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The Swedish audio company’s newest headphones are the Urbanista Los Angeles over-ear wireless headphones. The Los Angeles is more expensive than its cheaper sister, the Miami, but it has one of the best features I’ve seen on a headphone: it can be charged by the sun. Yes, these headphones with a simple look have a solar panel built into the cap that lets them charge themselves in the sun or with artificial light indoors.
What a cool thing! Also, the battery life says that the headphones can work for up to 80 hours after a full solar charge, which is the most I’ve seen from any self-powered type. The Los Angeles has great sound quality, and it also has active noise cancelling (ANC) and transparency modes.
Urbanista Los Angeles Specifications
Specification | Details |
---|---|
Manufacturer | Urbanista |
Driver size | 40mm |
Frequency response | 20Hz – 20kHz |
Sensitivity | 100dB |
Impedance | 32 Ohms |
Battery life | 25 hours |
Charging time | 2 hours |
Bluetooth version | 5.0 |
Weight | 8.8 ounces |
Design and comfort
The Los Angeles headphones look the same as the cheaper Miami headphones, but they only come in a few colours. The headband of these headphones, on the other hand, has a layer of Powerfoyle solar cells that turn light into energy to power the headphones. I’ll talk more about this later in my review.
These headphones are made out of soft aluminium with a matte finish. The padded earcups and cap are wrapped in vegan leather. The quality of the build looks and feels great. Like the Bose 700, the earcups don’t fold inward, but they do rotate 90 degrees to fit neatly in the super-sleek carrying case, which gets its own praise. It is Urbanista’s effort to make Apple’s AirPods Max Smart Case look better, but it doesn’t have the low-power mode functionality. You can buy this headphone from its official website
Urbanista Los Angeles: Sound quality
The ambient sound mode is also pretty good. It lets you hear messages or traffic, but wind noise is hard to deal with. The headphones have a sound that is pretty big and wide, so they can handle songs with a lot of energy. But the sound is heavy on the low end, with a lot of powerful bass that is well-controlled and makes lower notes than most headphones can. The high and middle tones are pretty good, but the bass will drown them out. There is no physical equaliser to turn it down, which is a shame.
Urbanista Los Angeles: Noise Cancellation
The headphones do a good job of reducing the deep, low-frequency rumble you hear on an aeroplane, but they have a harder time with the mids and highs. The two people were able to cut down the lows and mids in a recording of a busy restaurant pretty easily, but the high frequencies were able to get through the ANC circuits. The difference between Ambient and the usual noise cancellation mode is small. In both modes, you can hear your surroundings, but Ambient mode boosts the high-mids to make it easier to focus on conversations.
Performance
Like the Miami, the Los Angeles have 40mm dynamic drivers and sound that was tuned by Axel Grell, who used to work for Sennheiser. They’ve had some small changes, but nothing that changes the sound much, so most of what I said about the sound quality in my review of Urbanista Miami still applies here. Still, there is a lot of focus on the bass ranges, which are well-controlled and have a lot of detail. This is good for some types of music, but some people will find it too loud in the picture.
Battery life and charging case
Whether the headphones are on or off, it is taking in light and slowly charging the battery. Urbanista says that an hour of good sunshine will give you three hours of playing. This depends on the weather where you are, though… But as long as you don’t live in a cave or something, your headphones shouldn’t ever need to be charged from an outlet. (And if you do decide to live in a cave, the Los Angeles has a battery life of between 50 and 80 hours, depending on whether the noise-canceling feature is on or off.
Price and availability
We can’t say enough about how easy it is that you don’t have to charge these headphones often. That’s why we gave them our Editors’ Choice and TechX awards. Sennheiser’s HD 450BT headphones, which cost about the same, may have better sound, but they don’t work with solar power. We also suggest the Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones, which cost $329 but have the best active noise cancellation.
Final words
The Urbanista Los Angeles headphones may not be the best headphones you can get for this price in terms of sound quality, but they are the only ones that can be charged by the sun. This will be more than enough for a lot of people to check them out.
Urbanista Los Angeles review: The good and The bad
The Good
- Category-leading battery life
- Gorgeous, innovative design
The Bad
- Mediocre ANC
FAQs
You can use these earbuds to listen to music for up to eight hours without the charging case and up to 34 hours with it. Of course, you can play for as long as you want if you leave the charge case out in the light.
The Urbanista app is the perfect partner for your Urbanista headphones because it lets you change and customise how you use them. Make your own choices to get your own sound.