Cambridge Audio (or should that be Cambridge) has revealed its latest headphone in the A100 true wireless, which aims to bring the company’s award-winning sound to a lower price.
The A100 follows on from the M100 that this site gave 4.5 stars when we reviewed it in 2024. In our minds it essentially replaces the award-winning Melomania 1 and Melomania 1+ from a few years back, priced at £119 / €139. It’ll be available in the US at a later date for $149.
New look, same Cambridge sound
It features a different form factor with its stem earbud design that Cambridge claims offers long lasting comfort. IPX5 IP rating protects it from sweat and water.
Audio is funnelled through 10mm Neodymium drivers, powered thriugh the came Class AB amplification that’s found in the company’s CX and EX Series amplifiers. According to Cambridge, this combination of tech offers listeners “deeper bass, richer mids, and crystal-clear highs” for a high quality experience.
A new feature we hadn’t seen before on the company’s previous headphones is its DynamEQ technology which claims to keep music “perfectly balanced” at all volumes, adjusting bass and treble through the volume curve to ensure the best sound.
There’s a dual-core 240MHz Qualcomm Kalimba DSP that reduces distortion and enhances clarity, and if you’re an Android user you’ll benefit from high-fidelity audio codecs such as aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless (Snapdragon Sound) and LDAC. You don’t see those Bluetooth codecs too often on such an affordable true wireless.
Of course, you can customise the sound to how you want it sound. The out of box performance of the A100 is said to be transparent and natural, but you can shape the sound through the Melomania Connect with a 7-band adjustable EQ. Six presets are also provided in the app if you don’t want to fiddle with the custom EQ option.
A quieter noise-cancelling performance
The A100 feature set would be incomplete without Active Noise Cancellation, and the earbuds feature the hybrid version to cancel outside sounds as well those within your ear for a quieter experience.
Conversations on the go are handled by the A100’s six microphone array to ensure your voices comes through “loud and clear”; while advanced noise isolation tech filters out background sounds.
There’s Bluetooth multipoint to connect to two devices at once, and you get long battery life with this model at 11 hours per charge (6.5 hours with ANC on) and up to 39 hours in total. Colours are a choice of black and white.
