Someplace in a quiet nook of Urbanista’s Stockholm HQ, there’s a listing of emergency place-names. Since its inception in 2010, the corporate has been on a type of digital world tour, naming every of its merchandise after a location of lesser or higher resonance.
However there’s a finite record of evocative toponyms on this planet, isn’t there? How lengthy earlier than we’re supplied the Urbanista Chongqing? Or the Urbanista Slough?
Proper now, although, Urbanista is but to exhaust the world’s provide of poignant place-names. And so right here’s the Malibu wi-fi speaker, obtainable in a most un-Malibu-like alternative of black or grey finishes.
In some ways, the Malibu is a wi-fi speaker like all of the others—however, as with the corporate’s Phoenix and Los Angeles wi-fi headphones, there’s some extent of distinction right here. The highest of the speaker is nearly completely made up of Exeger’s Powerfoyle photo voltaic cell materials, which suggests the Malibu, like its headphone siblings, can harvest the facility of sunshine, whether or not pure or electrical, to contribute to the lifetime of its 3,600-mA battery.
It’s not fairly a USP—fringe manufacturers Abfoce and Cyboris have solar-powered audio system of their lineups, too. However these manufacturers don’t have the hard-won credibility of Urbanista, they usually don’t boast the extraordinary effectivity of Powerfoyle both.
Left to its personal gadgets, the Malibu’s battery is sweet for round 30 hours of playback. That’s so long as you’re listening at reasonable quantity, anyway. The form of digital audio file measurement you’re streaming isn’t an element, because the Urbanista is barely appropriate with the bog-standard, low-energy SBC and AAC codecs.
However with mild shining on its Powerfoyle floor, the Malibu can lengthen its playtime handily. We’re not speaking about an Urbanista Los Angeles–fashion state of affairs right here, you perceive; these headphones can truly acquire energy, whilst they’re enjoying. However Urbanista means that even some reasonably sunny days whereas the Malibu is doing its factor can lengthen that battery life from 30 hours to one thing nearer to 45 hours. And free vitality will not be one thing to be sniffed at.
Photo voltaic Sounds
“Reasonably sunny” is a relative time period, after all. In the course of the course of my time with the Urbanista, it was charged by a mix of inner mild and the pathetically watery glimmers of a wet British October that was even grayer than the Malibu’s Desert Grey end. And even then, it was capable of play for almost 40 hours earlier than I had recourse to mains energy.
I can solely think about how lengthy it could go for throughout a Malibu summer time—indefinitely, presumably. Both method, the speaker’s IP67 ranking ought to imply it’s capable of arise effectively to those extremes.
As is normal Urbanista follow, the Malibu is flawlessly constructed and completed from a number of supplies that mix tactility with robustness. Other than the Powerfoyle, the Urbanista is comprised of a mix of sturdy plastic and a amount of acoustic material.
{Photograph}: Urbanista
