Cambridge Audio Melomania Touch True Wireless Earbuds - Bluetooth 5.0 Hi-Fi Stereo Earphones with Premium Sound for iPhone & Android (Black) | Perfect for Gym, Commuting & Music Lovers

First, I am going to dive in to my complaints.1) The ANC mode works awesomely and blocks out sound pretty well when wanting noise cancellation. However, my issue with these earphones is the Transparency mode, unfortunately. The Transparency mode sounds excellent if sitting at a desk, or at a standstill, with excellent directional sensation for a very natural ambience experience. The issue is, the moment I start moving, even at a walking pace, the wind wooshes over the mics, and sounds like blasting my ears with a can of compressed air. I tried these for mountain biking, and even on a very slow climb, enough of a wind factor was created to make the wind noise insufferable (even with Transparency set at or below 50%). The wind noise blocked out both the ambient sounds and the music, totally negating the benefit of a Transparency mode. Even walking around my office creates a harsh wind noise. I contacted Cambridge and asked about wind reducing technology, which they claim this unit should be able to do reasonably well (which they do not). I suppose I will return the Melomania Touch so I can try out the Sony WF-1000XM4, and/or the Sennheiser Momentum 3 TWS, or even settle for the horrible sounding Shokz OpenRun Pro bone conduction headphones if the other buds can't suffice with wind noise during exercise (as bone conduction leave the ear canal totally unblocked at the expense of any sort of tonal quality). It would be awesome if a firmware push would help the wind noise issue, but I won't hold my breath.2) The connectivity issues and touch controls are just as finnicky and inconsistent as the OG Melomania 1. Even the latest firmware update has not resolved the issues. I need to put the buds back in the battery box several times to get both buds to play equally, or get Transparency Mode to work at the same level between left and right. The Touch controls only respond to the necessary number of touches to perform a function sometimes (example the buds confuse sings, double, and triple presses and perform the wrong function). It's passable, but annoying.The good:1) The sound quality is phenomenal. I've been rocking a pair of the Melomania 1's since they first released, and they are pretty darn good, especially for their price point and ease of use. The Melomania Touch happen to carry the Cambridge sound signature, but sound substantially better in every regard. The highs are less veiled with refined detail, while never sounding aggressive, harsh, fatiguing, or too bright (especially for cymbals and distorted guitars in metal music). NOTE, I found it necessary to set the EQ to "Custom" with no EQ curve to get a neutral response. Ironically, the "Neutral" preset sounds like an icepick. The bass is even bigger than before, but significantly tighter with quick transients, with a depth of range I get out of my SVS SB-3000 subs in my home system (providing the thunder to my Dynaudio towers). The low-mids are no longer loose and bloated sounding for some recordings. The sound stage is much bigger and immersive than before. It's pretty mind blowing how incredible TWS earbuds have come in terms of sound quality. And this pair, especially at this price point, should be on any audiophile's wish list (as long as these aren't used in a momentous situation). Sonically, they really blow any Apple AirPods or Samsung Galaxy buds I've experienced out of the water. Albums like Decapitated's Cancer Culture, Machine Head's Of Kingdom and Crown, and A Wilhelm Scream's Use Your Delusion for example, sound reference quality across the whole frequency spectrum.2) The fit. I really love the stability fins. I was skeptical that this set only comes with silicone tips and no foamies. However, the fitment is so good for jolting, running footsteps, rapid head movements, and enduro biking, that I never felt the need for foam tips. The sound seal is great with the silicone tips. The buds are lightweight and barely feel like I am wearing them.If the intended purpose is top quality sound, these earbuds are great. Sadly, if the intended use involves any physical activity that needs transparency mode afor safety, the wind noise renders the mode useless.These headphones don’t have ANC or a super fancy app, but what they do offer is great transparency mode, decent passive noise cancelling and amazing audio quality. Bass is super deep and reverberated well, highs are clear and crisp and half decent mids. These are by far the best headphones (either over ear, on ear, or in ear) that I have ever owned.I have read that these particular headphones have connectivity issues, but I haven’t experienced it save for once when I might have inadvertently initiated the pairing sequence - requiring me to re-pair the Bluetooth connection with my phone.Complaints - very minor, but the transparency mode seems to “renew” every few minutes which essentially turns off for a second in one ear, then the other. It’s a minor complaint, but could be disruptive if listening to an important announcement, or during a conversation.Compliments - these are massively comfortable. I wore them for 4 hours straight, save for minor itching inside my ear after a couple of hours I felt zero discomfort with the stock earpiece and tail-fin. The battery life is fantastic. The 9 hour playback is a bit of a gotcha as you need to switch to low power mode which (apparently) initiates a OS swap on the earbuds. Standard “high performance” mode probably lasts 6 hours which is plenty. The case has a battery that charges the ear-pieces pretty quickly. I have had these headphones for a week and have yet to recharge the case. The audio is amazing. David Gray’s - Please Forgive Me bass roll around 4:00 of the song shakes my skull, not to overpower the other audio though, but carry's like a car audio system with a subwoofer. The equalizer in the app is awesome. The 6 stock settings are pretty quality, with three custom settings available. My only complaint is that the three custom setting names are not able to be edited. Minor complaint.The average - audio on phone calls is ok. I can hear them very well, but I often hear “I can barely hear you” during my conversations.Overall, for $99, these are a no-brainer!! If you’re on the fence I think that you’ll be hard pressed to find better audio for the cost. Get ‘em! They look good, they sound good, and they last a long time. I’ll update this review in a few months after using them more.I am so very disappointed with these. The sound quality is amazing, easily the best I have ever heard from wireless earbuds WHEN/If they work. But that's the problem. Let me break it down for you -1-despite using the eartips included in the box they regularly disconnect from the charging pins in the case and turn themselves on whilst in my bag, sometimes connecting to my phone and causing havoc.2- Nine times out of ten they don't connect to my phone at all when removed from the case, or just one of the earbuds connects and that forces me to put them back in the case and press and hold them there to factory reset them. Doing this ofc means I have to unpair them with my phone and they loose all of the settings from the app.3- IF I manage to get them to connect correctly then about 2/3 of the time a glitch happens where the volume control on my phone freaks out and keeps jumping up and down making them unlistenable and I'm forced to, you guessed it, factory reset them.4- the app is a shoddy barely working joke. Half the time if I manage to connect the earbuds the app won't register them as connected so I cannot control them.5- the firmware upgrades... I have had to do 2 firmware upgrades since I first bought these earbuds and BOTH times it has gone badly with only one earbud updating successfully leaving me to, drumroll please, Factory effing reset them! When the process finally works the buds are just as shoddy and just as broken as before.6- the touch controls just plain don't work most of the time either and I keep pressing them accidentally when seating the buds in my ears.7- the microphones are barely functional and sound awful on phone calls to the point where I'm forced to remove one and hold it in front of my mouth so the other person can hear. At which point the hateful touch controls usually activate and end the call.In conclusion I loved my melomania 1s and was so excited to try the 'upgrade' suffice to say I have not been this disappointed in a product in a long long time. All of my goodwill for Cambridge Audio has dried up and after 3 weeks of struggling with them, talking to customer services, being promised firmware fixes that don't deliver and growing to despise them I will be refunding these as soon as I have done with this review.Cambridge Audio should be ashamed of themselves for shipping something so half-baked and broken to the general public. Don't buy these, save yourself the disappointment and hassle.A year and a half on from the brilliant and criminally underrated Melomania 1's, here is Cambridge Audio's follow-up: the Melomania Touch.Provided you achieve a good seal, which isn't too difficult given the ergonomic design of the melomania touch with the switchable wing tips (called comfort bands - 3 sizes included in the box) and earbud tips (also 3 sizes included in the box), they are undoubtedly one of, if not the best sounding TWS as of February 2021. I see many people have complained about connectivity, but honestly I've noticed no issues whatsoever - make sure you download the melomania app and update the firmware, because I suspect many of these individuals are running on early dated releases. Cambridge Audio supported the predecessing Melomania 1's very well post-launch to iron out kinks, and it is no different here; if anything it is even better because the app allows for effortless updating.Speaking of the app, it is incredibly clean and intuitive - it could easily pass as something developed by the likes of a software giant such as Sony. There are plenty of options to customise to your liking, including a very appreciated option to force the phone to only ever use aptX codec. Another great thing in the app is the equaliser, which if you increase the sliders is actually able to increase the volume without distortion - THANK YOU, CA! I use my earbuds to do active stuff and I need them to be loud. There are so many equalizers that add distortion when you move the sliders up. You are also able to enable transparency mode via the app (or the earbud), which is a very useful and underrated feature for a variety of reasons, most obvious being your safety, especially when used at night. Noise cancelling didn't make the cut unfortunately, but given the price it's a trade-off I am willing to make and to be honest if you have a good seal, which you should anyway for the best sound quality, most of the external noise is blocked out anyway. Noise cancellation also negaticely affects sound quality with some earbuds. There is a high-performance option in the app which I yse exclusively and this allows for about 6-7 hours battery life on the earbuds. The low-performance mode allows for a couple extra hours at the expense of soynd quality, although to be honest the difference is negligible. I have no need for more than 6-7 hours so I just leave it in high performance mode.Now, onto my few criticisms with the device: first, the touch controls. Honestly they should have just stuck with physical buttons because they are just too sensitive and it's hard to adjust the fit without triggering them. At the moment I have turned off all the earbud controls in the app besides double tap for previous/next track and triple tap for transparency mode, since these two are less difficult to trigger accidentally. I know a common complaint with physical buttons is that they hurt a bit when pressed since the earbuds are slightly jammed into the ear, but you quickly get used to how much pressure to use when pressing them so that they don't hurt. I also find that this occasional mild pressure helps recover the seal for the duration that you have them in. Also, please if you read this Cambridge Audio, release some foam eartips for the touch just like you did for the melomania 1's - they are just substantially more comfortable and also help maintain a seal better. Due to the ergonomic design of the Melomania Touch, I find when you move your face to laugh, smile etc and your ear canals contract, it is slightly uncomfortable because they occupy so much of the inner ear section compared to the melomania 1's which stuck out like plugs. It's a trade-off they made to make the earbuds more compact and visually appealing, which I am happy about, but I feel like foam eartips would help mitigate that occasional uncomfort. Also, the case, despite being compact with a nice leather texture, it does not have wireless charging or fast charging. This really isn't a big deal for me since they get charged overnight anyway and you only save about 2 seconds by placing them on a charge pad opposed to plugging it in.Overall they are a very versatile set of earbuds that offer fantastic sound quality and value for money and require only foam eartips to be the icing on the cake, which I suspect Cambridge Audio probably have on their to-do list. Thanks for taking the time to read my review. I really like this product and I am happy to thoroughly share my honest thoughts so people might be able to use them to predict if they would be the best option for themselves. They are certainly worth a punt at the fairly modest price they are set at in my opinion.I bought these to accompany my lock down walks. I love music especially Hip Hop and rap and the quality of the delivery on this set is brilliant.I use Tidal masters so APTX was a must, the difference is audible, the distance between instruments and lyracists is brilliant and only really matched by my Sennheiser over ears.The problems come when trying to use it with more than one device.My MacBook connects but refuses to deliver audio to the headphones, my PC doesn't acknowledge it exists, my android phone is the only thing that will reliably pair to it and even then it always only connects to one headphone at a time then i have to wake up the other one before it connects to it.There has been one firmware update already so at least they are updating it regularly. The app ain't that great either, I think this is a hit or miss type scenario. I am not sure I will keep them but if I don't I will definitely miss the quality and instrument separation.UpdatedNow on firmware 1.3.1 the connection has been rock solid on all of the above and switches between them quickly now. The phone callquality has improved as well. Basically all of the things I whine about above is now sorted. The app is even better now.Edit to my review below. I did eventually have to send these back to CA after they identified that one of the buds was broken. Customer service was great and the return process slick. The new set of buds alongside the software updates has gone a long way to resolving many of the problems. However, after a few months I'm beginning to see similar problems with the new set, including having to leave the buds to run out of charge overnight because they wouldn't connect and wouldn't reset. I'm still of the view that these sound great but they're not for people who aren't happy with putting some effort in to keeping them running smoothly.Original review - I really do want to like these Melomania Touch but it is still clearly very early days for these earbuds.First of all these sound great. There is little to be gained in comparing their sound to other pairs of headphones and in-ear monitors that I own other than to say that they can hold their own against all of them. These aren't for critical listening but for having music with me when I'm out and about and getting on with other stuff. For this there is plenty to like about the way they deliver up your music and sonically nothing to complain about. They deliver across the spectrum for my particular tastes: enough bass, enough treble, plenty of detail and clarity. More than anything they seem to serve up the music with an awful lot more enjoyment than others I own - to the point that for the few days I owned them I've chosen to listen to these even though I didn't need the flexibility or portability of wireless earbuds. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything in the music when I have these on. The equaliser settings in the app make a noticeable difference to the sound, so if you need more treble, mids or bass it's all there, although personally I find the standard balanced settings suit me best.Ergonomically they suit my (small) ear well and, despite approximately half of the main body protruding (rather than sitting in) my ear, the rubber tips and wings keep them securely in place while I move about. I've worn these continuously for five hours with no discomfort. The touch controls are useful and, after taking some getting used to, work most of the time and certainly consistently enough for me to use this as the main form of control without having to reach for my phone. Sometimes they do seem to struggle to get the timing right (was that one, two or three taps?) but this could be my inability to hit the side of my head accurately enough - a skill I never though would be useful so I've never practised. Build quality is good and they feel like a quality product although the shiny surface does need a clean now and then. The passive sound isolation is good and the transparency mode is great - although it does annoy my family that I won't take them out to talk to them.But then...getting these connected can be tricky proposition. I've owned these about five days now and for the first few days of casual listening I had the odd glitch with getting connected. The app in particular seems reluctant to do it's job and I've had to revert to connecting manually via the Bluetooth settings on my phone. Sometimes they will initially only play through one ear, so start again and reconnect...app not recognising them...back to the bluetooth settings and so on. Eventually when they are set up they tend to keep their connection fine (for example while my phone is next to me typing this). However I have experienced some disconnections, particularly in the left bud, when my phone is in my right rear pocket. Change to left rear pocket and the problem disappears. The sound quality once connected has made this nuisance worthwhile - I'm used to some inconvenience if it gets me exactly what I want and all of this seemed like a fair trade off.However, on the day of writing this getting connected has been a major problem. App says no and so does the phone's bluetooth settings. Reset earbuds, once, twice, three times. Phone can see the buds, connects, disconnects, connect again etc etc. while I sit doing nothing just watching the status change every few seconds. App does nothing. One ear bud connects and I get music. The other one can't be bother turning up to the party so they both get put back into the charging case and we start all over again. All in all, of the two hours I had to listen to music (a rare opportunity in my house and a credit to the sound quality that I chose these over more expensive kit) and I have spent 1.5 hours trying to connect them. That's a fail in my book - if I can't listen to music through headphones when I have the time too then what's the point?I can't quite bring myself to send these back but any more of this and I'm afraid I will have too. I want to like these so much and when they are connected I really do - enough to bore people about it! But at the moment I couldn't recommend these to anybody who just needs a product to work and only wants a single set of earphones. The connection issues remind me of the woes of trying to play mp3s though one of those radio transmitters that I used to plug into the cigarette lighter of the car 15 years ago. Eventually I fear the frustration will get the better of me and I'll stop using them altogether.I know it's early doors for these earbuds (they were released 11 days ago) and if Cambridge can get this together I will happily change this review (and I really want to). I just hope they do it before I have a temper tantrum, put them back in their Jiffy bag and back off with the post man again as not fit for purpose. Come on Cambridge Audio - get it together, this is a great sounding product that just doesn't work well enough for most people.First thing to say this review is for the Melomania Touch. I also have the Melomania 1 and they are truly excellent. The Touch actually sound slightly better than the 1. The sound is very balanced, it is deeper and has improved bass without damaging the overall balanced tone. The fit of the earbuds is very nice and they stay in your ear well. The melomania app is also very good. The problem is they absolutely will not stay connected. 9 times out of 10 when I take them out of the case I get the Melomania Connected message, almost immediately followed by Waiting to Pair, Melomania disconnected. At this point if I'm lucky putting them back in the case, closing it up and then removing them fixes the issue. More often I have to reset them to factory default settings and re-pair them. After that they work perfectly for that listening session, before it starts all over again the next time I want to use them. This doesn't happen with my Melomania 1 earbuds. I suspect its due to the software and will over time be resolved by firmware updates, however right now I think it's too much money to invest on a very frustrating product. I have requested a return of mine. I truly hope this issue is resolved in the future as I'd love to own a reliable pair of these earbuds!