Sennheiser Smart Control 4+

New version of the app is a step in the right direction. The settings menu should get rid of the tiles option if the product has two or less tiles and just display the tiles permanently, noise cancellation could use something like an info button with a brief explanation behind each option, and the same idea could be applied to the acoustical settings. Also, the options for “Director” are a little too dramatic; I can’t imagine anyone already into sound quality enough to purchase Seinnheiser products to go with “thump” and “high” reverb.

App reviewed with PXC 550-II headphones. Based on other reviews and what I see in the app it seems like settings are slightly different for each product. I’m able to connect easily with only one product, something I wasn’t able to do in the previous app version. The iPad is a completely different story, and I try to stay away from the app completely and just keep noise cancellation fully activated via the headphones.

Would Sennheiser please add a toggle that allows us to turn off the spoken audio prompts. They’re way too loud (painfully so), and they’re seldom relevant. For example, when I’m listening on one device and the headphones automatically connect to a second device, the “Connected” speech barges in. Even worse, using them in a Zoom meeting, I’m constantly hearing “Mute On” and “Mute Off” when nothing of the kind is happening, and I miss what other participants are saying.
I’ve worked out the kludge of putting the headphones on a knee first, waiting to don them until “Connected” has said her thing, but that doesn’t work for the examples above, and it ruins the otherwise seamless functioning of these headphones.
Which matters, because they are GREAT headphones—fabulous sound, connectable to two devices at once, lightweight for travel, and comfortable.

We can really only conclude that Sennheiser accidentally hired a lead software engineer who faked their credentials. Usually, when I write bad reviews of software, it’s because the software is merely clunky and difficult to navigate— but it’s very rare that I discover in a respected electronics company accompanying software so horrifically designed that it lacks even basic functionality. This app’s shortcomings are humiliating and unacceptable coming from a top-tier company like Sennheiser: the app fails to connect to earbuds, activates factory resets at nonsensical times with neither consent nor warning, floods its own user interface with pop-up notifications instead of— well— actual interfacing, and sometimes simply shuts the user out of actually being able to change settings for the earbuds. As a result of this last item, it’s highly likely that there are countless many software failures aside that I’ve simply been unable to discover yet.

This combined with a terrible customer service setup from Sennheiser’s website should cause all consumers and published tech reviewers to rate Sennheiser much lower than they have in the past.