Someplace in a quiet nook of Urbanista’s Stockholm HQ, there’s an inventory 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 larger resonance.
However there’s a finite listing of evocative toponyms on this planet, isn’t there? How lengthy earlier than we’re provided 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, accessible in a most un-Malibu-like selection 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 a degree of distinction right here. The highest of the speaker is sort of solely made up of Exeger’s Powerfoyle photo voltaic cell materials, which suggests the Malibu, like its headphone siblings, can harvest the ability 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 nice for round 30 hours of playback. That’s so long as you’re listening at average quantity, anyway. The type of digital audio file dimension you’re streaming isn’t an element, because the Urbanista is just appropriate with the bog-standard, low-energy SBC and AAC codecs.
However with gentle shining on its Powerfoyle floor, the Malibu can prolong its playtime handily. We’re not speaking about an Urbanista Los Angeles–type state of affairs right here, you perceive; these headphones can truly acquire energy, at the same time as they’re taking part in. However Urbanista means that even some reasonably sunny days whereas the Malibu is doing its factor can prolong that battery life from 30 hours to one thing nearer to 45 hours. And free vitality just isn’t one thing to be sniffed at.
Photo voltaic Sounds
“Reasonably sunny” is a relative time period, after all. Throughout the course of my time with the Urbanista, it was charged by a mix of inner gentle 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 in a position to 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 means, the speaker’s IP67 score ought to imply it’s in a position to rise up effectively to those extremes.
As is normal Urbanista apply, the Malibu is flawlessly constructed and completed from a number of supplies that mix tactility with robustness. Other than the Powerfoyle, the Urbanista is made out of a mix of robust plastic and a amount of acoustic material.
{Photograph}: Urbanista
