Diotima received €500,000 under Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund last year.

AI edtech start-up Diotima, founded by former secondary school teacher Siobhan Ryan, has spun out from Trinity College Dublin (TCD).

The platform aims to enable educators to use AI to create assessments and individualised feedback to improve learning outcomes and lighten burdens on teachers.

The spin-out will be led by edtech commercialisation specialist Jonathan Dempsey as CEO, with Ryan, also a biochemist and environmental scientist, becoming chief product officer and learning lead.

Development engineer Daniel Fernandez and AI engineer Dr Long Mai, who have both worked on the Diotima project, will also join the inaugural team.

Dr Eoin Lane, an AI regulatory compliance expert who was formerly the global head of AI and data science at the Bank of New York Mellon, is a governance consultant to the Diotima project.

“This all started when I was working as a teacher and I had a vision for how AI could enhance teaching and learning even before any of the models like ChatGPT launched,” said Ryan.

“I then worked with Tom Pollock and Learnovate to develop this vision into a real-world project.”

Diotima began its partnership with Learnovate in February 2025 and received €500,000 in funding under Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund, which supports third-level researchers in translating their research into commercially viable solutions.

The idea was to develop an AI-enabled edtech platform to help teachers and other educators create assessments, as well as provide feedback to learners, all in compliance with European and Irish legislation.

Specifically, the platform meets requirements under the EU AI Act, which has strict regulations around the usage of AI in high-risk sectors such as education.

“We aim to position Diotima as a leader in responsible AI for education,” Ryan said. Diotima will continue to engage with prospective customers and stakeholders for a go-to-market strategy while also seeking new investment.

“Using responsible AI, Diotima promises to develop into a revolutionary platform for learners in secondary schools and professional education organisations, delivering formative feedback and better outcomes overall,” said Pollock, Learnovate’s impact, licensing and commercialisation manager.

Learnovate launched its ‘Responsible AI for Learning’ initiative earlier this year to enable AI implementers and practitioners involved in teaching and learning to share knowledge, interpret guidelines and comply with AI regulations.

The initiative is made up of professionals from all four education domains – schools, higher education, vocational education and training, and professional education – as well as representatives from the Department of Education, teaching unions and other sectors.

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• AI-powered hackers now exploit software flaws faster than companies can patch systems
• Mobile phishing scams now outperform traditional email attacks across corporate environments worldwide
• Unauthorized AI tools are quietly leaking sensitive company information across global workplaces

For the first time in nearly two decades, exploiting software vulnerabilities has overtaken stolen passwords as the primary way hackers breach corporate networks.

Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report claims the exploitation of vulnerabilities now accounts for 31% of all confirmed data breaches.

Over the past two decades, technical debt meant outdated architecture, messy code, and poorly maintained documentation. That definition is no longer sufficient in the AI era, where failure modes are more subtle and often non-linear. AI systems are introducing new layers of technical debt that live across prompts, models, and data dependencies — making these layers less visible, harder to measure, and often more dangerous than traditional debt.

A crisis hiding in plain sight

The complexities of AI systems and their associated failures have been well documented. A 2025 MIT study found that 95% of AI projects fail to reach production or deliver value. A similar study by S&P Global Market Intelligence found that 42% of businesses scrapped multiple AI initiatives in 2025 — a sharp increase from 17% the previous year. Various reasons are cited for these failures, but most of them point to poorly designed and implemented systems that are complex to manage and have multiple hard-to-monitor failure points, leading to a rapid accumulation of AI debt. 

Traditional technical debt was localized to the codebase, and bugs were usually easily reproducible. Consequently, bugs could be easily identified during tests and fixed through rearchitecting the codebase. However, AI debt is much more distributed, manifesting across prompts, models, data pipelines, and all associated infrastructure. It is also more intermittent: Due to the probabilistic nature of AI, systems do not always respond the same way, leading to intermittent failures. This makes it much more challenging to identify risks during testing, and also creates a need for more continuous monitoring even post-deployment to prevent gradual drift and worsening performance.

The new forms of AI debt

AI debt typically manifests across four new forms, each of which comes with its own set of risks.

Prompt debt is the most visible of these. A modern version of ‘spaghetti code,’ this can include undocumented prompt tweaks, accumulated ‘quick-fix’ prompts that lead to inconsistencies, neglected version control of prompts, and ‘prompt stuffing’ (the cramming of extraneous data or context directly into AI prompts). All these combine to make prompts a form of untyped, untested code without any version control, leading to increased brittleness and vulnerabilities.

Model dependency debt is another increasingly common form of AI debt. Most enterprises now depend on a mixture of external models developed by leading foundation model providers; applications and agents are built on top of API calls to these models. Consequently, application logic now depends on models that are external to the core system, and that cannot be clearly controlled. As models update, performance varies and reproducibility is lost — prompts tuned for one model may fail or perform poorly when switched to another model, whether an update from the same provider or from another provider.

Most enterprise AI deployments today use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which pulls in additional context from enterprise data repositories. Retrieval debt is a consequence of these repositories having messy data, duplicated documents, and outdated information. This causes AI to return technically correct answers that are outdated and no longer relevant, causing downstream failures. Unlike hallucinations, these are harder to detect because they were correct, perhaps even until recently, and hence look correct to any tester. 

Evaluation debt reflects the lack of standardization in testing and monitoring for AI models and applications. While AI benchmarks exist, they tend to focus on narrow tests and reflect point-in-time results. Most enterprises lack consistent testing standards, ground truth datasets, and real-time monitoring of deployments; there is no equivalent yet of continuous integration /continuous delivery (CI/CD) for prompts. As a consequence, CIOs and CTOs do not have clear visibility into model performance and cannot track improvements or worsening of models. 

All of these are in addition to traditional forms of technical debt, which still manifest across the tools and systems that AI applications and agents interact with, read from, or write to. A rapid increase in the adoption of AI-generated code (often deployed without inadequate testing) is further aggravating inconsistencies within, and poor maintainability of traditional codebases. 

The new forms of AI debt combine with these earlier forms of technical debt to compound rapidly and create large-scale risks that can cause catastrophic failure of entire enterprise deployments. Solving for these risks is made even more challenging by the distributed nature of AI ownership – most systems span engineering, product, data, and business teams, leading to unclear accountability when an error is identified. 

As a result, these risks manifest in the form of escalating compute costs, inaccuracies in AI outputs, and increasing exceptions that need to be handled by humans — leading to projects often stalling and failing due to unclear return-on-investment stories and a lack of trust from users. 

How enterprises can prevent AI debt

AI debt will not be solved by ‘better’ models — failure rates remain high despite models already having high accuracy. The solution to AI debt requires better system design, integration, controls, and changes in organizational culture. 

First, prompts need to be treated as code. This involves careful version control, documentation, and rigorous testing both pre- and post-deployment for all possible prompt configurations. Best practices from the traditional world of coding — such as the use of smaller prompt blocks instead of large prompt-stuffed walls, or reducing the use of hard-coded parameters — can also help mitigate AI debt. 

Second, evaluation needs to be built into the entire AI infrastructure stack. Continuous evaluation pipelines need to be established and must reflect a wide variety of metrics measuring both technical and business-aligned metrics. In addition, AI observability systems should be integrated to monitor output quality, failure rates, model drift, and data drift.

Third, explainability should be included by default in all AI results to make up for limited reproducibility. Data lineage, models used, and the steps followed should be clearly traceable so as to allow auditability of results and correction in case of any systemic errors. 

This requires explicit AI debt reduction programs and associated budgets, similar to earlier waves of investment in security or in cloud modernization. These need to be driven at a CXO level by key leaders to prevent costly rework later.

Conclusion: A stitch in time

Enterprise AI deployments are not just static code; they are living systems that interact with the entire enterprise stack. As a result, the defining challenge in an agentic enterprise will not be building or deploying intelligent systems, it will be maintaining these systems to ensure continued reliability during real-world operation.

Enterprises that seek to proactively identify and mitigate AI debt from the design phase itself are the likeliest to build sustainable AI platforms that deliver significant long-term productivity boosts across the organization. 

Vikram is a principal at Cota Capital, where he invests in early-stage enterprise tech and deep tech companies.

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• Kansas City schools replace 30,000 Windows and Chromebooks with Apple devices
• Concerns raised over financial loss from retiring functional school computers
• District cites security, durability, and “student pride” as reasons for the Apple switch

The Kansas City Public Schools district has announced a sweeping transition which will remove tens of thousands of non-Apple devices from its classrooms.

According to information on the district’s website, administrators will replace more than 30,000 Windows PCs and Chromebooks with Apple hardware over the coming months.

Laptops have always come in all shapes and sizes, but recently I’ve seen ultrabooks become super popular. Maybe it’s just me who’s been drowning in work with my other colleagues, but wherever I go, I only see these thin and light laptops. A big part of this push can be attributed to efficiency gains, which mean we can fit more power into these chassis and get serious performance out of them. There’s one brand that’s always bet big on ultrabooks, and that’s Asus. Their ZenBook lineup is probably what comes to mind when anyone thinks about a serious laptop for professionals, at least in India.

I’ve tested several of these ZenBooks in the past, and they’ve always passed my tests with flying colors. However, 2026 has been proving to be a big challenge with rising memory prices driving costs up and value down. The latest iteration of the ZenBook 14 landed on my table a couple of weeks back. Asus has refreshed it with the latest Ryzen processor and a new OLED touch display option. To do the laptop justice, I switched my MacBook (it’s easy, my work is on Chrome, mostly) and made the ZenBook 14 UM3406GA my daily driver. Here’s how it stacks up in 2026.

Design & Hardware

If you remember the last ZenBook 14 (which we reviewed previously), then the new iteration would feel right at home. The laptop is available only in stealth black, and I’m a fan. It’s super elegant, and I’m a bit biased towards stealthy machines. The ZenBook 14 would fit perfectly for a corporate meeting or a quick stop at the nearby cafe to catch up on some work. Sadly, if you like experimenting with colors, there’s no other option. For some fun, the Vivobook lineup should come in handy.

The new Asus logo adds to the premium appeal, and everyone whom I gave the laptop to loved the design. There’s just one small problem, though: fingerprints. Asus has yet to fix this problem, as the black finish picks up sweat and grease from your palms and leaves them printed on the surface unless you use a cleaning cloth. It’s not a major problem, but something worth mentioning.

Minor complaints aside, what the Asus ZenBook 14 does best is portability. The 14-inch form factor is best for people who are constantly on the go but still need enough screen space to multitask. To put this to the test, I took the laptop on a recent work trip to Delhi, where the 1.2 kg weight didn’t put much stress on my shoulders. I took it out to work at the airport, and everything went fine without hiccups. The metal construction meant I wasn’t worried about putting too much pressure on the backpack. I also tested the build myself and observed no flex in either the keyboard deck or the display panel. The hinge holds the display firmly enough, though it’s a little stiffer than I’d like. It lifts the laptop ever so slightly, which can be annoying, especially coming from a MacBook.

As far as ports are concerned, Asus has your back. The left side houses a couple of Type-C ports, with one supporting USB 4.0 Gen 3 (40 Gbps data bandwidth, DisplayPort, and Power Delivery). Beyond that, there’s a full-size HDMI 2.1 port, an audio combo jack, and a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port on the left. I had no problems connecting accessories to the laptop.

Keyboard & Trackpad

A good keyboard is one of the cornerstones of an ultrabook, since most people spend hours typing documents (like me writing this review). Fortunately, the one on the ZenBook 14 is quite good. Coming from a MacBook, my keyboard standards aren’t that high, and I got used to this one quickly. The keyboard is generously spaced, so there’s no cramped action. Typing feels clicky enough, and there’s good feedback in the end. Backlit support is present, and, thankfully, Asus hasn’t gone with gray keycaps for contrast, which would make them visible at night.

The same praises can be carried to the touchpad as well. Sure, it’s not the haptic one I’m used to, but I’ve seen plenty of people who love physical touchpads. If that’s you, you’re in luck: the one on the ZenBook 14 is quite large, and I didn’t find any dead zones. Instead, Asus has bundled a few extras with the trackpad, including a light-up number pad that turns on when you press the button on the top right.

Display & Camera

Last year’s Asus ZenBook 14 came with arguably the best display ever, with a 3K OLED 120Hz panel. This year, though, Asus has decided to switch things up. The new one gets a 14-inch FHD+ OLED panel with a 60Hz refresh rate. If that sounds underwhelming, there is now support for touch. This adds a whole new dimension to using the laptop, and I’d much rather have this functionality over the tad bit of extra sharpness. Beyond that, watching content is an absolute breeze on the ZenBook 14. I was catching up on Better Call Saul (I know I’m late), and the 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space kept everything stunning with vibrant yet natural colors. The contrast was excellent, and I could make out the different details on the faces.

The ZenBook 14 is also VESA DisplayHDR True Black 500-certified, so HDR content should pop out a bit. In everyday use, I measured a peak of around 450 nits, which is plenty for working in a bright cafe or on a cloudy day outdoors.

As for the camera, the 1080p webcam performs as you might expect. The sensor is sharp enough not to make the videos look muddy, but it struggles in low-light environments, with noise creeping in. Aside from the basics, Asus has bundled several AI features, including 3D noise reduction and AI Noise Cancellation. Both of these work fine, and I actually enjoyed my time giving presentations on the laptop.

Performance & Gaming

Performance is another pillar of the ultrabook experience since nobody wants to deal with an underpowered processor that hangs up during an important call. With the Asus ZenBook 14, you get the latest AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 processor, running on the Zen 5 architecture, along with 16 GB of LPDDR5X-7500 RAM and 512 GB PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD. Right off the bat, the everyday performance of the ZenBook 14 is excellent. I write reviews, so my work mainly happens in Chrome, with about 20 tabs open for research. The laptop handled all that blissfully well, without a single hiccup. I could have multiple apps running in the background, too, and it wouldn’t break a sweat.

Sadly, I’m no coder or video editor, but I did try my hand at both. I downloaded VSCode and edited a 4K Instagram reel, both of which went surprisingly well. Sure, you cannot expect the laptop to handle ten 4K streams, but for casual editing and reels, it’s perfectly fine. Large coding projects are compiled in seconds, so if you’re a college student, this could be worth a look.

But what about the actual numbers? I know benchmarks don’t often tell the whole story, but they do help paint a picture. Keeping up with that spirit, I turned on performance mode and ran Cinebench R23, where the ZenBook 14 scored 1,098 in the single-core and 7,032 in the multi-core tests. In 3D Mark’s Wild Life Extreme test, the laptop scored 2,655 points. Finally, in the Night Raid test, the number reached 20,792.

Given the very decent benchmark scores, I thought we should play a few games on the ZenBook 14. But before that, please note that this is not a gaming laptop, by any stretch of the word. Still, if you only play eSports titles like Counter-Strike and Valorant, the ZenBook 14 might surprise you. At medium-to-high settings, I got over 100 FPS in both games, and the experience was jitter-free even during high-intensity matches.

Battery Life & Speakers

AMD has made quite a few gains in efficiency with its newest chips, and they help a lot with battery life on the Asus ZenBook 14. On a typical workday, which involves using Chrome, editing spreadsheets, and watching tons of YouTube videos, I get roughly 12 hours of SoT. This is almost MacBook-level battery life, and something I quite frankly didn’t expect. Charging is handled by a 65W fast charger, which gets the laptop from 20% to 80% in under an hour.

Usually, I’m not a fan of downward-facing speakers, since they inherently limit output depending on the surface’s hardness. While that factor is in play here, the speaker quality is top-notch. Compared to my aging MacBook Air, the ZenBook 14 sounds more full, with an emphasis on the mids. The vocals sound super clear, and the treble is nice. There’s Dolby Atmos support for the people who watch a lot of movies without headphones.

Verdict

At ₹114,990, the new Asus ZenBook 14 has everything a professional needs, and in my two weeks of testing, I couldn’t find anything that made me go, “Oh, I wish they had done this better.” The design is sophisticated yet stands out, with premium materials. The OLED panel is bright and colorful, and the touch functionality adds a new way of using the laptop, especially for kids. Performance keeps up with anything you might need, even demanding tasks, and a little dabble in the gaming world. Honestly, the ZenBook 14 gets a solid recommendation from me.

“Now I’m being taught how to do it the right way,” Ryan says. “And I’m being paid to do it.”

Ryan hopes Enhanced can pave the way for a separation of truly “clean” events and transparently juiced competitions. He even calls on events like the Olympics to increase testing strictness.

“What we’re doing is completely separate,” Ryan said during Friday’s media availability. “It’s marketing, it’s show business. And it should be separate.”

The financial argument and the idea of helping aging athletes prolong their careers make up the most compelling case I hear for Enhanced on its face—at least in terms of athletes’ motivations. But it’s the business side of the organization where some conflicts of interest become tougher to ignore.

Photograph: Etienne Laurent/Getty Images

Head to the products page of the Enhanced website and you’ll find what appears to be the organization’s spinoff of telehealth company Hims, but for PEDs. Products like copper peptides, sermorelin and testosterone injections are available alongside GLP-1s, semaglutide, and tadalafil.

Martin is open about the mission: To bring these products to the masses. He talks up required medical intake forms and regular check-ins with certified company doctors to avoid risks of mis- or over-use.

But if the Enhanced mission is successful, and PEDs become a bigger and more financially appealing part of sports, assuming these products will only be sought after and used in responsible ways is just as naïve as pretending doping hasn’t happened in the past at supposedly “clean” events. If anything, athletes in particularly disadvantaged financial situations might prioritize doping even more.

That’s where the dystopian feel bubbling below the surface becomes more palpable. There’s a distinctly MAHA undertone here, from investors like Thiel and Donald Trump Jr. to Enhanced Games founder Aron D’Souza describing RFK Jr. as “pro–human enhancement.”

While organizers wouldn’t give me any specifics on how much of Enhanced’s future will rely on product sales to fund prize pools and operations, it’s probably safe to assume investors like these will expect returns to remain involved.

It’s fair to wonder whether this is truly an attempt to remove stigmas and change sport. The overconfidence on display prior to the actual contests only drove home the feeling that this was more an elaborate money-making scheme than anything else.

So will the Enhanced Games usher in a new era of athletic capability and prowess? Maybe—at least if you can afford it.

Earlier this year, Lucra Sports founder and CEO Dylan Robbins did something that no one else has ever done.

He landed famed public investor Cathie Wood and her ARK Invest Venture Fund as a lead in a startup fundraising round.

Lucra announced last month that it raised a $20 million Series B, led by the ARK fund, with participation from several other VCs. Robbins attracted ARK even though the fund had previously gotten badly burned on a similar eSports company: Skillz, a skill-based gaming platform in which the fund invested heavily before divesting at a loss.

On top of that, Dylan landed this big fish as an investor even though his company is not in the one area that all VCs are currently chasing: AI.

Lucra offers white-label interactive gaming competitions as a novel kind of loyalty program for businesses that serve consumers. Rather than, say, earning points toward a coupon, Lucra’s clients offer online tournaments for prizes, or supports friendly wagers between their customers on who will win games. Its customers include Five Iron Golf, Dave & Buster’s, and Chess King.

Robbins told us there were two secrets in how he landed a big-name investor against such odds:

1. Be friendly to everyone, anywhere because you never know when a casual conversation will turn into your major investor.

2. Lead your pitch with AI even if you aren’t a famed AI scientist and aren’t building models, agents, or anything AI.

To the first point, the seeds to Lucra’s fundraising journey began when Robbins was playing darts in a New York bar. He met another guy at the dartboard, and they enjoyed a few games together.

“Six months later, we ran into each other at the bar again. The same darts bar. It’s like, ‘Good to see you. How’s it going?’ And we got to talking and I asked him what he did for work. And he told me he worked at ARK,” Robbins recalled.

Robbins told him about Lucra and the contact introduced him to the investment team at ARK, which wound up writing a small check in his Series A round.

“My first piece of advice on all of this is you never know who you’re talking to. Just go around, be nice, meet people, have fun,” Robbins says. Let that lead to good conversations, which will lead to introductions, he said.

Flash forward a few years to the end of 2025, when AI had overtaken venture funding like honeysuckle.

Lucra Sports had really found its lane with its white-labeling service. It was ready to raise a Series B to fuel growth and new ideas like adding mini-games into its offerings. (Lucra just invested in a mini-game development partner to build out this capability.)

But Robbins kept running into an AI-shaped wall.

“We were raising in Q4 of 2025, which was then, like even now, kind of peak AI mayhem,” Robbins said. “One out of every three calls, the first line, they would stop the meeting and say, oh, we’re only investing in AI now, I don’t want to waste your time. To the point where they wouldn’t even let me pitch.”

The rest told him they were only investing in AI after they heard the pitch.

So Robbins tried a new tactic. He adjusted his pitch and his deck to discuss AI right out of the gate. The revised pitch argued that if AI works, people are going to have more free time to play games with friends at the bar or online — hence his business will be a winner — and if it doesn’t, a non-AI bet starts to look like smart diversification. It was a hedge either way.

“It was a small cohort of people that would really take it seriously,” he said of his pitch. ARK, fortunately, was one of them. Once committed, the lead investor made introductions to other VCs to help fill out the round.

Underpinning all of this were good business fundamentals, including “consistent year over year growth, not just one spurt,” he said.

The final lesson Robbins learned was that, especially for a non-AI business, VCs want to hear a big dream. Robbins had one: a total addressable market of anyone who plays games of any kind, from pickleball to Wordle.

“So our TAM is almost every American that’s 18 to 70, right?” Robbins said. Even so, he had one VC send a rejection that he printed out and posted to the wall.

“I sent them our growth chart and our TAM, which was like crazy, up into the right growth potential, huge, big, billions of TAM. And the response was: ‘TAM’s too small.’ That was the response. Like, our growth rate was too slow,” he said.

He said this was a “reminder” to him “to think even bigger.”

“I have to put myself in that mindset and really swing for the fences if I want to raise venture capital money,” he added.

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless arrives at a critical moment for every premium noise-cancelling headphone brand that likes sleeping at night. Sony has the new 1000X The ColleXion, Apple has finally pushed forward with AirPods Max 2, Bose is still leaning hard into noise cancellation with its latest QuietComfort Ultra Headphones, and Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 continues to court listeners who demand that their wireless headphones sound like high-end transducers.

That matters because Sennheiser has spent the past few years defending two different corners of the headphone market: the mainstream wireless category with the MOMENTUM 4 Wireless, and the more serious audiophile lane with the HDB 630, which we also reviewed as a higher-performance Bluetooth headphone for listeners who prioritise sound quality over ANC performance or call quality.

MOMENTUM 5 Wireless Keeps the MOMENTUM 4 Formula But Adds More Control

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless builds on the MOMENTUM 4 platform rather than replacing the basic formula. The new model keeps the 42mm transducer from its predecessor, manufactured at Sennheiser’s Tullamore, Ireland facility, and uses tuning inspired by the company’s HD 600-series headphones. Sennheiser describes the sound as full-bodied with dynamic bass, which suggests continuity with the MOMENTUM line rather than a major sonic reset. 

The more practical headline may be the user-replaceable 700 mAh battery, which gives the $399.99 MOMENTUM 5 Wireless a real longevity advantage over rivals that still treat batteries like a countdown timer to your next purchase. Sennheiser is giving owners a way to keep the headphones they already paid for instead of nudging them toward the next model the moment battery life starts to fade.

The codec and wireless story has also been updated. MOMENTUM 5 Wireless includes Hi-Res Audio certification, Snapdragon Sound, and Bluetooth codec support up to aptX Lossless. It ships with Bluetooth 5.4, but Sennheiser says the hardware is designed to support Bluetooth 6.0 through a future firmware update.

Noise cancellation has been revised with more microphones. Sennheiser says the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless uses four microphones per side for ANC and transparency functions, doubling the microphone count used for those duties. The company claims the new system is up to three times more effective at reducing distracting voice chatter, with improvements to airplane cabin noise reduction and voice quality on calls.

Spatial Audio Arrives, But the Replaceable Battery May Matter More

Spatial audio is included, but there are a few conditions. Dolby Atmos with head tracking will be enabled through a day-one firmware update in Sennheiser’s Smart Control Plus app, and it requires an Atmos-enabled source device plus supported Atmos content.

That should include popular devices such as recent iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple TV 4K, many current Android phones, Fire TV devices, and other streamers or computers that support Dolby Atmos playback through services like Apple Music, Amazon Music Unlimited, TIDAL, Netflix, Disney+, or Max. The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless can handle the feature, but the phone, app, subscription tier, and content still have to line up. Naturally, audio remains a team sport whether we like it or not.

Support for Dolby Atmos-encoded content streamed through TIDAL worked properly out of the box, but head tracking was not yet enabled during my review period.

Battery life remains a major part of the story. Sennheiser rates the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless at up to 57 hours per charge with ANC engaged. The bigger practical change is the user-replaceable 700 mAh battery, which can be swapped with a small Phillips-head screwdriver.

That 60-hour battery claim looks great on paper, but real-world use landed a bit lower for me. Across several weeks of mixed listening, I averaged closer to 53 to 54 hours, depending on volume, source device, codec support, and whether I was streaming music from TIDAL and Qobuz or watching movies and TV on an iPad Pro.

Battery drain varied by device. My iPhone 14, iPhone 17, and iPhone X burned through the charge a bit faster, while a borrowed Samsung phone came closer to the upper end of Sennheiser’s rating. Streaming hi-res content from Qobuz and TIDAL pulled those numbers down slightly, which is exactly what you would expect when asking the headphones to do more than sip compressed audio through a straw.

With ANC engaged, especially in Adaptive or Custom modes, I would set realistic expectations closer to 51 to 52 hours. That is still excellent. I used the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless on NJ Transit, inside the walking migraine known as American Dream on Memorial Day Sunday with roughly 150,000 people trying to turn a mall into a survival documentary, and during a United Airlines trip home from Las Vegas that was delayed, rerouted through George Bush Airport in Houston, then Dulles in Northern Virginia, before finally reaching Newark about 17 hours later.

After seeing The Wizard of Oz at Sphere in Las Vegas, I thought Dorothy had the rough travel day. Turns out all she needed was a pair of ruby slippers and a unionized gate agent.

The practical takeaway is simple: the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless has more than enough stamina for a full week of commuting, travel, office use, and the kind of airport punishment that makes you question every life choice since booking basic economy. For anyone who treats wireless headphones like a daily workhorse rather than a delicate audio object, the battery life is one of the stronger reasons to consider them.

Build Quality, Comfort, and a Travel Case That Actually Saves Space

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless fold flat for travel, which helps, although they do not feel quite as premium in the hand as the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 or Px8 S2. Those remain part of my daily rotation along with the HDB 630, and Bowers still has the edge when it comes to materials and that more polished luxury feel. The Sennheiser build is still quite solid, just more practical than posh.

The headband uses braided cloth on the top side with padding underneath, and on my head, the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless feel very similar to the HDB 630. The difference is that the HDB 630 uses the same leatherette material on both the inside and outside of the headband, which gives it a slightly different tactile feel. Both are lightweight and easy to wear, and neither feels like it was designed by someone who thinks discomfort builds character.

The ear pads have the same basic issue I noticed with the HDB 630. They are soft and comfortable, but I would prefer them to be slightly firmer. They also get warm after about 30 minutes, especially during commuting or longer listening sessions. Not unbearable, not deal-breaking, but noticeable.

Clamping force is generally similar to the HDB 630 and less firm than the Bowers & Wilkins models. That matters because I have a huge head, move through trains with some force, and still somehow try to maintain the stealth profile of a ninja who has had enough of NJ Transit. The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless stayed secure without feeling tight, which is the balance you want from travel headphones that are going to see actual use rather than live in a review drawer.

Sennheiser has also reduced the overall travel footprint. The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless carrying case is 20% smaller, and the packaging is now smaller and plastic-free. Inside the case, Sennheiser includes a USB Type-C charging cable and a 3.5mm analog audio cable, so wired listening is still available for laptops, in-flight entertainment systems, and the other legacy sources that refuse to die quietly.

Compared to the case supplied with the more expensive HDB 630, the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless case is noticeably smaller, which matters when the headphones are going into a backpack, carry-on, or that personal item you are already pretending is not overstuffed. Both models fold, so neither is a travel disaster, but the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is clearly the more compact option.

The accessory package is where the pricing difference starts to make more sense. The HDB 630 includes extras such as the airplane adapter and Sennheiser’s BTD 700 USB Adapter; the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless does not. That makes the HDB 630 the better-equipped package for listeners who want more connection options in the box, while the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless keeps things simpler, smaller, and more mainstream.

Smarter App, Stronger ANC

The companion app also gets more control. The new Smart Control Plus app includes an 8-band EQ, user presets, and Sennheiser’s Sound Personalization system. That should give listeners more flexibility than a few canned tuning modes, especially for those who liked the MOMENTUM 4 but wanted more precise adjustment.

One of the stronger parts of the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless experience is Sennheiser’s Smart Control Plus app. This was already one of the highlights with the HDB 630, and that carries over here. The app is comprehensive without feeling like homework, and it worked flawlessly with both Sennheiser models during my testing.

The level of control is the real win. You are not stuck with a crude choice between full ANC and transparency mode. The MOMENTUM 5 lets you adjust the level of noise cancellation, enable or disable Anti-Wind in ANC mode, manage multipoint connectivity, and turn the app’s individual tiles on or off depending on what you actually use. That last part sounds minor until you have used enough headphone apps that feel like they were organized by committee after a three-hour liquid lunch.

ANC performance is also very strong. The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless did an effective job reducing commuter noise, chatter, and the general low-level misery that comes with trains, airports, and crowded public spaces. More importantly, it does not wreck the sound. There is still a slight reduction in openness and detail with ANC engaged, and the presentation tightens up a little, but the damage is minimal.

I still prefer listening with ANC off when the environment allows it, because the MOMENTUM 5 sounds more open and natural that way. But Sennheiser has made the ANC useful without turning the music into a padded cell.

Buttons, Touch Sensors, and Real-World Use

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless and HDB 630 are very similar when it comes to controls, and that is mostly a good thing. Sennheiser keeps the basics straightforward with a power button that also handles pairing, plus the expected USB-C connection and 3.5mm analog input for wired listening. Nothing exotic there, and nobody needs a treasure map to find the ports.

The touch controls are where things get more personal. Sennheiser’s system works, and I will give them full credit for that. Playback, volume, track skipping, calls, ANC, and transparency mode can all be handled from the ear cup, and the gestures responded reliably during my testing. Transparency mode can be activated with a double tap, which is useful when someone suddenly decides your headphones are an invitation to start talking.

That said, I am still more of an app person. The controls are not bad, but after rotating through multiple headphones and wireless earbuds, each with its own secret handshake of taps, swipes, pinches, holds, and “wait, was that two fingers or three?” routines, it becomes a lot to remember. At some point, you are not controlling headphones; you are auditioning for community theater mime work.

Sennheiser’s Smart Control Plus app makes more sense for how I actually use headphones. It is clean, comprehensive, and easier than trying to remember every gesture sequence while standing on a train platform or walking through a crowded terminal. The touch controls are there, they work, and plenty of users will like them. I just prefer opening the app and making the adjustment without playing finger Twister on the side of my head.

As for phone calls, the MOMENTUM 5 can handle them, but I remain fundamentally opposed to taking calls through earbuds or headphones unless absolutely necessary. That is not a Sennheiser problem. That is a “please stop making me listen to people conduct business next to the avocados” problem.

BTD 700 Dongle: Great Idea, Rough Landing With MOMENTUM 5

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless has a stronger codec story than the HDB 630 in one key respect: it supports aptX Lossless in addition to the usual Bluetooth basics, but there is still no LDAC support. For Android users with the right hardware, that may not be a big issue. For Apple users, it gets more complicated because the iPhone and MacBook still do not support aptX natively. Naturally.

That is where Sennheiser’s BTD 700 USB-C dongle is supposed to help. It acts as an external Bluetooth transmitter, bypassing the device’s built-in Bluetooth stack and handling higher-quality codec support itself. In theory, that makes it a very useful add-on for getting better wireless performance from laptops, tablets, and phones that otherwise leave you stuck with more limited Bluetooth options.

The problem is that my experience with the BTD 700 and the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless was not clean. Using it with both my iPhone and MacBook, I heard audible distortion, which is not exactly the kind of “high-resolution” experience anyone is looking for. Sennheiser has confirmed that it is working on a fix, so this may be resolved through a firmware update, but as of my testing, the issue was real.

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless still supports aptX Lossless, which is a meaningful feature on paper and potentially in practice. But the BTD 700 experience needs that fix before I would call it a slam dunk. Great concept. Right now, a little too much gremlin in the machine.

Listening

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless and HDB 630 are cut from the same Sennheiser cloth, and anyone expecting two completely different headphones is going to be disappointed. Or relieved. They share a lot of the same DNA: excellent clarity, a largely linear tonal balance, strong midrange presence, and a presentation that favors detail and space over cheap bass tricks. Sennheiser did not turn the MOMENTUM 5 into a skull-rattling gym headphone, and thank you for small mercies.

But there are differences, and they matter.

Where the HDB 630 leans a little more restrained and studio-minded, the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless brings slightly more weight and impact in the bass range. It still will not rearrange your dental work, but there is more definition, punch, and low-end authority than I heard from the HDB 630. Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia” and “21 Guns” still had the clarity, imaging, and sense of space that made the HDB 630 so easy to like, but the MOMENTUM 5 added a little more drive underneath the guitars and drums. Not bloated. Not boosted into stupidity. Just more physical.

That difference became more obvious with Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” and “Giorgio by Moroder.” The HDB 630 presents those tracks with a more open, almost studio-monitor sense of space, which is rare for a closed-back wireless headphone. The MOMENTUM 5 does not lose that Sennheiser clarity, but it adds more rhythmic grip and bass definition. The groove lands with more conviction, which matters when the entire point of the track is to make you forget whatever nonsense you were supposed to be doing for the next six minutes.

Sia’s “Unstoppable,” “Cheap Thrills,” and “Breathe Me” pushed the MOMENTUM 5 in a different direction. Those tracks are a cheerful little reminder that love, betrayal, and emotional wreckage can apparently come with solid production values. Her voice was cleanly centered and easy to follow, with enough texture to keep the emotional weight intact. “Breathe Me” in particular exposed the MOMENTUM 5’s ability to keep vocals intimate without turning the presentation syrupy. The HDB 630 is a touch more controlled and refined through the upper ranges, but the MOMENTUM 5 gives the material a bit more body.

Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” also favored the MOMENTUM 5’s extra bass definition. The pulsing low end had more shape and authority than it does through the HDB 630, while the vocal remained suspended in the mix with that slightly ghostly quality the track needs. Again, this is not bass-head territory. Sennheiser is not auditioning for a parking lot SPL contest. But the MOMENTUM 5 has more impact where the HDB 630 can sometimes feel a little polite.

Disturbed’s cover of “The Sound of Silence” was the track that really exposed the difference. David Draiman’s voice needs weight, control, and scale, and the MOMENTUM 5 gave it more physical presence than the HDB 630. The power in his delivery hit harder, especially as the arrangement builds. Draiman is also a total mensch and a personal hero, so I am not exactly coming into that track emotionally neutral. Still, the MOMENTUM 5 handled the vocal intensity well without smearing the edges or turning the whole thing into melodrama with Bluetooth attached.

The one tradeoff is the top end. On some of the same tracks I used with the HDB 630, the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless sounded slightly harder through the treble. Not bright enough to become a deal-breaker, and not sharp enough to make me start bargaining with my own ears, but it is there. The HDB 630 has a little more refinement and composure up top, while the MOMENTUM 5 trades some of that smoothness for greater bass impact and a more energetic overall presentation.

That is really the comparison in one sentence: the HDB 630 is the more restrained, refined, audiophile-leaning wireless headphone, while the MOMENTUM 5 Wireless gets very close in clarity and tonal balance but adds more bass definition, more punch, and a little more everyday fun. Sennheiser may have created a problem for itself here, because the less expensive headphone does not sound like the lesser one in every category.

The Bottom Line

The Sennheiser MOMENTUM 5 Wireless is not a dramatic reinvention, but it does not need to be. The upgrades that matter are practical and audible: Dolby Atmos with head tracking, stronger ANC with four microphones per side, aptX Lossless, Hi-Res Audio certification, an 8-band EQ, and a user-replaceable 700 mAh battery. That battery is the sleeper feature because it gives the $399.99 MOMENTUM 5 a real longevity advantage in a category where too many brands still treat worn-out batteries as your problem. 

What is missing? There is still no LDAC, the BTD 700 dongle issue needs a fix, and the MOMENTUM 5 does not include the same accessory package as the more expensive HDB 630. It also does not feel quite as premium as the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 or Px8 S2, even if the build is solid, comfortable, and travel-friendly.

Should you buy it over the HDB 630 and save some money? For many listeners, yes. The HDB 630 still has the more refined, audiophile-leaning presentation, but the MOMENTUM 5 gets surprisingly close while offering stronger bass impact, excellent ANC, a better travel footprint, and a lower price. That makes it one of the more compelling wireless headphones in the $350 to $450 range, and anyone shopping there should put it on the audition list before Sony, Bose, Apple, or Bowers get the automatic nod.

Pros:

• Strong clarity, detail retrieval, and linear tonal balance
• More bass impact and definition than the HDB 630, without turning into a bass-heavy mess
• Excellent ANC performance that does not seriously damage sound quality
• Smart Control Plus app is comprehensive, reliable, and genuinely useful
• Adjustable ANC, Anti-Wind mode, multipoint connectivity, and customizable app tiles
• Dolby Atmos support worked properly with TIDAL during testing
• aptX Lossless support gives it a stronger codec story than many rivals
• User-replaceable 700 mAh battery is a major long-term ownership win
• Real-world battery life remains excellent, even if below the claimed maximum
• Lightweight, comfortable fit with solid build quality
• Folds flat and comes with a noticeably smaller travel case than the HDB 630
• Strong value at $399.99 compared with the more expensive HDB 630

Cons:

• No LDAC support
• BTD 700 USB-C dongle produced distortion with iPhone and MacBook during testing
• Head tracking was not enabled during the review period
• Treble can sound slightly harder than the HDB 630 on some tracks
• Does not feel as premium as the Bowers & Wilkins Px7 S3 or Px8 S2
• Ear pads could be slightly firmer
• Pads get warm after about 30 minutes
• Does not include the airplane adapter or BTD 700 USB Adapter like the HDB 630
• Touch controls work, but remembering every tap, swipe, pinch, and gesture remains a pain

Our Ratings

★★★★★★★★★★ Sound Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ Comfort

★★★★★★★★★★ Usability

★★★★★★★★★★ Build Quality

★★★★★★★★★★ ANC

★★★★★★★★★★ Value

Price & Availability

The MOMENTUM 5 Wireless will be available in Black, White, and Denim finishes for $399.99 USD, with U.S. availability beginning June 16, 2026 through Sennheiser’s website and select retailers.

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