Sennheiser today revealed its most affordable set of active noise-canceling (ANC) true wireless earbuds so far: The $180 CX Plus True Wireless. The new earbuds will be available in either black or white and will hit stores on September 28.
Until now, if you wanted a set of Sennheiser earbuds with ANC, you needed to cough up $300 for the company’s Momentum True Wireless 2, a great but pricey product. The new CX Plus appears to be part of Sennheiser’s ongoing effort to make its audio technology more accessible. Earlier this year, it cut the price of its $200 CX 400BT True Wireless earbuds by half. In July, it followed up with the $130 CX True Wireless — offering the same outstanding sound quality but with better battery life and sidetone for phone calls.
With the CX Plus, Sennheiser now has a set of ANC earbuds that undercut the price of Apple’s $249 AirPods Pro while offering much better sound than Apple’s buds.
The CX Plus includes most of the features from the Momentum True Wireless 2. In addition to ANC and transparency modes, you get music auto-pause when you remove an earbud, and the 7mm TrueResponse transducer, which powers many of the company’s earbuds, including the CX True Wireless. For the first time, Sennheiser has also included Qualcomm’s aptX Adaptive Bluetooth codec. When paired with a compatible phone, this should deliver significantly better audio quality than the standard SBC and AAC, or even regular aptX, codecs.
Sennheiser says battery life will be 24 hours in total but hasn’t yet revealed how long the earbuds will last on a single charge, or how the use of ANC or transparency modes will affect these numbers. At this price, we’d also expect the charging case to offer wireless charging, but that feature remains absent from Sennheiser’s true wireless portfolio.
Like the Momentum True Wireless 2 and the CX True Wireless, the CX Plus has an IPX4 rating for water resistance, which should be more than enough protection for a sweaty workout or the occasional rainy run. And though the provided photos make the CX Plus look nearly identical to the CX and CX 400BT models, a spokesperson tells Digital Trends that their design and ergonomics have been refined for better comfort and fit.
We noted in our reviews of the CX True Wireless and CX 400BT that the combination of their shape and the included silicone eartips made it hard to get a really good seal and secure fit — we had to swap out the silicone tips for memory foam versions to correct for this. Hopefully, the CX Plus have improved on this one weak spot. We’ll let you know as soon as we get a chance to try them out.
