Review: Urbanista Headphones

Urbanista Headphones are very much about Urbam Chic with an emphasis on design and presentation. This is immediately obvious when you open the packaging. The boxes are very stylish and open with a satisfying magnetic click. These look far more like something you expect to find enclosing a high end watch or a piece of jewellery. These would make a very impressive gift.

However that gift won’t be long well received if the headphones don’t live up to the expectations of the presentation.

Urbanista names their headphones after what they claim are stylish cities. The two on review here are the London and the Copenhagen. Both come with a built in microphone so these can be used as hands free for your phone.

The London are an in-ear bud type with a selection of soft plastic buds for various ear sizes. The ear buds are hidden by a stylish rectangular metallic plate when in the ear, I found them difficult to locate in my ear however even trying all the various buds and they had a tendency to fall out. I also found they didn’t cut out the outside world like other ear –buds I own. I was also disappointed with the sound quality. Everything sounded a little clouded. The frequency response was good if a little lacking in the bass and low midrange but somehow the whole didn’t really work. They don’t sound bad and they are certainly way better than most you would get with your Phone but they just don’t live up to the hype of the packaging which is a shame.

The Copenhagen are completely different matter. These are on ear padded phones in a foldable design. They again have a trendy squared design. This does mean that they are not so good as sealing out external sounds as a rounded design would be but they are very far from bad. In fact they are very good. With a good frequency response across the range with only a little drop off in the very high end. They are simply very listenable to.

My only complaint is that the microphone always seems to be active and sometimes seems to feedback into hearing even when it is not connected to a device with a microphone in. I would like to see a microphone mute button. There is a button on the microphone block but this seems to mute all the sound. This may have been a fault with my review pair as I tried another pair where the button did just seem to mute the microphone. Whilst we are on the subject the Microphone button doesn’t seem to match the overall design philosophy and looks like a little bit of an afterthought.

I was also a little unhappy with the head strap which seems a little uncomfortable. I did also find the ear pads becoming a little uncomfortable after an hour’s use.

Overall though the Copenhagens are fabulous headphones and very good value for the quality. I’ve actually used these to record several TDL shows which proves the microphone is pretty good as well.