Ever since Swedish audio model Urbanista first introduced out its mightily spectacular solar headphones that, sure, charged even whereas they have been getting used, WIRED has been hoping the corporate would take this tech and take a look at it in a bigger audio product. Now it has, and the result’s a brand new moveable wi-fi speaker, the Malibu.
The Urbanista Malibu, identical to the model’s Phoenix photo voltaic earbuds and Los Angeles headphones, makes use of Exeger’s Powerfoyle photo voltaic cells to recharge the Bluetooth speaker’s battery. This implies the Malibu can recharge whereas unplugged utilizing each ambient indoor lighting and outside sunshine. The speaker additionally has an IP67 score, that means it’s totally waterproof and guarded in opposition to sand, mud, and dust—preferrred for the seashore.
The $149 (£149 or €169) speaker might be linked to a different Malibu to type a stereo pair, and it comes within the compulsory black and a brand new Desert Grey. A chat with Mårten Sahlén, product director at Urbanista, reveals that the rugged design homes a 3,600-mA battery, which powers twin 10-watt amplifiers inside. That battery might be totally charged by the photo voltaic cells, however there’s USB-C charging too.
The accompanying app enables you to customise the sound profile and preserve observe of the speaker’s reside light-charging and historic knowledge (do you have to be concerned about how a lot free power you’ve harvested over the product’s lifetime).
Urbanista says the photo voltaic speaker comes with a full-day battery reserve, which it says equates to a play time of as much as 30 hours. However the query is how for much longer the Malibu can pump out the jams whereas sitting in daylight. We requested for this knowledge, and the model performed some in-house assessments for us. Urbanista used a curated playlist of songs and set its speaker on the quantity it believes different manufacturers are utilizing for testing.
Apparently, the Malibu can prolong its 30-hour play time by as much as 15 hours with 50,000 Lux photo voltaic mild charging, which is the extent of outside mild you’d discover on a mean sunny day. Photo voltaic mild ranges from roughly 20,000 to 100,000 Lux, so the technical staff at Urbanista determined to go for “half-sun power” for testing. Nonetheless, a complete potential run time of 45 hours in full solar is engaging, if considerably tough to attain in actual life.
{Photograph}: Urbanista
Lit Up
There are, after all, solar-powered audio system available on the market from lesser recognized manufacturers, similar to Abfoce and Cyboris, however what makes Urbanista’s mannequin attention-grabbing is the considerably superior effectivity of the Powerfoyle photo voltaic cells. So long as you don’t utterly drain the battery in a single lengthy listening session, the speaker can prime up when not in use and prolong the play time significantly. Sahlén presents three examples of battery drain if the Malibu is used on this approach.
Situation 1: If the speaker is used twice per week for a complete of seven hours and all that point saved in full darkness, the battery ought to final for as much as 30 days.
