Review: Urbanista Phoenix

How exciting it must be to confidently declare your company’s latest product to be a “world’s first.” How enticing for your prospective customers, the promise of “endless playtime.” Let’s face it: If you can’t pique a bit of interest this way, well, consumers must be even more jaded than everyone suspected. But though you may think you’ve seen it all before, be assured that you haven’t … or, at least, you haven’t seen this particular variation on a theme. 

When I reviewed the Urbanista Los Angeles wireless over-ear headphones just over a year ago, they (like pretty much every product that ends up on these pages) had their pros and cons. High on the list of “pros” was their remarkable Powerfoyle-assisted charging system. This solar cell material, the product of a company called Exeger, covers the outside of the headband and can draw power from both solar and ambient light. Which means the Los Angeles headphones rarely, if ever, need charging via mains power.

So, by way of an encore, Urbanista has managed to incorporate the technology into a pair of true wireless in-ear headphones. They’re called Phoenix (because every Urbanista product is named after a locale of lesser or greater resonance), WIRED got to try them before anyone else, and they’re unarguably a world’s first. They might even be able to provide you with endless playtime.

Of course, there’s a lot about the Urbanista Phoenix that is emphatically not a world’s first. They’re absolutely standard in many ways, in fact. The earbuds themselves are a slightly chunky 30 x 26 mm version of the “dangly stem” design popularized by Apple and shamelessly appropriated by numerous brands ever since. The faintly bulbous business end has space for a 10-mm dynamic driver, while the stem itself carries some branding and features a capacitive surface that allows some touch control.

An IPX4 rating against moisture is par for the course. Bluetooth 5.2 multipoint connectivity is superior, but compatibility with just SBC and AAC codecs most certainly is not. Active noise cancellation is always welcome (as long as it’s effective), and eight hours’ worth of power stored in the earbuds is half-decent, too. Add in a control app with numerous EQ presets and noise-cancellation adjustment, and a couple of choices of finish (Midnight Black or Desert Rose), and so far the Urbanista Phoenix are competitive with most price-comparable rivals. But they’re hardly a “world’s first”–style revelation.

Photograph: Urbanista

The charging case, though, is where the significant action is. At 90 x 68 x 20 mm (the lattermost tapering to 15 mm) and 72 grams (80 grams with the earbuds inside), it’s considerably bigger and a little heavier than the prevailing norm, even though with 24 hours of power on board it doesn’t demonstrate significantly better stamina than any number of price-comparable rivals. What its dimensions mean, though, is that there’s a fair bit of space on one of its faces for an area of that Exeger Powerfoyle.

Although there’s obviously not as much of the solar cell material on the charging case for a pair of true wireless in-ear headphones as there is on the outside of the headband of the preceding over-ear model, the effect is no less impressive. Yes, the Phoenix headphones take longer in the sun (or under a source of ambient light) to fully charge than their siblings, but fully charge they will. If you find you ever need to use the USB-C socket on the case to charge them, well, it must be because you’ve moved into one of those coal mines that are suddenly all the rage again. 

There’s just no arguing with the efficacy of the Powerfoyle material. It’s as worthwhile here as it is as part of the Urbanista Los Angeles experience. 

In other respects, though, the Phoenix are a more qualified success. It’s all well and good being able to play and play and play without recourse to mains power—but it does rather assume that the sound you’re making is worth listening to.

Photograph: Urbanista

When compared to the most accomplished true wireless earbuds around at this sort of money—every company from Google to Sony wants a piece of the action, as this list makes clear—the Urbanista Phoenix are just a little coarse and unrefined. 

They’re admirably consistent in the face of varied musical styles (and in the course of this test they played everything from “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?” by Tubeway Army and “Break My Soul” by Beyoncé to “Excursions on a Wobbly Rail” by the Cecil Taylor Quartet and Gene Autry’s pass through “Blueberry Hill”), but in every sonic department they’re crying out for just a little more finesse.

Tonally they’re slightly on the warm side of neutral, with a touch too much richness, especially apparent in the midrange. Vocalists can sound like they need to cut some of the dairy out of their diet. The top of the frequency range leans toward the abrasive. It’s not like treble sounds are especially hard or unyielding, but there are jagged edges in evidence, especially if you listen at significant volume. The warmth of the overall sonic signature does little to take the edginess out of the top end. 

And at the opposite end of the frequency range, bass notes and/or hits don’t attack (or decay, for that matter) with the necessary positivity. So, rather than being properly defined, low-frequency stuff can trip over its own feet. It follows that rhythmic expression is more approximate than is absolutely ideal.

The frequency range hangs together well, mind you—even if specific areas have their issues, at least they’re not estranged from each other. And the Phoenix headphones create a robust and believable soundstage, organize it well, and can make sense of quite dense mixes and compressed recordings. Dynamic headroom is respectable, too, and there’s a reasonable amount of detail retained and revealed no matter the complexity of the music you’re listening to.

Elsewhere, the news is similarly mixed. The active noise cancellation does its thing without impacting the sonic performance of the earbuds at all—but it’s far from the most effective or complete a noise-cancellation solution this sort of money will buy you. If you’re happy with “noise reduction,” then the Urbanista system is satisfactory, but if you’re not, then it simply isn’t. 

The control app is useful in quite a few ways: Getting an indication of remaining battery life, finding out how much playtime you’ve “gained” thanks to the light-charging circuitry, switching between full ANC and transparent, and so on. Its EQ presets, though, are eccentric: There are six, with a definite-yet-inexplicable distinction made between Default (“suitable for a wide range of genres”) and Balanced (“for all-day listening”), and huge sonic variations in some of the others. If you can find some music that is crying out for the Energize setting (“suitable for workouts or that perfect Friday feeling”), for example, your taste in music is wide-ranging for sure. Sadly, there’s no facility to create any bespoke EQ settings.

The app does let you amend the meaning of “long press” on the capacitive touch surface of each earbud, though—choose between Toggle Sound Mode, Summon Voice Assistant (the integrated mics are just as helpful and effective in these interactions as they are during calls), and Volume Up/Down. What the app can’t do, though, is make the touch controls themselves any more responsive or reliable, which is a shame, because they really could do with it.  

Still, there’s plenty to be said about a charging system that doesn’t involve mains power, and more still about spending a long time listening to your Urbanistas only to find they’re actually holding more power than they were before you started. 

This, at least, is one phoenix that may have a strong association with the sun, but is unlikely in the extreme to reach the point of needing to rise from its own ashes.