We liked Cambridge Audio’s Melomania 1 headphones when we gave them a go last year; we felt they offered standout sound quality and connectivity for their price. Now the venerable audio company is releasing its latest set of headphones, this time promising to both improve sound quality and battery life.
In fact, the company claims its new Melomania Touch true wireless headphones offer a whopping 50 hours of total battery life (9 hours per charge, plus an extra 41 in the case) when used in a special low power mode. Even in ‘High Performance Audio Mode,’ the headphones still offer a very respectable 7 hours of battery life per charge, with an extra 33 hours in the case.
This time around the headphones use touch controls as opposed to the big buttons on their predecessors. The company says the headphones were “crafted using data points from over 3,000 pairs of ears to ensure the perfect combination of long-lasting comfort,” and that they are lightweight at under 6 grams each.
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While the headphones don’t offer any built-in active noise cancellation, I found the originals still blocked a good amount of sound passively, and Cambridge Audio seems to be aiming for similar performance here. To that end, there’s also a transparency mode for when you’d actually like to hear more of the outside world. The touch controls also allow you to play and pause music, skip tracks, change volume, or summon Siri or the Google Assistant.
The company says it’s leveraging the similar amplification technology to what it uses in its hi-fi CX amps, claiming to offer “an even greater soundstage, lower noise and a higher dynamic range than ever before with Melomania Touch.” The headphones feature a 7mm graphene driver, slightly larger than the 5.8mm graphene driver in the original; the material is known for its strength and rigidity.
The headphones support Bluetooth 5.0 and both AAC and AptX codecs, and promise decent microphone quality too, thanks to Qualcomm’s Clear Voice Capture technology that cancels background noise. A new Melomania app allows you to set custom equalizer settings and helps you find lost earbuds. And mercifully, the headphones charge via USB-C rather than the antiquated Micro USB this time too.
The Melomania Touch will be priced at $149.95 / £129.95 / €139.95 when they go on sale starting January 1 on both Cambridge Audio’s website and Amazon. It’s a refreshingly reasonable price for a product from an audiophile-oriented company; here’s hoping they live up to their predecessors.
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