist, verging on nondescript design, even more so than Sony’s WH-1000X headphones, which at least have a distinctive look about them.

Wearing the Momentum 4 headphones around my suburb, I found myself wishing they looked a little fancier, so people would look at me and think: now there’s a man who knows his headphones.

Likes: Comfortable even after many hours. Long battery life. Great sound. Feature set that blends into your life effortlessly. Dislikes: Bland looking. Don’t fold for travel. Touch gestures for ANC are a little fiddly. Price: $549.95

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