Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 True Wireless Headphones with Active Noise Cancellation
design
In-ear wireless headphones have quickly sorted themselves into three common shapes; stem, bullet and bud. Cambridge Audio has gone with the latter for the Melomania M100 in a sleek, dark package that cleverly incorporates the brand’s circular logo – a neat touch. Beyond this small detail there’s nothing too remarkable about the M100’s design, they’re understated and classy while looking suitable premium for their £169 price point.
Build quality is impressive too with enough weight in each M100 earbud to feel solid and sturdy but still remaining plenty light enough to be forgotten about in your ear. Squeezing, shaking and prodding each Melomania M100 earbud there was no creakiness or rattling and with just 1 visible seam that’s cleverly integrated into the design it feels almost as if they’re formed from a single continuous blob of plastic.
Cambridge Audio is generous with its tips, there are five different size and material options in the M100 box with both silicon and foam options in different sizes. I appreciated how much easier these are to remove and replace than those on the Apple Airpods Pro, though I couldn’t settle on an option that I felt was a perfect fit. The Melomania M100 earbuds are comfortable enough overall but I always found they never quite felt as though they were sitting right and I had to make little tweaks and adjustments all the time. This isn’t uncommon with ear buds though, ears are weird and often funny shaped things so it’s not surprising you need to be willing to make small compromises.
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While the Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 buds themselves are compact, the same can’t be said for the case which is a little too big to be practical for day to day use. I could overlook the length of this pill-shaped box, that’s easily pocketable, the problem is the combination of the near 4.5cm depth and 3cm height. While on paper these dimensions aren’t too far away from an Airpods Pro case, in reality the extra size makes the M100 charging case a lump to carry around and it was noticeably awkward in the pocket of my jeans.
performance
I don’t claim to be an audiophile, I wouldn’t even go as far as to call myself an audio enthusiast, I’m pretty common when it comes to my listening habits. Spotify in the gym, podcasts on a walk and the odd on-the-go phone call thrown in there too. Like a lot of people I usually turn to a set of Apple Airpods Pro for this, so you’ll find a lot of comparisons between those and the Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 here.
For day-to-day listening I was impressed by what the M100 earbuds had to offer. I’m not going to try and wax lyrical about the finer details of the sound, there are far more qualified people than me to do that for you, but to my everyman ear they sounded better for all-round listening than my Airpods. There was a greater richness to songs, feeling fuller and more unctuous thanks to the Melomania M100 10mm drivers. This extra depth was particularly noticeable when listening to podcasts where voices were rounded and smooth with a little extra punch to them.
If you’d like to dial in and personalise things then the Melomania Connect app offers 7-band adjustable EQ and fiddling around in there does produce noticeable differences to the sound. The app is neatly laid out and easy to navigate around and includes a few handy features like sleep mode that disables the touch sensitive controls and mono mode for sharing a single M100 bud each with a friend. There’s even the option to have the effortlessly wonderful Matt Berry deliver audible feedback which is something I never knew I needed and now am not sure I can live without.
While there are wear detect settings available on the Cambridge Audio M100 earbuds, in testing I found these largely unreliable. On multiple occasions I’d notice my podcast continued to play even after I’d removed both buds and on a couple of occasions I could hear it continuing to play even seated in the closed charging case. For something so minor it’s surprising how irritating this little quality of life flaw was, Airpods are so good at this that it’s something you begin to take for granted.
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Active noise cancellation is a new addition for Cambridge Audio and on the Melomania M100 earbuds, unlike the audio performance, I found the experience fine without being impressive. While the M100s were able to take the edge off in most situations I often found they felt a little unbalanced. One ear would sound like it was filtering out more sound than the other and no amount of fiddling with the fit could overcome this. I also found the Melomania M100s particularly sensitive to wind, more so than my Airpod Pros, so would usually end up toggling off ANC when out and about.
One thing that the Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 earbuds do incredibly well is battery life. They just seem to go on and on and on. I’ve been testing them for a few weeks now, admittedly without any particularly long or heavy sessions, but even with standard use I’m yet to have to charge the case. Cambridge Audio claim the buds themselves will last 10 hours with ANC on and 16 with it off, both of which are outstanding – when’s the last time you listened to music non-stop for 10 hours? The charging case more triples both these numbers and 10 minutes sitting in there pumps in enough power for 1.5 hours of noise-cancelled listening. Genuinely impressive.
summed up
The Cambridge Audio Melomania M100 earbuds are tidy little performers without quite offering enough to become a must-have purchase. At £169 they’re still a premium purchase, albeit a more reasonable one than Apple Airpods Pro, and so while their raw audio performance does reflect this – the whole experience includes a few rougher edges.
If you’re looking for pure sound quality the Melomania M100 wireless earbuds are a great choice with lossless audio and a full, rich vibe. As a general pair of buds though, little problems like middling ANC performance and the odd connectivity quirk start to become more impactful. If you can listen past those flaws however there’s a lot to like and the Melomania M100 earbuds are well worth considering.
