Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: impressive debut clip-style open earbuds, but they’re not without snags Simon Cocks | usagoldmines.com

Sennhesier Accentum Clip: two-minute review

Clip-on (or cuff-style) examples in our best open earbuds guide once felt like a niche trend alongside the more sensible shape — the one that arcs behind your ear. But these ear cuff-esque offerings may now be the next major personal audio craze.

The first ones to hit were Huawei’s FreeClip, and they were followed soon after by the premium Bose Ultra Open Earbuds. That was in early 2024, and they’re still among the best options you can buy today.

These days, everyone from Soundcore and Shokz to Earfun and Sony offers a clip-on set of buds, made to attach to the back of your ears and direct audio with tiny speakers pointing to your ear canals. They’re good for hearing everything around you at the same time as your music, and Sennheiser has just got in on the action with its Accentum Clip, available in Black and Cream colors.

The naming of Accentum (as opposed to Momentum) means they’re part of Sennheiser’s more affordable range, but they still promise the brand’s well-known rich and natural sound. The press release for the new buds says that “the growing demand for truly open earbuds has come with sonic compromises” and that these buck that trend by offering “brilliant Sennheiser sound in every situation”.

But we’ve also been here before with the cheap and slightly disappointing Sennheiser Accentum Open. I was keen to try the Accentum Clip and hoped they improved upon the previous attempt.

The good news is that these offer great performance in most of the areas that matter. Once you get a comfortable fit (which I found a tiny bit more challenging than usual), they deliver a clean and accurate sound. You have to be careful with volume levels, as too much volume introduces distortion, but they’re overall pretty delightful-sounding for this category.

And they’ve got excellent battery life, although I did encounter a couple of connection and multipoint quirks. Rivals from Shokz beat these on comfort and weight, while Soundcore undercuts them in the price department. That said, I still reckon they’re some of the best-sounding clip-ons I’ve heard, and that is important in a congested market.

The bad news? If you’re in the US, you seemingly can’t buy these at launch. They could be coming at a later date, but for now, US buyers will have to look at other clip-on contenders. As to why, Sennheiser told prospective buyers that it’s a “strategic decision based on the legal environment”, in a comment on Reddit. But decisions can be rethought, can’t they…

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: Specifications

Sennheiser Accentum Clip: Price and release date

• Launched on July 23, 2026
• Sells for £149 / AU$289 (around $180, although not officially available yet)
• Sennheiser’s first-ever clip-on buds

The Sennheiser Accentum Clip went on sale on July 23, 2026, after being announced almost a month earlier, on June 18. While they’re Sennheiser’s first-ever challenger in the clip format, the brand previously tried its hand at a “semi-open” AirPods-style with the Accentum Open, which lacked app support and had flimsy build quality.

You can buy the Accentum Clip for £149 / AU$289. That puts them firmly in the middle of the pack for this style of earbuds. You can get the Soundcore AeroClip or new Shokz OpenDots Air for a competitive $129 / £129.99 / AU$219, or increase your budget to get the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds for $299 / £299 / AU$449.95.

Another top pick, the Shokz OpenDots 2, costs $199.95 / £179.99 / AU$339, while budget contenders like the EarFun Clip 2 set you back as little as $79.99 / £69.99 (about AU$120).

So, stiff competition — and Sennheiser’s come in at a busy time.

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: Features

• 9 hours of playback on a charge; 36 hours with the charging case
• 5-band graphic equaliser in the Sennheiser Smart Control Plus app
• LDAC support and a battery protection mode to enhance longevity

The Sennheiser Accentum Clip are easy to set up and customise, and they support the Sennheiser Smart Control Plus app, which is one of the best companion apps in the business.

Right after adding them to the app, I was able to do a firmware update, turn on battery protection (more on that in a moment), Bluetooth multipoint, and customise the default touch controls. Here, you can also enable “advanced sound quality”, which turns on the buds’ LDAC capabilities.

As they’re open earbuds, you’re not getting any noise-cancellation (very few buds like this offer it, although the Shokz Openfit Pro and Honor Earbuds Open are two that do), which would draw more battery, so the promised battery life is 9 hours of listening, which extends to up to 36 hours when you factor in recharging via the case.

I checked battery life after three hours of continuous playback and they’d dropped by 40%, indicating a respectable 7.5 to 8 hours of total playtime at 50% volume. That’s not quite Sennheiser’s official figure, but still a solid real-world showing for open-ear buds — matching rivals like the Bose Ultra Open and Huawei FreeClip.

There’s not a long list of features here, although I do think they nail the basics. The battery protection mode, which makes them charge more slowly and prevents them from charging to 100%, is a fantastic feature to increase the longevity of your earphones. It reduces stress on battery cells and means you could vastly improve their lifespan.

There’s a 5-band EQ for tinkering with the sound, the ability to turn on the high-res LDAC codec and connection management. I’ll talk more about sound in a separate section, but it’s worth saying that one of my few disappointments here was with connectivity. Multipoint just didn’t really work effectively.

It connected to two devices, but audio would restart on the wrong device when pausing and playing again, or sound wouldn’t come out when watching some Instagram Reels. With multipoint off, you also can’t “pull” the connection from one device to another like you can on others. You have to manually disconnect and reconnect. These were all unexpected flaws for buds running Bluetooth 6.0, and hopefully will be fixed via firmware.

• Features score: 4 / 5

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: design

• Comfort takes a little getting used to
• As do the touch controls…
• IP54 dust- and splash-resistant

Most cuff-style buds look pretty similar, but there are some notable deviations from the formula in Sennheiser’s design. They’re a little heavier than some rivals, at 6.8g per bud, and a little more of that mass is at the back, where the battery is held in the part that clips behind your ear.

In use, this makes them “pinch” ever so slightly more than some comparable rivals, and it’s essential to find the right position to angle the driver to fire audio into your ears. Get it slightly wrong, and you’ll have a less-engaging sound.

The stretchy part is a little chunkier than on some rivals, too, which may also affect how they feel to wear. I was able to get them sitting comfortably, but it takes a little trial-and-error.

Once they were on, the other big difference I noticed is that they use touch controls at the front of the buds (on the speaker part) rather than at the back on the battery container. This, unfortunately, does mean several more accidental taps. But, luckily, you can tweak and turn off capacitive control in the app.

They’re IP54-rated, so they can survive dust and light splashes, and they go in a fairly compact and discreet charging case with the Sennheiser logo on the top. I like that the case stands upright on a tabletop, and it’s small enough to be pocketable.

They’re just in white or black shades, and the plastic of the buds and case doesn’t feel quite as premium as Sennheiser’s flagship true wireless pair; but this is the Accentum line, so that isn’t a huge shock.

• Design score: 3.5 / 5

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: Sound quality

• Natural, warm Sennheiser sound
• Best suited for indoor listening
• They have LDAC support, but it doesn’t make a difference

Open earbuds always have to make a couple of compromises to bring you audio while maintaining your awareness of the outside world. Keeping your ear canals unplugged means you don’t have the acoustic seal required for deep low frequencies, for example.

That said, Sennheiser has managed to bring much of its natural and balanced sound signature across to the Accentum Clip, and these offer a pleasant, warm listen. Vocals and instrumentation sound as I expected, and there’s none of the harshness or hollowness I’ve heard on some cheaper clip-ons.

Across a wide range of listening (including ambient focus playlists, the new Myles Smith album, summer pop playlists, and Michael Giacchino’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day soundtrack), I found the 12mm drivers deliver impressive clarity and refinement. At moderate listening levels (up to about 70%) I felt they had a good bass presence with a bit of weight to kick drums.

But, crank the volume up and it does change things a bit. I’d definitely prefer to use these in quieter indoor environments over the busy outdoors, because increasing the volume introduces distortion, takes some of the texture out of the bass, while fine details end up getting a bit lost.

Audiophiles will be happy to see that the Accentum Clip support the high-res LDAC codec, alongside standard AAC and SBC. In use, though, I couldn’t detect any meaningful audible difference when switching between streaming via LDAC on a Google Pixel 10 Pro and AAC on an iPhone 17 Pro. High-res support is great, but it doesn’t make an obvious difference in this product and using LDAC will probably just burn through your battery life a little quicker.

• Sound score: 4 / 5

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: Value

• Great value compared to Sennheiser’s last ‘open’ pair
• But they’re undercut by quite a few other cuff buds

While the Sennheiser Accentum Clip are a good pair of clip-on buds, you’re paying mid-range money for a pair that feels ever so slightly below-mid-range, given how many elements are evidently a “first try” at this form factor.

I like them for sound quality, but because I found comfort, control and connectivity a little less convincing, I think there are cheaper rivals with better features.

When compared to Sennheiser’s last open earbuds attempt, the Accentum Open, these are a far better value proposition because they include app support and features like battery protection, control customisation, and LDAC.

But if compared to the rest of the open bud market, there are serious challengers available at lower prices from the likes of Shokz, Earfun, Soundcore, CMF by Nothing and Soundpeats.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Should I buy the Sennheiser Accentum Clip?

Score card

Buy them if…

Don’t buy them if…

Sennheiser Accentum Clip review: Also consider

How I tested the Sennheiser Accentum Clip

• Tested for two weeks
• Paired with Android, iOS and macOS devices
• Used during multiple activities

I tested the Sennheiser Accentum Clip over two weeks, pairing them with my iPhone 17 Pro, MacBook Air, and Google Pixel 10 Pro, which allowed me to thoroughly test multipoint connectivity and LDAC support.

I wore them mostly at home while working, cooking, and during full-day listening sessions, as well as outside on walks in the park. I used them to play a wide variety of media, including music of several genres, podcasts, and YouTube videos.

I also ran a battery test on these to see if the real-world performance lived up to the claims.

I’ve been testing gadgets since 2020, and I’ve reviewed countless headphones and earbuds, including dozens of open-style models from brands like Shokz, Nothing, Soundcore, Bose and Huawei.

Read more about how we test at TechRadar

• First reviewed: October 2026