Cambridge Audio Melomania Touch True Wireless Earphone Review

Cambridge Audio has released their second set of true wireless earphones. The Melomania Touch follows on from the Melomania 1 (which we reviewed here), with a new design and a number of key new features.

Cambridge Audio sent us the Melomania Touch before Christmas to review. Read on to see how we got on.

Design

The Melomania 1 had a conical, or bullet-shaped design with a tactile button on the end. With the Melomania Touch, as you may have guessed by the name, Cambridge Audio have moved to touch-sensitive controls and have redesigned the casing to resemble a more traditional in-ear monitor form factor.

With that redesign comes a much more natural fit. The casing takes the shape of your ear when inserted and Cambridge Audio has added an additional, removable, rubber “fin” which helps to secure the earphone at the top of your ear.

You can touch pretty much anywhere on the outward face to issue commands but as a result, if you have to reposition the earphones in your ears you need to be mindful of accidental touches.

Overall the Melomania Touch are a big improvement for fit and comfort compared with Melomania 1 and they stay in your ears without too many issues. This is helped by the fact that the earphones weigh in at only 5.9g each.

What’s in the Box

Inside the box, you get a pill-shaped charging case, a USB C charging cable along with a number of different sized silicone ear tips and a number of different sized fins mentioned above.

Melomania Touch Specs

The Melomania Touch are crammed full of all the latest specs you’d expect from a high end set of true wireless earphones including Bluetooth 5.0, aptX support, IPX4 water resistance and voice control support for both Android and iOS.

Depending on what performance mode you choose (more on that below) the batteries in the earphones are capable of up to 9 hours playback with a further 50 hours available through the charging case.

Click to expand the button below to have a look at the full specs.

Melomania Touch Features

As true wireless earphones have matured the feature list has expanded with most new models and there’s almost a checklist now we check to see are included when we get news of a new launch.

In this regard, the Melomania Touch tick nearly all of those boxes. The big inclusion this time around for me is the introduction of an app to interact with the earphones. The vast majority of earphones we review at this price point don’t include this so the extra features on offer make this seem like a more premium experience.

To begin with, the app can facilitate firmware updates for the earphones. True wireless earphones often experience minor issues when they make their way out to the wider world so being able to correct these issues via firmware updates is a massive advantage.

From the app you have access to an equalizer for adjusting the sound, should you so wish. There’s a number of the usual presets available and the user can also create their own.

There are two audio performance modes available to select. A high-performance mode that provides the best audio experience and a low-performance mode which increases battery life to its maximum. If you care about sound quality I don’t think you will ever use the low-performance mode but it’s still nice to have the option. In high-performance mode, the battery life is still a respectable 7 hours.

You can also disable the touch controls from within the app if you’d prefer to just use your phone to control things.

The range for connection to your device is excellent. Around my home which has all brick walls, I could walk around freely while leaving my phone in the middle of the house in the kitchen. That’s something that few other earphones I have reviewed can achieve.

It hasn’t been completely without issue though as sometimes I have struggled to get the earphones to either connect or stay connected to my phone when you take them out of the case initially. The majority of the time it worked without issue but every now and then when I took the earphones out of the case they would power on, pair and then disconnect in short order. You would need to then place the earphones back in the case and try again.

Usually, after a try or two, it would work fine again. Hopefully, this is something that will be resolved in future firmware updates.

One feature that is missing from the checklist is active noise cancellation. As there is now that checklist that people are looking at it may seem like a negative for the Melomania Touch but I don’t think that’s really the case. Whether you need ANC in a set of earphone is questionable in my opinion. Once you have a good fit, which is easily achievable with the Melomania Touch, you have blocked out a huge amount of ambient noise already and when you hit play, what’s left disappears. Not having to process ANC will also have a positive impact on battery life.

How do they Sound

One of the advantages Cambridge Audio have over many of their competitors is a long history of making hi-fi audio equipment. The challenge for Cambridge Audio has been miniaturising that tech to fit in wireless earphones and still sound good.

For the most part in high-performance mode, Cambridge Audio has produced a very clean sounding set of earphones which are very easy to listen to. Across the frequency range, there is no distortion at all. Out of the box, the earphones can be a little bass-heavy for my liking but this is where the equalizer comes in to play and I could rein some of it in a little.

The higher bass levels is a continuing trend for broad market earphones. If you are used to listening to high-end equipment it will stand out and I’d prefer to see Cambridge Audio producing a more balanced audio signature in line with their other high-end equipment but the bass-heavy tones do seem to be what the average consumer wants. I guess it’s better to have it and be able to tone it back rather than not having it at all.

Sound is delivered via 7mm graphene-enhanced dynamic driver. As with most dynamic drivers, sound quality has improved a small amount as I have used them more. Volume levels could be a little higher. This was something we found with the Melomania 1. This could be an active choice by Cambridge Audio to protect people’s hearing but for me, I’m a little too close to the top of the volume range with nowhere to go if the audio I’m listening to is also on the low side.

The Melomania Touch provide an enjoyable listening experience and are right up there with competitors at any price point.

Conclusion

If I was reviewing the Melomania Touch and they were priced in the €200 to €300 range then I’d probably have more to say about how they stack up against the competition already in that range but when you take into account that they retail at €139.95 they are fantastic value.

With some adjustment to the equaliser, they produce excellent sound quality and are packed full of all the features you will want in a set of true wireless earphones. The earphones are well made and everything about them feels quality.

You can purchase the Melomania Touch through the Cambridge Audio website here.

(Please note this is not a sponsored review and we do not receive any commission should you choose to purchase anything from Cambridge Audio)