Marshall brings ANC back to its smaller on-ear wireless headphones

Marshall’s first headphones with active noise canceling were the Marshall Mid A.N.C. first launched in 2018. Its current lineup only offers noise canceling on its larger over-ear Monitor III A.N.C. headphones, but its new Milton A.N.C. bring the feature back to Marshall’s smaller and lighter on-ear options. The wireless headphones are available today for $229.99 through Marshall’s online store, but availability will expand to other “select retailers” starting on May 27th.

That makes the new Milton A.N.C. $70 more expensive than the on-ear Marshall Major V, which have a similar compact design and offer over 100 hours of wireless playtime. The Milton A.N.C. still muster an impressive 80 hours of playtime with ANC turned off, but once you start blocking out the noisy world around you, that drops to over 50 hours.

On-ear headphones typically don’t offer ANC that’s as good as what you’ll get from headphones that completely cover your ears, but Marshall claims the Milton A.N.C. have an updated design with “larger earpads and softer memory foam” so they’re better at blocking outside sounds and more comfortable to wear. There’s also a transparency mode that uses the headphones’ six microphones to amplify the sounds of what’s going on around you.

For those times when you’re in a loud environment and ANC isn’t entirely silencing all the noise, the Milton A.N.C. have Marshall’s adaptive loudness functionality. Instead of having to manually tweak the sound profile or just crank the volume, the headphones will automatically adjust “audio playback tonality” so quieter details don’t get drowned out.

Other features include an “entirely new driver system tuned to improve bass and treble extension,” spatial audio compatibility; Bluetooth 6.0 with support for codecs including LE Audio, SBC, AAC, LC3, and LDAC; a replaceable battery to extend the life of the headphones; and the ability to track the Milton A.N.C. using Apple’s and Google’s item tracking networks.