It's been almost five years since we featured the first truly wireless earphones, and now such things are almost as ubiquitous and varied as their cabled counterparts. Battery life can be quite short though, even Apple's second generation AirPods only last for five hours or so. Cambridge Audio is tackling this for its first dip into the wireless earphone pool with the Melomania 1 – true wireless earbuds boasting up to 45 hours of music listening.
Launched today, the Melomania 1 earphones are named after the live music venue located on the ground floor of the company's London research and development center. To be fair, each earbud will only last for nine hours of continuous playback per charge, but that should be enough for even the longest trip to work and back. Possibly even a few times over.
When the built-in batteries begin to fade, the listener can pop them into the carabiner-packing charging case up to four times before the whole shebang runs flat – hence the 45 hour battery life claim. It will take 90 minutes in the charging case for the earphones to reach full capacity from empty. If you can't wait that long, 20 percent can be had in 15 minutes, or 80 percent in 60 minutes. The battery in the charging case itself also takes 90 minutes from flat to full.
Cambridge Audio prides itself on delivering top notch audio, and that starts here with wireless connectivity between Melomania 1 earphones and music source over Bluetooth 5.0 with AAC and aptX codec support for CD quality audio reproduction, and drop-free streaming with up to 30 m (100 ft) of range.
Then there's the use of graphene for the diaphragms of the 5.8 mm drivers, with the company promising dynamic and responsive listening with deep bass and clear highs over a 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response with less than 0.04 percent total harmonic distortion.
To slice away background noise during calls, the MEMS microphone makes use of Qualcomm's Clear Voice Capture noise-canceling tech. And the earphones are compatible with Siri and Google Assistant too.
Finally, both the charging case and earphones rock IPX5 resistance to water and sweat, which should be good for dancing in the rain or running a marathon without worrying about damaging your earphones.
The Melomania 1 true wireless earphones are available from today for US$129.95.
Source: Cambridge Audio