ADIDAS URBANISTA LOS ANGELES - INFINITE ENERGY 

Today, I am going to test The Urbanista Los Angeles outside, to see how much power these solar cells actually gather during use on a regular basis. Now, according to the packaging, this is supposed to be solar charged and how they gather the most power and these are the Urbanista Los Angeles, headphones powered by the sun itself. While the Solar Power thing is pretty cool,  there's more to these than just that. They also have great bass, a fun sound, and a pretty solid build at a decent price. Now, these retail for $199 dollars, but there are discounts on their site, so you can probably get them for less. But there were some design choices which made me wonder whether they really thought about who would be using these and how. Some of these design issues had major negative impacts on my overall experience. And some weren’t even design issues, they were just carelessness. Here is what I am gonna do. I grade things on a 1 to 5 scale, where1 means I hate it, 2 means I don’t like it, 3 means it’s OK, 4 means I like it, and 5 means I love it. So, let’s go ahead and get started.

Solar Power Charging

Normally, I like to start with an overall impression of the product, but let’s face it: the reason you’re probably reading it because you wanna know about the solar power thing and how well it works. Well, it works great! 5 out of 5 there, but 4 out of 5 total. These have up to 80 hours of battery life, so there’s a real possibility you may never have to plug these in so long as you own them. But if you do need to plug them in, they have a fast charge of 3 hours of music in 5 minutes using via USB-C. Now, you’d only need that if the solar power cells weren’t working or were covered for some reason, and I’ll cover why you might do that a little bit later on. Still, why a 4 out of 5? Random shutoffs! I don’t understand why? And maybe this is a bad unit, but I kept getting random shutoffs. At first, I thought it was because they would automatically shut off after an hour if you weren’t wearing them, or if you had ear pads on them and it messed with the on-ear detection. But, I turned on-ear detection off using the app and these would still shut off randomly, not even after an hour! For example, I was recently wearing these when they randomly shut off. And I turned them back on. About 30 minutes later, boom, off again. This wasn’t annoying enough to offset the awesomeness of solar power, which is really cool and really convenient and maybe it was just this unit, but it’s a pretty serious issue in headphones where “unlimited power” is the main selling point. But, back to the solar cells. Now, the solar cells don’t charge equally under all light. Sunlight is best, and then it goes down from there, depending on the type of light. So then best place to store these when not in use? Put them in the case, by a window sill. Still, under regular use, most people will never have to plug these in. Heck, in 3 weeks of use, I only plugged them in once, and that was just to test something.

Eco - Friendly

This was super convenient, no denying that. But, if you’re thinking about getting these because of environmental reasons, let me stop you right there. The build is where you start seeing that maybe Urbanista didn’t think past a certain point with these. This is a shame, because had they done so, these may have been some of the best headphones I’d ever used. Overall, I have to give these a 2 out of 5 on Build. Keep in mind that the build materials aren’t bad in themselves, and that none of this work is shoddy. The plastic on the ear cups and along the headband is solid and feels great to the touch. 

Comfort

The PowerFoyle solar cells on the headband, they look and feel great. There’s some flexibility to the headband. You can hear there's no creaking noise. It doesn't go too far, but it doesn't really need to. And the extenders themselves, feel sturdy. So, from the build perspective there, that's good. Finally, there's the PU leather. There's memory foam underneath which makes it very comfortable but the PU leather itself it feels fine, but that's actually what I have an issue with. Before I go into why I have an issue with the PU leather, I have to talk about the comfort: 1 out of 5: I hated the way these felt in most cases for one reason only: clamping force. How uncomfortable these were. As I said, the memory foam in the headband and ear cups? That's super comfortable. But these headphones were so tight that wearing them for an hour or more would leave me with a headache. And after I would take them off, I didn’t want to put them back on again. At first, I thought that they might loosen up over time, and while they did, it was only a smidge. After 3 weeks, I simply didn’t want to wear them anymore. These are the tightest headphones I’ve ever used. And don’t even think about wearing these with glasses, unless you prop the glasses above the ear cushions. To make sure it wasn’t just me, I let five other people try these. To a person, they all said the same thing: these are way too tight. Conversely, the clamping force makes them great for the gym, since they’ll stay on your head pretty much regardless of what you’re doing. And since you’re moving around, you’re not focusing on the clamping force. It’s too bad these are not sweat resistant, but the comfort level in the gym itself, and the usability there raises the comfort to 3 out of 5. Which brings me back to the PU leather. These feel like they’re built for the same type of crowd that would go for Beats: bass forward headphones that look good and are likely to end up being used at the gym. PU leather doesn’t stand up too well to sweat. So, if you’re planning on using these out in the sun—where solar power tends to live—or somewhere you’re likely to sweat like a gym—you’ll want to get something like sweat resistant earpad covers and something to protect the headband. Otherwise, your sweat will cause the PU leather to get stiff and flaky. Of course, if you get a headband cover it stops the solar power cells from working. Still, a good thing for that 80-hour battery life and fast charge. Also, good thing hats exist. By the way, for the ear cups, I bought some sweat resistant covers called SweatZ, which I’ll link below. Anything you get that fits Beats Studio3 or Skullcandy headphones should fit these just fine. The only problem I had with doing this is that, these already caused a lot of ear heat because of the clamping force, and that just left me with swamp ear. Adding sweat resistant earpads just made the swamp ear worse.

Design & Build

Back to the Build, there are a couple more things to note, and they’re part of why I say these aren’t for environmentalists. First, the ear pads are not replaceable. Once these earpads flake, they’re done for. Making the earpads replaceable (and making the headband silicone or fabric) would have improved longevity and made these more attractive to the environmentally conscious crowd, as well as the folks interested in wearing these outside. Where the sun lives. The second thing is the lack of a replaceable battery. Again, adding this would help them last longer and made them more attractive to the environmentalist crowd. It’s not a common feature, true, but neither are solar cells on headphones. Here’s the deal: from a build and design perspective, the Los Angeles are basically copies of Urbanista’s Miami headphones. I think that was a mistake, because the design decisions that made sense in the Miami don’t make sense in the Los Angeles. With all that said, I still really like the way these look, so 4 out of 5. They’re minimalist, with barely any buttons and only one USB-C port. These come in two colors, Midnight Black and Sandy Brown.

Sound Quality

But now, moving on to sound, if you’re a fan of bass heavy headphones, BOY OH BOY! Have I got the headphones for you? Now, if you’re an audiophile, you’re probably thinking, “look, the cheap, crappy stuff always goes for extra bass, so these are probably cheap and crappy!” Well, at $200 dollars they’re not cheap!! these don’t have incredible staging or instrument separation, but what they have is an amazing, deep, rumbling bass with an enjoyable presentation. So, I rate them at 4 out of 5, I liked them! I just about loved the sound on these. It’s fantastic and a blast if you love that nice, rumbling bass. Tech wise, these handle the AAC and SBC Bluetooth codecs. I thoroughly enjoyed the sound on these for listening to hip hop, pop, workout playlists, EDM, lo-fi, and even some classical, usually anything involving the right half of the orchestra. (Unless you’re one of those blessedly weird orchestras that likes to stick the cellos and bass between the first violins and violas, then it’s the middle of the orchestra I’m paying attention to.) Anyway, I adored these for the gym. That deep bass, that punch and rumble just drove me to want to move my body more. Honestly, I worked out harder in the gym with these than any other headphones I’ve tried. All because of that phenomenal bass, and that good fit for the gym. Until, you know, they started to randomly shut off mid-shoulder press. Now, the app for these doesn’t have an EQ, but if you use something with an EQ, like Spotify, go ahead and turn up the sub-bass and the bass. You are in for a treat. Also, do the treble if you want to get yourself a nice V sound and it'll pretend like you have highs. Anyway, just don’t turn on the active noise cancelling unless you absolutely need to, because it diminishes the bass enough that you lose the best part of these headphones’ sound.

Sound on Calls

Finally, a note on calls. These were fine for calls, 3 out of 5. It does the job well enough. Calls are decent both ways. So, turning to the active noise cancelling, I was not a fan. 2 out of 5. First, the noise cancelling was OK for most deep, constant sounds, like road noise and microwaves, but it didn’t help in anything above those lowest frequencies. This was a shock, given the high clamping force and thick ear pads. Regular $60 dollar headphones do just about as good a job. Second, as I mentioned in the section about sound, the ANC kills a lot of what makes the sound on these special, that deep body and rumble goes away. Finally, these also have an ambient mode that uses the microphones to let outside noises in, and you can put transparency mode on while you listen to music, which is good. You can cycle between ANC on, off, and ambient mode, using the single button on the left ear cup or the app itself.

Interaction Design

The Interaction Design on these leaves a LOT to be desired, and I had to give these a 1 out of 5. Unfortunately, Urbanista stumbled in some key areas by simply not going that one extra step. Let’s start with the buttons themselves. They’re easy enough to find, and their functions all make sense. On one side, you have the noise cancelling/ ambient mode / digital assistant button. On the other, the play/volume/power buttons. My issue was that the play and volume buttons are hard to identify by touch. It feels a bit like a guessing game. Tactile dots on the buttons would have gone a long way to fixing this. Note that there’s no touch interface on these, which is fine: I actually prefer that. The big flaw here was with the instructions, and the fault for this goes to both their documentation and website teams. In the package, there’s a little slip that says, “Hey! Use this QR code to download the app.” Well, I did that and all I got what a broken page. When I contacted their support, they basically said, either “it’s your fault” or “we know it’s broken,” I’m not sure. But then they said I could download it from the App Store. The problem? Searching for "Urbanista" didn’t turn anything up. I had to search for “Urbanista Audio”, which wasn’t documented anywhere. I literally had to guess at this. Eventually, I found the app, and I’m glad I did because it gave me access to the on-ear detection on/off switch. Remember how I mentioned that you should use earpads with these? Well, if the earpads cover the on-ear detection sensor on the right ear cup, these will automatically shut down after an hour, even if you're listening to music. That may just be part of the random shut-off thing. I'm honestly not sure. Here’s why not being able to find the app is ultimately so bad: Without the app, you cannot turn off the on-ear detection. If you are using these outside or at the gym, and you have a cover on them, the on-ear detection will just think no one is wearing them and shut off after an hour. If you take the cover off, and you’re sweating, then you start damaging the PU leather, and maybe the electronics. Once you damage the leather (forget the electronics), you have two choices: replace the headphones or put on earpad covers... which brings me back to the problem with covering the on-ear detection: automatic shutoffs. The app, which is kind of useless otherwise, is pretty crucial for longevity.

Features

With this, I guess I also covered Features, which I gave a 2 out of 5 total. The on-ear detection works awesome, but the connectivity is a real pain. The on-ear detection identified when I was or wasn’t wearing these very well, and at the $200 dollar price point, it’s a great feature to include. About the connectivity: let’s start with the basics: thaw feature Bluetooth 5.0, so you’ll get the power saving and range advantages of this, provided that your device supports these. But these don’t have multi-point connect, so they can only connect to one device at a time.  And if they are connected to one device, you can’t just go to the other device and connect it to that one. You have to go to the other device first, disconnect it from that one, and then come back to your device to connect it. Frankly, most of the time, it’s just faster to pair them again. This far down, you may be wondering whether these are a good value. But, in short, actually 5 out of 5. Despite all my issues with these when it comes to where I think they may have cut corners, the fact is they deliver a solid feature set and sound for the price. And that solar powered charging just can’t be ignored. Alright, so final score, tallying them all up? 2.7 out of 5. That's not a good score. That's below average. A large part of that has to do with carelessness. There are a lot of really great things to these that they start doing very well, and then they just drop the ball. I was really disappointed with these. So finally, should you buy these? It depends, though I think that, for most people, this is a no. Look, you should consider these if you want to use them for the gym or outside, provided you put some kind of sweat protection. If you’re considering something like Beats or Skullcandy, also put these in the mix. But don't count too much on their return policy because their support response time is terrible. I actually tried to go ahead and return these a week and a half ago, and they basically told me, "Yeah, we can't send you a return receipt." I'm not a fan of their support right now. You might want to get these, though, if you've  always wanted solar powered headphones. Again, terribly convenient. You never have to plug them in. But don’t get these if you’re looking for environmentally friendly headphones.  They're just not it. Don’t get these if you need headphones you can use with glasses. And don’t get these if long-use comfort is the most important thing to you, which I feel should be important to the vast majority of people. As for me? Look, I'm gonna try again to return me. They cost me about $170 dollars once all the taxes and everything and the discounts were considered. And I don't wanna have to pay that for this because... random shutoffs and discomfort are just not my bag. Normally, I keep my headphones.  But I just don't want to wear these anymore, which is a shame, despite their flaws, I really like what they did well.  The sound, the build, and of course, that solar power.