Cambridge Audio Melomania P100: Two-minute review

The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear noise-cancelling headphones enter a sector of the market as cutthroat as they come – that of best noise-cancelling headphones. It’s a category that’s been ruled (at least in the under-$350 sub-sector) by Sony's XM-suffixed cans for some time now, but Cambridge Audio reckons it’s got what it takes to snatch the crown.

And, on paper at least, it’s off to a great start. Specification, from Class AB amplification to aptX Lossless compatibility, is impressive. Battery life, at up to 100 hours if you leave the ANC alone (not a typo, we mean one hundred), is the best around. Having Matt Berry as one of your options for ‘audible feedback’ is nothing less than a stroke of genius.

And the good news keeps coming. The P100 are flawlessly built and finished, from materials that are both tactile and reasonably up-market. Comfort is good. Ignore the relative size of the travel case and there’s nothing to take issue with here.

To seal the deal, the sound they make is endlessly listenable. There’s a stack of detail, a wide-open soundstaging, vaulting dynamic potency and an engaging, lively overall attitude that will keep you coming back for more. And with that epic battery life, of course, there’s plenty of ‘more’ to enjoy. 

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Price & release date

• Released on July 15, 2024
• Priced $279 / £229 / AU$479

The Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 wireless over-ear headphones have been available via Cambridge's website since they were announced on July 3, 2024, but every other stockist has had to wait until July 15 to offer them for sale.

At $279 / £229 / AU$479 they’re keenly priced when you consider how extensively they’re specified, that’s for sure – but don’t go thinking that there aren’t impressively specified alternatives from equally well-regarded brands at very, very similar money. Chief of those would be the Sony WH-1000XM5, which can be yours for a little more than the P100 these days (rather than a lot more, which is what they were when they launched), at around $329 / £319 / AU$549. 

Then, there's the Sennheiser Momentum 4 Wireless, which arrived in August 2022 and can be found for even closer to the Cambridge Audio P100's price, at around $299 / £269 / AU$450 in today's money.

However, at the risk of stating the blinkin' obvious, the P100 are brand new July 2024 cans. And a quick glance at our Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones review proves that Cambridge has priced them ever-so aggressively; Bose's top-tier October 2023-issue over-ears arrived with a price tag of $429 / £449 / AU$649. Food for thought, then. 

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Specs

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Features

• Class AB amplification 
• Up to 100 hours of battery life
• Bluetooth 5.3 with aptX Lossless compatibility

No matter what else happens during the course of this review, there’s no arguing with the way Cambridge Audio has specified the Melomania P100. And just because the company has plenty of previous where the features-per-pound ratio is concerned, that’s no reason to take it for granted – instead, let’s just take a moment to marvel at what these headphones offer relative to the money they cost.

Battery life is as good a place as any to start. I won’t pretend I wasn’t mildly sceptical about the quoted figures when these headphones first arrived, but having lived with them for a good while, and on a number of different continents, I can’t disagree. The P100 will run for 60 hours with active noise-cancellation switched on, and an epic 100 hours if it’s switched off. Yes, you have to be listening at unremarkable volume levels – but the fact remains, these numbers are achievable. And they’re way beyond what the vast majority of price-comparable rivals can offer. And should you be negligent enough to allow the worst to happen, five minutes on the power is good for a couple of ANC-enabled playback or four hours with it switched off.

The technology taking advantage of this prodigious battery life is equally impressive. Wireless connectivity, for example, is taken care of by Bluetooth 5.3 and there’s multipoint connectivity along with aptX Adaptive and aptX Lossless codec compatibility – so as well as lossy 24bit/96kHz file-streaming, there’s lossless 16bit/44.1kHz resolution available to those with an appropriate source player.

Unlike most Class D-toting alternatives, the Melomania P100 use hi-fi-tastic Class AB amplification – the same sort of technology deployed in its hugely successful CX range of full-size stereo amplifiers. This is used to power a couple of 40mm full-range dynamic drivers made from a three-layer composite arrangement of polyurethane sandwiched between polyether ether ketone. 

A total of six mics take care of active noise-cancellation, voice-assistant interaction and telephony – Cambridge Audio has deployed Qualcomm cVc echo-cancelling and noise suppression technology in an effort to maximise call quality. The ANC itself is a hybrid system, with ‘low’, ‘mid’ and ‘high’ settings available alongside a ‘transparency’ mode. 

• Features score: 5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Sound quality

• Lively, detailed and confident presentation
• Nice tonal balance
•  ‘Very good’ ANC = ‘not class-leading’ ANC

Some wireless headphones at this sort of money like to make it obvious that certain things are beneath them. Some wireless headphones will take a 320kbps MP3 file from Spotify’s free tier and basically hold it up for ridicule. The Melomania P100 are not those headphones.

Obviously they prefer some 16bit/44.1kHz FLAC file action from Qobuz or Tidal. Obviously they prefer being hard-wired to a DAC/headphone amp churning out the 24bit/192kHz stuff even more. But they don’t judge – give them what you’ve got and they’ll do their best with it.

And ‘their best’ turns out to be very agreeable indeed. During the course of this test I listened to (for example) Jersey Girl by Tom Waits as a 320kbps MP3, Salt in the Wound by boygenius as a 16bt/44.1kHz FLAC file and a 24bit/192kHz FLAC file of David Bowie’s Sound and Vision – and the Melomania P100 are never less than entertaining and quite often impressively insightful.

Dynamic headroom, for instance, is considerable – so where the broad strokes of ‘quiet’ modulating to ‘loud’ are concerned, the Cambridge Audio are more than capable of keeping up. It doesn’t matter the increase in intensity, the P100 can track it without discernible stress. And the more subtle harmonic variations apparent in a voice or an instrument from note to note are picked up on just as readily. But while the P100 extract and contextualise a huge amount of detail from any given recording, they’re not analytical for the sake of it. More than anything, they’re an energetic and thoroughly engaging listen. 

From the top of the frequency range to the bottom, the Cambridge Audio are convincingly integrated and unwilling have any favorites. The bottom end is substantial, and it packs a punch – but there’s control to go along with the presence, and attack is so straight-edged that rhythms are expressed with real confidence. The opposite end has plenty of bite, but it’s not in any way thin or undernourished. There’s substance to treble sounds (as well as a whole lot of variation) to balance out their brilliance. And in between, the midrange manages to secure a little pocket of space in which to operate without sounding estranged from the rest of the frequency information – and has an eloquent, revealing way with a vocalist that allows character and attitude full expression.

Soundstaging is good, both in the simple size and impressive definition of the area. And despite the amount of room that’s available, there’s a tight unity and togetherness about the way the P100 present a recording. Tonally, the sound is fractionally warmer than ‘neutral’ – but this is a characteristic much more than it is a shortcoming. 

Really, it’s only where active noise-cancellation is concerned that the Cambridge Audio are anything less than fully and quite aggressively competitive. The ANC here is very acceptable, don’t get me wrong – it will do a job on external distractions of all types, and without leaving a counter-signal or shift in tonality in its wake. But there continues to be no two ways about it: if you want the best noise-cancellation available at a given price (and you don’t mind some sacrifices in other areas) you buy a pair of Bose.

• Sound quality score: 4.5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Design

• Vegan leather earpads and headband
• Black or white finishes
• Physical, rather than touch, controls

Sensibly, there are no shocks to be had where the design of the Melomania P100 is concerned. They look, and feel, like a reasonably upmarket pair of wireless over-ear headphones. Although personally, I much prefer the black finish to the white – it’s more harmonious, somehow.

Anyway, the P100 are very agreeably built and finished, from a nice mixture of memory foam and vegan leather for the (detachable) earpads, more vegan leather on the outside of the headband with sturdy, nicely padded fabric on the inside. The adjustment mechanism is concealed inside the headband, and the arms, yokes and outer portion of the earcups are all of aluminium. An all-in weight of 330g is pretty ordinary by prevailing standards, and the nicely judged clamping force means the headphones are comfortable on the head for a good long time. Certainly for longer than it takes for the earpads to heat your ears up, that’s for sure.

There are a few physical controls distributed around the edges of each earcup. On the left there’s a slider that covers ‘power on/off’ and ‘Bluetooth pairing’, and a button that allows you to cycle through your ANC options (‘off’, ‘on’ or ‘transparency’) or summon your voice assistant. There’s also a USB-C socket for charging the battery, and it can also be used for data transfer – Cambridge Audio supplies nice USB-C / USB-C and USB-C / 3.5mm cables in the P100’s robust, but not especially compact, travel case. On the right earcup is the usual three-button strip, dealing with ‘play/pause’, ‘skip forwards/backwards’ and ‘volume up/down’.  

Other functionality is accessed via the ‘Melomania Connect’ app that’s free for iOS and Android. Here’s where you check for firmware updates, check on battery life, and select the level of noise-cancellation you’d prefer. It has a seven-band equaliser with half-a-dozen presets and the facility to save plenty of your own custom settings. It’s where you can switch ‘automatic play/pause’ on or off and enable ‘gaming mode’ (which will reduce latency to less than 80m/s). And it’s where you get to select the sort of audible feedback you’d like – switch it off, have tones tell you what’s what, or choose from one of nine different languages. 

Actually, there’s no difference in the language if you select ‘English’ or ‘Southwark’, but the latter, as with the Melomania M100 true wireless earbuds, is voiced by actor Matt Berry. This is as worthwhile a unique selling point as I think I’ve ever encountered – I’ve been using these headphones for quite a while now and am still nowhere near bored of hearing “device one… disconnected” delivered in the fruitiest voice imaginable. 

It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate Cambridge Audio’s commitment to ‘circularity’ of design here. The P100 packaging is plastic-free and 100 percent recyclable. The battery and the earpads are replaceable by the end user, using standard tools. 50% of the plastics used in the construction of the headphones, and 100 percent of the rare earth neodymium in the drivers, are recycled. None of which is to be sniffed at. 

• Design score: 4.5/5

Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Value

• Remarkably thorough specification
• Frankly staggering battery life 
• Great across-the-board sound quality

When you line the Melomania P100 up against pretty much any price-comparable competitor (and quite a few that cost a bit more), the value for money they represent can’t really be argued with. 

Specification is ahead of the curve, battery life is as good as it currently gets, build quality and the standard of finish can’t be argued with. And the sound they make – detailed, direct and endlessly listenable – is profoundly competitive too. 

• Value score: 5/5

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Cambridge Audio Melomania P100 review: Also consider

How I tested the Cambridge Audio Melomania P100

• Using iOS and Android devices
• Using a variety of Bluetooth codecs
• With music of many types

During well over a week of pretty much constant use, the Melomania P100 were connected to a MacBook Pro, an iPhone 14 Pro and a Samsung Galaxy S23 in order to listen to as many different codecs and sources of music as realistically possible. The music, naturally, was of many different file types, sizes and styles. Active noise-cancellation was tested by taking the Cambridge Audio with me on several journeys on public transport – which also helped me test the claims for battery life. 

• First reviewed: July 2024
• Read more about how we test