Oct 12, 2021 2:47 PM

Review: Urbanista Los Angeles

Name: Los Angeles
Item: Los Angeles

These noise-canceling cans are a fine listen, but what really sets them apart is a solar cell that derives energy from any type of light.

$199 at Urbanista

Rating:

8/10

WIRED

Novel and effective charging system. Comfortable and well made. Lively sound …

TIRED

… almost too lively. Noise-canceling is a qualified success. App could be more comprehensive.

“Infinite” is a tricky one, isn’t it? Something’s either infinite or it isn’t. So when Urbanista describes its Los Angeles wireless noise-canceling over-ear headphones as having “virtually infinite” playtime, that’s basically the same as saying the Los Angeles don’t have infinite playtime.

Although, to be fair to Urbanista, the Los Angeles get a lot closer than most.

At a glance, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the Urbanista Los Angeles. Like the Miami wireless headphones on which they’re closely based, they’re discreetly good looking and nicely finished. And like every Urbanista product, they’re named after one of the planet’s more evocative places.

It’s on the outside of the headband, though, that the Los Angeles suddenly become unique. "Unique," like “infinite,” is an absolute, but currently this is a description the Urbanista deserve. Because integrated into the outside of the headband is a big strip of a material called Powerfoyle that’s supplied by a company called Exeger. It’s a solar cell material, and it can derive energy from any type of light, from sunshine to the lightbulbs in your home. It’s always pulling energy, always charging, whether the headphones are switched on or not. And it means the Urbanista Los Angeles will play for an enormous length of time without ever needing to be charged from the mains. Which, as unique selling points go, is pretty impressive.

This piece of engineering brilliance aside, it’s mostly Urbanista business as usual. Which means the Los Angeles are a robust pair of headphones, comfortable at every contact point and not (like so many rival designs) about to swamp the smaller-headed listener. Build quality is unarguable, the choice of materials is judicious, the color options ("midnight" black or “sand” gold) are pleasant, and there’s a degree of tactility about the Los Angeles that is by no means common in headphones below the £200 mark.

Wireless connectivity is via Bluetooth 5.0, which is adequate but hardly at the cutting edge. Sound is delivered by a couple of the same 40-mm full-range dynamic drivers fitted to the (suddenly slightly low-tech) Urbanista Miami. There’s three-position active noise-cancellation: On, Off, or Ambient Sound, and hair-trigger accelerometers that pause music if you take the Los Angeles off your head (or even shift them slightly on your ears). Happily, the on-ear detection can be defeated in the nice, new Urbanista control app.

As far as headphones control apps go, it’s one of the better-looking but one of the more restricted in what it can actually do for you. There’s a nice, big display that explains whether the battery is being topped up or drained; there’s switching for the three-stage noise-cancellation; and there’s the ability to define the function of the physical Control button on the outside of the left earcup. That’s your lot.

That left earcup is also where you’ll find a USB-C input. This can be used to charge the Los Angeles’ 750-mAh battery should you not encounter light of any kind for many an hour. Urbanista reckons spending an hour outside in decent sunshine will charge the Los Angeles for three hours of playback (but given the shortage of decent sunshine while testing, we can neither confirm nor deny this claim), while on battery power alone the headphones will run for a gargantuan 80 hours (with noise-canceling off) or 50 hours (with noise-canceling on).

These are figures that are (a) scarcely believable and (b) absolutely achievable. Should you find yourself down a well or something, you can be confident your Urbanista will last you for well over three days and nights.

On the right earcup there are three buttons, each too small and all too close together. Between them they cover power on/off/Bluetooth pairing, play/pause, skip forward/backward, volume up/down, and answer/end/reject call. Their size and placement make them more than a little hit-and-miss, so it might be easier and less frustrating to ask either Google Assistant or Siri to take care of these operations for you.

What’s conspicuous by its absence on either earcup is a 3.5-mm analog output. So unless you have a USB-C adapter, it’s not possible to make a wired connection to use the Los Angeles.

With the headphones (comfortably, securely) in position and a Tidal Masters file of Sparks’ “When Do I Get To Sing ‘My Way’?” playing, it’s briefly disconcerting to realize that the Los Angeles’ audio performance isn’t actually the be-all and end-all. But their innovative charging system notwithstanding, these are a pair of headphones … and they’re just as upfront and energetic a listen as the Miami headphones on which they’re based.

This basically means deep, textured, detailed, and undeniably overconfident low frequencies that impact just slightly on the midrange. It means a midrange that’s equally detailed and informative, able to give the characteristically mannered vocals in this tune real bite and attack. It means a high-frequency response that’s just the right side of hard and zizzy and that walks this particular tightrope no matter the sort of volume you’re listening at (and the Los Angeles are capable of considerable volume).

They’re not the most dynamic headphones this sort of money can buy, and while they define a soundstage pretty well they aren’t the best at organizing and expressing rhythmic intricacies. What they are, though, is fun to listen through. If you like it vivid and high-energy, with a stack of assertiveness throughout the frequency range, you won’t go far wrong here.

Noise-cancellation is a similarly qualified success. Switch it on and there’s no denying external noise is reduced considerably—but it’s at the cost of some three-dimensionality and some midrange positivity, and there’s also a mild but definite counter-signal introduced. “Ambient Sound,” meanwhile, does boost external sound but, unhelpfully, doesn’t lower the volume of your music while it does so.

Probably most important of all, though, is that the Urbanista Los Angeles make good on the promise of their remarkable configuration. The temptation to keep the app open at all times in order to check on the state of the battery is extremely strong, and we’ve done so for more than long enough to report that yes, the charging system here really works.

After wearing and listening to the Los Angeles for well over 30 hours, at no point has the battery level dipped below 52 percent. And it’s a very curious sensation to see the battery, while listening outside in daylight, has on occasion actually gained power while the headphones themselves have been operational.

We can’t imagine the Urbanista Los Angeles will be unique for all that long. This solution to the multifaceted problem of keeping your headphones powered up is just too elegant and too effective to remain an Urbanista USP. In fact, JBL still hasn’t given up hope on the Reflect Eternal solar-powered headphones it’s been threatening for well over a year now.

But, for now, at least, the Los Angeles are number one in a field of one.

This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.

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