Every pair of true wireless earbuds I’ve owned over the years has failed in pretty much the same way, and it was never the sound, drivers, app, or even the case. It was always the battery fading, until a full day of listening turned into just a couple of hours before I had to charge, and then less than the length of my commute. Every time, I ended up with a pair of earbuds that weren’t worth taking out of the house, and no obvious way to fix them.
But companies are now finding ways around this historic problem, and Sennheiser’s answer arrived in August with the Momentum True Wireless 5, which is set to release in September at $299.95. What’s different here is that the earbuds and charging case both have user-replaceable batteries, which can be swapped out in what the company says is ‘minutes’ using nothing but the compact screwdriver included in the box.
This is a new development for a mainstream flagship, but what makes the timing interesting is the European law that appeared to force the change, only to backtrack on including wearable devices weeks earlier.
Batteries kill earbuds
And Sennheiser is the first big name to design around it
Lithium-ion cells in earbuds are tiny, and when they get charged every day, they predictably degrade faster than anything else in the product. After a couple of years, the runtime shrinks so much that the buds are no longer useful, even though the components you paid for, like transducers and microphones, are fine. Sennheiser rates the Momentum True Wireless 5 at 12 hours per charge with noise-canceling off (6 with it on) and up to 40 hours total with the case.
We’ve all watched this play out before with phones, where removable batteries went from standard to pretty much extinct over the course of a decade, with no one in the industry seeming especially troubled by it. It happened to earbuds more quickly, partly because they’ve been sealed from the start, and Sennheiser’s own line illustrates this fairly well. The Momentum True Wireless 3 was a well-judged pair of earbuds in 2022 with no realistic path to a battery swap, but that was entirely normal for the category.
Europe started writing exemptions after it set the deadline
Though earbuds were never actually named in the carve-out
The EU Batteries Regulation requires portable batteries in products sold in the bloc to be removable and replaceable by end users, and those obligations take effect on Feb. 18, 2027. So now, a lot of sealed hardware is being redesigned ahead of that date.
However, on July 14, the European Commission adopted a delegated act adding six new categories to the list of products for which batteries need only be replaceable by independent professionals rather than by owners. The Commission’s own summary lists wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, electric toys, and others like smart glasses and wearable accessories, but it doesn’t explicitly mention true wireless earbuds.
This is what makes things complicated, as the derogation applies only to wearables where user access would compromise safety, durability, or water resistance, and where the device is either too small to handle a swap safely or relies on a sealed enclosure to keep out dust and shock. The act then closes with a condition that applies to almost all categories: the derogation is available only when required to ensure the safety of the user and the appliance. This is a conditional escape hatch, but not a blanket pass.
It also isn’t yet law, as the act went to the European Parliament and the Council for scrutiny and will enter into force 20 days after publication.
An IP54 rating vs a screwdriver
The rating makes the safety argument a little harder
Sennheiser’s timing makes things a bit awkward for everyone else, since the industry’s standing objection to replaceable earbud batteries has always been that opening up a bud will wreck its ingress protection, and that the cells are too small to handle safely. The Momentum True Wireless 5 is rated IP54 for dust, sweat, and splash resistance, and it has a battery the owner is expected to remove with a screwdriver, which seems counterintuitive at best.
Of course, IP54 means splash and dust resistance, not immersion, and it sits below what many rivals offer. A design that passes ingress testing on the production line may not behave identically after an owner has had it open on a kitchen table, and Sennheiser hasn’t published a resealing spec or said what happens to the rating after a swap.
Even allowing for all of that, any brand arguing to a regulator in 2027 that its earbuds are too small and too sealed to permit a user battery swap now has to explain away a competitor doing precisely that at $299.95.
Sennheiser hasn’t yet talked about the catch
Though replacement cells are only good if you can buy them
‘Replaceable’ is a claim about design, ‘repairable’ is a claim about supply, and Sennheiser hasn’t published pricing or availability for the replacement cells at the time of writing. So the feature is still a promise, and a replacement battery you can’t buy in five years is completely useless from a consumer perspective. Under the regulations, spare parts must be available at a reasonable price, but even that isn’t very specific.
In the immediate term, I’d treat the replaceable battery as a reason to buy it over another pair with identical features and an equivalent price tag, and more flashy elements like sound, fit, and noise-canceling should still be your primary criteria. And, of course, outside Europe, none of these new rules will directly impact you, other than encouraging international brands to redesign future products. The Sennheiser design is going global because building two versions of a flagship earbud is more expensive than building one, which is the same reason USB-C ended up on every iPhone.
Whether any of that sticks depends on how many other brands reach the same conclusion before February, and on whether Parliament has anything to say about the exemption first.
