I’ve been listening to Marshall’s latest ANC headphones all week and I haven’t charged them yet
The Monitor III A.N.C have crazily-long battery life and a comfortable fit.
Marshall’s latest $350/£299 Monitor III noise-cancelling headphones have a very welcome trick up their sleeve – monstrous battery life. 70 hours of playback with noise-cancelling on. I’ve been using them since last Wednesday lunchtime when I made sure they were fully charged. It’s now Tuesday lunchtime and I haven’t charged them yet – they’re still on around 20 percent.
OK, so I don’t have headphones on all the time and I went out on Friday evening and took Apple’s AirPods 4 ANC out instead, but those tiny caveats not withstanding, they have epic battery life.
The last over-ear headphones I reviewed were the Dyson OnTrac. They have two huge batteries inside the headband and yet they’re only capable of 55 hours.
Cambridge Audio’s Melomania P100 can go to 60 hours with ANC on or 100 hours without, like the Monitor III.
Marshall has also employed dual batteries but they’re inside the cups rather than the band. So while the Monitor III look similar to the excellent Monitor II they’re replacing, there are some significant changes to the innards.
The Bluetooth LE-capable headphones have the signature Marshall look (complete with gold trim). They don’t support Dolby Atmos, but do have spatial audio tech which Marshall is calling Soundstage. Adaptive Loudness adjusts your sound based on the noise around you, while Marshall says it has worked to reduce wind noise, especially for calls.
There are also various features which have been carried over from predecessor headphones such as audio personalisation and the customisable M-button for EQ settings, Spotify Tap and voice assistants. A dedicated ANC button cycles through the modes. Again there’s a ruggedised, hardy design and they’re very lightweight at just 250g. And they fold down very neatly into the included case.
I’ll be bringing you a full Monitor III A.N.C. review very soon.