The Stockholm earbuds are a pair of truly wireless earbuds from Urbanista, a Swedish-based audio company. The earbuds come in a range of colours, support touch controls and come in at under £100.
Video Review
Design
The earbuds come in four different colours; rose gold, dark clown, fluffy cloud and olive green. I decided to go with the fluffy cloud, white, colour choice as I’ve found that the lighter earbud colours usually don’t show skin oils and grease from the ear as much as darker colours.
These earbuds have a similar design to Apple’s EarPods, so the Stockholm does not have an ear tip that enters the ear canal. Some people may prefer this, whilst others may not – this type of design has advantages and disadvantages but ultimately it comes down to personal preference.
The earbuds fit well into my ears but they are a little larger than the pair of Apple EarPods that I keep in my bag, so they don’t fit quite as well for my ears – which does affect the sound quality as I am not able to get a tight seal around the earbuds.
The plastic construction of the earbuds has a matte finish, which is soft and adds a little extra grip. On the outsides of the earbuds, the design is simple, there’s a small amount of branding on the sides where the touch-sensitive areas are for controlling functions such as play/pause and skip. These touch areas work quite well once you get used to doing it and have learnt the different combinations of taps.
The underside of the earbuds has the contacts for when it comes to charging up the earbuds using their case. Unfortunately, there isn’t any lettering to tell you which earbud goes in which ear but luckily the design does mostly prevent you from putting the wrong earbud in the wrong ear.
The design of the charging case matches the same matte plastic materials used for the earbuds. It’s an extremely minimal clamshell design. The Urbanista logo can be found on the top and the battery status LED and micro-USB port for charging the case is found on the right-hand side.
The status LED is useful for checking how much charge the case has left as there is no way to get a numerical value for how much charge is left – the number of LED blinks indicates a battery percentage value remaining.
Also, it’s 2019, it would be nice to see a USB-C charging port on this case – especially as these are a mid-range pair of earbuds. Of course, it’s not a deal breaker – but it would be nice to see a pair of earbuds with this price tag embracing the latest and greatest.
Sound Quality
Judging the sound quality for these earbuds has been a bit difficult, let me explain why.
One of the main things I’ve learnt from reviewing the Stockholm earbuds is that they are going to sound different depending on the size of your ears. This goes back to my earlier size comparison between these and the Apple EarPods. As these earbuds are a little large for my ears, I’ve found that they can’t fit as well into my ears as they could potentially do if my ears were a tiny bit larger.
As a result of this, the sound quality is a little less punchy and bassy – now don’t get me wrong, it is still there but if that is something that you’re looking for and you’d consider yourself to have ears a little on the smaller size, these earbuds may, unfortunately, not be for you.
I was able to put some pressure on the earbuds which gave me a fuller sound, but obviously, I can’t walk around with my fingers pressing down on the earbuds all the time – but it did allow me to see how different the sound is if you are able to get a good fit.
If you’re able to get a good fit, these earbuds sound great. They provide good sound coverage across all the frequencies and provide clear vocals and punchy bass – ideal for podcast and music listening alike.
Microphone Quality
The microphone on the earbuds is okay for voice memos and phone calls, but it does sound a little quiet. The microphone is clear and does manage to pick up my voice well.
Features
The earbuds support Bluetooth 5.0 which ensures that the earbuds will be able to support the latest and greatest and be able to take advantage of new smartphones and mobile devices that also support Bluetooth 5.0.
The earbuds are also extremely easy to pair as they show up as a single device in the Bluetooth pairing menu, so there’s no worry about having to have multiple earbuds paired, it just works.
The touch controls, which I mentioned at the beginning of the review, are also extremely handy and convenient to use as it is rare for truly wireless earbuds to have controls for a range of functions. With the touch controls on the Stockholm earbuds, you have a full range of functionality that you can expect on a wired pair of headphones, with track skipping, play/pause and volume adjustment.
Battery Life
When it comes to battery life, you can expect to get around 3½ hours of playtime with the Stockholm earbuds – with a total of 14 hours of playtime when you make use of the charging case.
The battery life percentage of the earbuds will appear alongside your connected Bluetooth devices, which will let you see how much battery life you have left for the earbuds themselves. For the case, you’ll need to use the LED indicator on the case itself.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, the Stockholm earbuds from Urbanista are a pair of earbuds that I really want to like.
They’re well made, sound great (as long as they fit in your ears) and have decent battery life. But they don’t fit in my ears as well as other earbuds on the market, so, personally, they’re not for me.
Would I still recommend them? Of course, if they fit in your ears well – they sound great and provide a great experience for someone looking for a pair of true wireless earbuds. If they were just a little bit smaller, I’d use these as my next pair of daily earbuds.
I’ll look forward to seeing how Urbanista improves these for the second generation of earbuds like these – but until then, I’ll keep using what I’m using.
