While we all are drooling over wireless ANC headphones, an audio company has just gone a step further. The Scandinavia-based audio giant Urbanista that runs its operations from Stockholm, Sweden has created the first commercially available solar-powered active noise cancelling headphones.
The fact that these headphones juice up using the sun’s energy makes complete sense as ANC technology is a battery sucker, and demanding audiophiles need more juice to continue their audio needs non-stop.
Headphones need no physical charging
Practically speaking if you’re out in the sun with the Urbanista Los Angeles headphones, you don’t have to worry charging them up anytime soon. The good news is, they not only charge with the sun’s energy, the headphones continue juicing up even indoors in the presence of ambient light source.
The magic here is the Exeger’s Powerfoyle solar cell in the headband section. Just for reference sake, an hour on a cloudy day or in ambient light will charge the battery for two hours of listening time. Otherwise, on a clear day, the Los Angeles headphones give three hours of added battery after an hour in the sun. On a full charge, the headphones can play for 50 hours non-stop which is impressive.
Features at par with other options
Talking of their features, the wireless ANC headphones have on-ear detection, ambient sound mode and voice assistant support for Siri and Google assistant. To run through the ANC and ambient sound modes, simply click on the button on the side.
At a price tag of $199, the Los Angeles solar-powered headphones are a good option, given the impressive feature set they come with. When they finally arrive sometime soon (you can sign-up to get notified), it’ll be interesting to see how they fare in real-life usage. If headphones are what they claim to be, then Urbanista might win over a chunk of audio lovers.